Night and Day

Although the title of this review may give the impression that I'm playing fast and loose with the reputation of this remarkable writer I mean no disrespect. The interactions of these victorian era Britishers causes me to say this. All the characters are essentially good people who deserve happiness, but they can't seem to make up minds with whom they should fall in love and marry. Considering this was an early novel of Woolf (her 2nd.) her exquisite understanding of human nature is already evident. Also you will see how she uses the novel as her bully pulpit in the cause for women's suffrage. Women got the right to vote after the book was published. How much this novel had to do with that I can't say. Her stream of conscience writing, which became her hallmark, is already evident. but fortunately she uses it sparingly. Compared to say "The Waves" or "To the Lighthouse" or "Jacob"s Room", all of which are heavily reliant on stream of conscience the interactions of the principals is much more conveyed in dialog. The book seems longer than it has to be, (500 pages) but Miss Woolf was still learning her craft. There is beautiful descriptive passages using metaphors and word painting. One thing that clearly stands out is the main character of Katharine Hilbery is obviously Virginia Woolf herself. The character of Rodney, from reading a biography of Woolf seems to be heavily based on her husband. I got the impression that some of the abrasive conversations between Katharine and Rodney was based on her marriage at the time of writing. It's not uncommon for writers to say things through their characters that they can't or don't want to say in real life. Chapter 25 has a hint of the future novel "A Room Of One's Own" where Katharine describes the ideal situation for a writer. Have no fear eventually everyone winds up with the mate that's right for them. You will live with these people for a few weeks unless you are a fast reader, but it's worth it. Make an effort to stick with the book to the end. You won't be disappointed.

A well-crafted book can linger in my mind long after it is finished, its words, sentences, scenes or characters appearing in random spaces of my life, like the grocery store checkout line or in the car, prompting me to philosophize, laugh, smile, and frown. The novel Night and Day by Virginia Woolf is one such book.Although there is much in Night and Day to analyze, savor, or dislike—all equally valid reactions from a good read—one of the most memorable scenes takes place mainly in the consciousness of the family, and more specifically, in Katherine’s consciousness. The catalyst for this scene, which is also the beginning of the book, is a visit from Ralph Denham, a poor man who wants to be rich. To him, Katherine Hilbery and her family have it all—wealth, property, position—without having to work for it. Despite appearances, not all is perfect within Katherine’s family, and not for the typical reasons we see unfolding in a TV drama series. The situation is as follows: Katherine’s grandfather, Richard Alardyce, was a great and important poet; and as with so many other, great, important poet men—Woolf is poking a little fun here—his biography must be written. Katherine and her mother have been tasked since birth with the writing of this biography.Woolf unfolds her narrative carefully, lulling the reader dreamily into the deep mire into which Katherine one day finds herself. At age 27, she and her mother still have no biography to show the world. Nevertheless, Katherine’s view of her mother has been up to this point optimistic and sympathetic, even as she realizes how absurd the task has become for both of them. Her account of watching her mother at work:"These spells of inspiration never burnt steadily, but flickered over the gigantic mass of the subject as capriciously as a will-o’-the wisp, lighting now on that point, now on that. It was as much as Katherine could do to keep the pages of her mother’s manuscript in order, but to sort them so that the sixteenth year of Richard Alardyce’s life succeeded the fifteenth was beyond her skill. And yet they were so brilliant, these paragraphs, so nobly phrased, so lightning-like in their illumination, that the dead seemed to crowd the very room. Read continuously, they produced a sort of vertigo, and set her asking herself in despair what on earth she[Katherine] was to do with them…But the book must be written. It was a duty that they owed the world, and to Katherine, at least, it meant more than that, for if they could not between them get this one book accomplished they had no right to their privileged position." (Pg. 30).The situation intensifies when we discover that Katherine is hiding what she truly feels passionate about, and prefers doing over writing:"[Katherine]…would not have cared to confess how infinitely she preferred the exactitude, the star-like impersonality, of figures to the confusion, agitation, and vagueness of the finest prose. There was something a little unseemly in thus opposing the tradition of her family; something that made her feel wrong-headed, and thus more than ever disposed to shut her desires away from view and cherish them with extraordinary fondness." (Pg. 34).Her desire to do math and retreat into silence and thought provides the bulk of a thin but tenacious little thread that runs through the entire book, hinted at only a few times—as if the thinking of it in front of the reader is too much a kind of betrayal. This small, unassuming thread destabilizes her relationships—including her engagement to Rodney, who often observed Katherine within the strict confines of their position and endlessly misunderstood her, even if he did love her—and brings her finally to a place where she must decide for herself what to do. Thereafter a delightful sense of irony colors the entire story. Katherine, who clearly prefers “figures” which she finds simple and clear, is herself perpetually enmeshed and paralyzed in the “confusion, agitation, and vagueness of the finest prose”; in this case, in Woolf’s own finest prose. Woolf as author becomes Greek god, inserting Katherine directly into the kind of story she would dislike reading, a life that has been dragged into a dark thicket of mismatched engagements, feelings that confuse and entangle, and only after all that emotional upheaval and pain and discomfort, a union with Ralph, the most turbulent, emotionally distressed character in the entire book. Her own expression of love comes in a “broken statement” (Pg. 430) and is filled with imagery of fire—perhaps a symbol of the destruction such a partnership has wrought on her own day-to-day patterns up until this point. Yet with Ralph, there will be space for a different life in the form of a cottage where she can become the mathematician she wishes to be. And even though Katherine cannot describe or say to herself that she is falling in love, not very well, Woolf wonderfully describes the situation for the reader:“Moments, fragments, a second of vision, and then the flying waters, the winds dissipating and dissolving; then, too, the recollection from chaos, the return of security, the earth firm, superb and brilliant in the sun.” (Pg. 432)A subtle but satisfying ending.

I love Woolf's stream of consciousness writing style. This is not written in that style. It is hard to even say it is by the same author.

Exciting read

Virginia Woolf's second novel Night and Day is a romance fiction shaped around the Great War where four characters concerning and dealing with the imposition attached to their gender, which Woolf's criticised and developed in any of her later novels.Katharine Hilbery is a beautiful, wealthy and introverted granddaughter of a well known poet who is secretly interested in mathematics and astronomy and struggles to accept love into her solitary life. All the characters mainly influenced her own, in particular her motivational mother Margaret, affecting her own mindset as a woman living during the rigid Victorian period, and Mary Datchet which she shares quietly, almost hesitantly, close moments with during intellectual-literary parties she organises at her flat in London: she's a very independent activist woman, lives alone and works in a office for a women's suffrage campaign; Katharine seems to be envious of her freedom as a woman. During those literary parties also take part William Rodney, a mediocre poet and Katharine romantic interest, rather fond in her status, and Ralph Denham a lawyer who occasionally writes articles for Katharine's father; the latter had worked all his life to raise his family after his father passed away and gets obsessed with Katharine after seeing her at her family's tea party.If you have read any of Virginia's works before Night and Day as I did, you might find this novel surprisingly similar to an Austen's novel but what drift them apart is how romance between men and women is somehow seen by Woolf, almost forced and artificial, maybe because women especially in the upper classes had to settle down before getting in their husband's business and interests. Her writing though is still evocative, pretty descriptive and gets deep into the psychological side of the characters, drawing out their emotions, fears and unconscious desires.

Como sempre, Virginia Woolf nos traz uma narrativa belíssima, uma história sensível e sensações que só temos ao ler seus livros. Apesar de muita gente não gostar de "Night and Day", é um dos meus livros favoritos da escritora. Única!

Got a bookmark with it too...

beautifully written!