Essay 2 different story

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Seeking the self in the garden: class, femininity and nature in To the Lighthouse, "Bliss" and "The Garden Party"

Author: Rose Onans Date: Fall 2014

From: Virginia Woolf Miscellany(Issue 86) Publisher: Southern Connecticut State University

Document Type: Critical essay Length: 2,811 words

In Katherine Mansfield's short stories "Bliss" and "The Garden Party" and Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse the garden is a space of attempted self-transformation through which the female protagonists seek to grow beyond the confines of their upper- middle class feminine roles. The garden is one of Western literature's most enduring and potent symbols, contextualizing cultural and literary discourse on knowledge, sexuality and nature (Morris and Sawyer 21). In Mansfield's and Woolf's work, however, as Shelley Saguaro argues, "the gardens themselves are imbued with contingency and transition, rather than represented as simple paradigms of paradise or retreat" (59). Mansfield and Woolf problematize the idea that the garden, as a natural space, offers a means to transcend the barriers of class and gender by highlighting the commodification of this space and the restrictive effects of the traditional equation of femininity with nature. Each of the three texts offers its own perspective on the connection between the garden and female subjugation and emancipation. When read together, therefore, they offer a more complete understanding of this relationship, complicating and expanding on the ideas in the individual texts.

The relationship between women and nature is immediately problematized in Woolf's To the Lighthouse through the character of Mrs Ramsay. Mrs Ramsay, as an "archetypal mother" figure (Transue 68) and wife who "did not like to be finer than her husband" (To the Lighthouse [TTL] 45) has been rightly understood as Woolf's fictional image of the "Angel in the House" that she describes in "Professions for Women";. "Sympathetic," "charming," "unselfish," excelling in "the arts of family life" and entirely self-sacrificing, the qualities of the Angel in the House ensure that she "never had a mind or a wish of her own" ("Professions"). These traits, although not quite so one-dimensionally presented in Mrs Ramsay, coalesce with the powerful natural imagery that Woolf utilizes to describe her. Mrs Ramsay "pour[ing] erect into the air a rain of energy [...] looking at the same time animated and alive as if all her energies were being fused into force, burning and illuminating [...] this delicious fecundity, this fountain and spray of life" (TTL 42-43) draws upon the legacy of Western thought in which the feminine is equated with the natural (Kaplan 55). Yet "boasting of her capacity to surround and protect, there was scarcely a shell of herself left for her to know herself by; all was so lavished and spent"--fertile femininity is thus explicitly tied to the Angel in the House, who spends all her personal resources caring for her family (TTL 44). Maria DiBattista's analysis of Mrs Ramsay as being "in the novel's symbolic topography [...] at the center of a circle of life that encloses a green world of gardens and marriage" sums up what I argue is Woolf's problematization of the equation of women with nature by linking Woolf's view to the Angel in the House through the character of Mrs Ramsay (175).

This problem becomes particularly important when considering Mansfield's story "Bliss." Bertha Young, as a young upper- middle class housewife, rails against "idiotic civilisation," which means one has to keep one's body "shut up in a case like a rare, rare fiddle" (Katherine Mansfield. Selected Stories [KMSS] 111). Specifically uttered in response to Bertha's feeling of "bliss" and desire to "run instead of walk," this image of restriction by "civilisation" speaks of enclosure, objectification and commodification of the body and the subjugation of the desire to express natural emotion. This restriction becomes evident in Bertha's inability to express her thoughts and feelings to herself, her child and her husband, Harry, and most importantly can be

seen as borne out in her sexual "coldness" with Harry and ambiguous feelings for her friend, Pearl Fulton (KMSS 122). Chantal Cornut-Gentille D'Arcy's reading of the "rare fiddle" as symbolic of the "political and sexual alienation of women" (244) highlights the artificially restrictive force of society, which is countered by the central symbol of the blooming pear tree in Bertha's garden. Bertha's initial feeling of being "shut up in a case" is at odds with her later interpretation of "the lovely pear tree with its wide open blossoms as a symbol for her own life" (KMSS 115). While the specific implications of this identification with the pear tree remain extensively debated, I see it as symbolic of Bertha's desire to "grow" herself out from the restrictions of society. The garden thus becomes the site of Bertha's attempted personal growth. What this growth entails specifically for Bertha remains a matter for debate, but it places her subconscious desire for freedom to grow and express herself squarely within the natural realm through identification with her garden.

As Saguaro highlights, despite "Bliss" being imbued with Biblical imagery and symbology, the garden's meaning is transitory rather than static; it is neither a space of redemption nor fall. The women-nature problem discussed in To the Lighthouse becomes extremely pertinent in relation to Bertha's self-identification with nature through the pear tree, and complicates the possibility of nature as an escape in opposition to artificial social and class constructs. The relevance of this issue to Bertha is important, as she is characterized as a more "modern" woman than Mrs Ramsay. While she is not a Victorian "Angel" per se, Bertha's predicament highlights Woolf's point as to the pervasive and subtle power of this idea of womanhood. The connection between the Angel in the House and the feminine natural ideal elucidated through Mrs Ramsay highlights the subtle inference in "Bliss" that Bertha's desire to be like the pear tree cannot offer a meaningful way out, laden as it is with problematic cultural significance. Even Bertha's implied dichotomy between nature and civilization is troubled in "Bliss." Mansfield exposes the commodified status of the garden, listing it among commodities Bertha and Harry are blessed with: they "don't have to worry about money" so they have "this absolutely satisfactory house and garden" (KMSS 115). Bertha's use of grapes to complement the purple carpet and even her amusement at envisaging one of her dinner guests, Mrs Norman Knight, as a monkey suggests that rather than nature acting as an interruption on the artificial, it serves merely to complement it (112, 116). Her desire to identify with nature as a way out of the "case" of civilization's expectations is thus undercut by this reminder that the garden, and therefore Bertha, is not separate from cultural scripts but is, in fact, integral to them. Bertha too is not so far from being of the status of the "rare fiddle" after all.

The commodification of the natural, exposing the garden as an upper-class space, is extended in Mansfield's "The Garden Party." As Angela Smith argues, the second line, "they could not have had a more perfect day for a garden-party if they had ordered it," reveals that the family is "in the habit of ordering what it wants," (KMSS 237; Smith 141), and from the opening line on, the commodification of the natural is heavily emphasized. Even the description of the roses simply highlights that they exist to serve the family's needs (Smith 141): "you could not help feeling they understand that roses are the only flowers to impress people at garden parties" (KMSS 237). Mansfield thus complicates the possibility of Laura achieving any kind of authentic break from her class in the garden. Less than half Bertha's age, Laura Sheridan is arguably not old enough to feel the full extent of the class constriction with which Bertha struggles. Laura, however, perceives the garden as a space to break from the affectations of her upbringing in order to have a genuine interaction with members of the working class, causing her to abandon her attempt to "copy her mother's voice" and look "severe" and instead feel "just like a work girl" (KMSS 239). Her keen awareness of "these absurd class distinctions," despite her desire to believe that "she didn't feel them. Not a bit," precipitates her reaction to the death of the carter, and her eye-opening experience visiting his family (239).

Despite Laura's budding awareness of class sensitivity, Mansfield further erodes the idea that the garden offers a natural space, apart from the decadence of the house, in which to break down class distinctions. This is evident through the contrast between Laura's own garden and the "garden patches" of the "little mean dwellings" of the working class in which "there was nothing but cabbage stalks, sick hens and tomato cans" (KMSS 245). This emphasis on the disparity between the gardens, and Mansfield's use of a polyphonic narrative voice throughout the story (Smith 140), means that the Sheridans' judgmental upper- class mentality informs Laura's belief that she can escape. The pervasiveness of this view that perceives poverty as "disgusting and sordid" continually interrupts Laura's experience, and ultimately highlights that Laura is nothing like a "work girl" (245). Yet Laura's reading of the dead man's face as "content"--"what did garden parties and baskets and lace frocks mean to him? He was far from all those things"--suggests that Laura still seeks to get away from "all those things" of her frivolous life (251). Her previous alignment of the means of this escape with the workmen and the garden, however, is sharply critiqued, not only by the emphasis on the garden as a wealthy space, but also by the reality of the dismal poverty that Laura witnesses when she enters a real working class space. As Smith argues, Mansfield's use of polyphony ensures that the effect of Laura's epiphany remains ambiguous, such as when she struggles to articulate to her brother her new sense of life the narrative voice takes over: "but what life was she couldn't explain. No matter. He quite understood. 'Isn't it, darling?' said Laurie" (251). Laura is "poised on the edge of a greater revelation" that remains inconclusive as "we are taken back to the tone of the opening, with the perception that rites of passage are not easily achieved" (Smith 144). In situating Laura's initial personal conflict with class in the garden Mansfield creates a spatial metaphor for the need for distance from class paradigms to allow for Laura's natural process of self- discovery. Yet the continued insertion of the upper-class voice into the narrative speaks to the fact that even the garden is a commodified and class-designated space, offering an explanation for why this rite of passage remains thwarted.

To an extent, Bertha and Laura can be seen as intermediary characters between Mrs Ramsay and Lily Briscoe in To the Lighthouse. Unlike Mrs Ramsay, who exemplifies the traditional role of women, Bertha and Laura are aware of their class and gender roles and push these boundaries. Yet for both characters the ultimate effect remains ambiguous and under-realized. Lily and Mrs Ramsay, however, emblematize a diverging trajectory for women; while Mrs Ramsay remains static, Lily forges a new path for herself through the strength she gains from her painting, thus achieving the personal independence that evades Mrs Ramsay and Bertha. Her vision at the end of the novel, seen as an instance of a woman "freely choosing to engage in conscious, self defining activity" that is "rare in modernism" (Pease 21) is the culmination of the self-confidence that she

develops as a result of her painting. Charles Tansley's criticism "'Women can't paint, women can't write'" characterizes the view of women's endeavours that fall outside of their traditional circle (TTL 54). In the crucial dinner scene at the end of the first chapter, "The Window," Lily initially conceives of herself in natural terms as bending "like corn under a wind" from Tansley's ridicule, conforming in the moment to the passive feminine role of appeasement embodied by Mrs Ramsay (94). Lily only recovers "with a great and rather painful effort"' by remembering "there's my painting; I must move the tree to the middle; that matters--nothing else" (94). Her remembrance that "she too had her work" gives her a foundation from which to define herself, to move beyond her feminine role in conversation with Tansley and deny Mrs Ramsay's wish that she marry (92).

In the context of our discussion, situating Lily's act of painting in the garden, which has as its subject Mrs Ramsay reading to her son, James, is highly significant. Painting both the garden and the garden-like Mrs Ramsay, Lily is able to assert control over the image, and thus is able to reduce the Madonna-esque image of Mrs Ramsay and James into "a purple shadow without irreverence" (59). Just as her investment in her "work" allows Lily to remove herself from the feminine destiny of marriage and sexual politics, her act of painting in the garden externalizes her from it. Rather than being identified personally with the natural world like Mrs Ramsay (via reference to her fecundity) or seeking growth and escape through access to it like Laura and Bertha, Lily imposes her vision upon the scene, thus in a parallel act removing herself from what DiBattista pertinently calls the "circle of life that encloses [...] gardens and marriage" (175). While the influence of Mrs Sheridan. Laura's mother, is felt right to the end of "The Garden Party," preventing Laura from fulfilling her journey toward self-definition, the artistic act of reducing the mother and child to a shadow in the final version of the painting parallels Lily's realization that because Mrs Ramsay has died the metaphorical Angel in the House has died with her, so that "we can override her wishes, improve away her limited, old- fashioned ideas" (TTL 190). This process is not as simple as superseding the older generation; Lily must complete a highly complex process of taking control over both the garden and the Angel in the House ideal of womanhood so that it does not take control of her. By externalizing herself from both, she does not entangle herself in the problems associated with identification with the garden. She simultaneously breaks down the class expectations upon herself, not by seeking out the garden as a neutral space to avoid class restrictions, but rather by engaging with and defeating them by finding in the garden the subject and space for meaningful work.

For both Mansfield and Woolf, thus, the garden becomes a highly contested space imbued with the effects of the class system. To differing degrees, the texts explore this idea in terms of the problems of the commodification of nature paralleling the commodification of women and the pervasive equation of femininity with nature as a means of restricting women within a "generative cycle" (Kaplan 65). Written at a time when Woolf noted the necessity for women to "kill the Angel in the House" in order to "have a mind of their own," the texts speak to the period of transition in the understanding of the role of women. While I have not suggested that the works discussed here have any relationship with one another beyond that of their subject matter, I have argued that the idea of the garden becoming a space of attempted self-transformation functions at a deep level within the concerns of all three narratives. In advancing Lily as the example of a successful attempt to define the female self through a relationship with the garden I do not promote her as a solution to the problems encountered in Mansfield's stories but suggest that her character highlights the difficulties faced by women turning to nature to try and escape the confines of human class constructs. The garden, thus, provides Mansfield and Woolf with a spatial metaphor for the need to achieve both distance from and engagement with class influence, and by functioning as such in their work provides the means for them to achieve this themselves.

Works Cited

D'Arcy, Chantal Cornut-Gentille. "Katherine Mansfield's 'Bliss': The Rare Fiddle as Emblem of the Political and Sexual Alienation of Women." Papers on Language and Literature 35.3 (1999): 244-69.

DiBattista, Maria. "To the Lighthouse: Virginia Woolf's Winter's Tale." Virginia Woolf: Revaluation and Continuity, a Collection of Essays. Ed. Ralph Freeman. Berkeley: U of California P, 1980. 161-88.

Kaplan, Sydney Janet. Katherine Mansfield and the Origins of Modernism. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991.

Mansfield, Katherine. Katherine Mansfield. Selected Stories. Ed. D. M. Davin. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1998.

Morris, Paul and Deborah Sawyer, eds. A Walk in the Garden: Biblical, Iconographical and Literary Images of Eden. Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1992.

Pease, Allison. Modernism, Feminism and the Culture of Boredom. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2012.

Saguaro, Shelley. Garden Plots: The Politics and Poetics of Gardens. Hampshire: Ashgate Publishing, 2006.

Smith, Angela. Katherine Mansfield and Virginia Woolf: A Public of Two. Oxford: Clarendon P, 1999.

Transue, Pamela J. Virginia Woolf and the Politics of Style. Albany: State U of New York P, 1986.

Woolf, Virginia. To the Lighthouse. Camberwell: Penguin Books Australia, 2010.

--. "Professions for Women." The Death of the Moth and Other Essays. eBooks@Adelaide, The University of Adelaide, 2014. n. pag.

Web. 1 November 2014. <https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/w7woolf/ virginia/>.

Rose Onans

Monash University

Onans, Rose

Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2014 Southern Connecticut State University http://www.home.southernct.edu/~neverowv1/vwm.html

Source Citation Onans, Rose. "Seeking the self in the garden: class, femininity and nature in To the Lighthouse, 'Bliss' and 'The Garden Party'."

Virginia Woolf Miscellany, no. 86, 2014, p. 21+. Gale Literature Resource Center, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A418088225/LitRC?u=hunt25841&sid=LitRC&xid=e7c08c64. Accessed 24 Apr. 2021.

Gale Document Number: GALE|A418088225