As a Pennsylvania native, I have seen many maps of the Gettysburg battlefield, showing from an aerial view the movement of troops, the historical landmarks and the action points of the renowned civil war battle. However, it was not until I physically toured the battlefield and navigated the area, personally witnessing the space that the troops traversed, did I situate the battlefield and experience the “place.” I observed the contour of the land, noted the horizon, the topography, the landscape and the weather conditions.
Any tourist who has walked an historic site may not the sense of eeriness that creeps into an individual’s demeanor when they duplicate the passage of those who passed before them. Today, the Virginia Woolf Society offers walks designed to replicate the movement of Woolf and her famous fictitious characters, including Mrs. Dalloway’s bustling through the London city streets. (Virginia Woolf Society , 2012) .
For noted French philosopher Michel deCerteau, this phenomenon of evaluating space is the difference between a strategic view of the map and the tactical account of the tour, enriched by movement through the particular place. (deCerteau, The Practice of Everyday Life, 1984)
He wrote of this phenomenon in his books including a chapter “Walking in the City,” that the “act of walking is to the urban system, what the speech act is to language or to the statements uttered,” providing an enunciated function and implying relation with the space. (deCerteau, 1984)
I am reminded by a brief walk that Mrs. Jarvis persuaded Mrs. Flanders to take in Jacob’s Room:
“It is perfectly dry, said Mrs. Jarvis, as they shut the orchard door and stepped on to the turf.
I shan’t go far,” said Betty Flanders. “Yes Jacob will leave Paris on Wednesday.”
“Jacob was always my friend of the three,” said Mrs. Jarvis.
“Now, my dear, I am going no further,” said Mrs. Flanders. They had climbed the dark hill and reached the Roman Camp.
The rampart rose at their feet – the smooth surface circle surface surrounding the camp or the grave. How many needles Betty Flanders had lost there! And her garnet brooch .”…
How quiet it is!” said Mrs. Jarvis.
Mrs. Flanders rubbed the turn with her toe, thinking of her garnet brooch. (Woolf, 1947)
The focus on the garnet brooch elicits a memory to the past, revealing a ghost of past experience conjured by setting foot on that space. For deCerteau, this indicates the “trace” left by memory on geographical spaces. (deCerteau, 1984) Further, the focus on the “circle surface” surrounding the camp addresses a symbolic order of the unconscious that tipped off Mrs. Flanders to recall the lost needles and rosy brooch.
While the bulk of this blog entry has focused on movement through the city, I would now like to take a moment to discuss the personification of a letter and the seizing space. In Jacob’s Room, Woolf breathes life into a letter placed on Jacob’s table, imbibing it with the emotions, memory of the recipient’s mother, Mrs. Flanders. The letter, placed on the table by Florinda when she enters the room, then “witnesses” a sexual encounter between Jacob and his paramour.
“But if the blue envelope lying by the bisquit box had the feelings of a mother, the heart was torn by the little creek, the sudden stir. Behind the door was the obscene thing, the alarming presence, and terror would come over her as at death, or the birth of a child,” Woolf writes in Jacob’s Room (Woolf, 1947) .
While we know that Woolf and her husband Leonard Woolf, published the works of Sigmund Freud, on the Hogarth Press, this passage seems to pay homage to the Oedipal complex and the accompanying psychological ramifications.
In Jacob’s Room, Woolf emphasizes the ubiquity and social ritual of letters. “Let us consider letters – how they come at breakfast and at night ….Venerable are letters, infinitely brave, forlorn and lost. Life would split asunder without them,” Woolf writes in Jacob’s Room. (Woolf, 1947) .
Letters travel the distance of space and geography to bring sentiments and information to the readers. For my family, the travel to Gettyburg battlefield and the tour of monuments, troop movements and American historical markers, prompted us to buy postcards and memorabilia to prompt memories for years to come.
Bibliography
deCerteau. (1984). The Practice of Everyday Life. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Virginia Woolf Society . (2012, September 2). Retrieved from Virginia Woolf Society: http://www.virginiawoolfsociety.co.uk/vw_res.walk.htm
Woolf, V. (1947). Jacob's Room. London: Hogarth Press.
No comments:
Post a Comment