Introducción a la clasificación de recursos

It is not possible to talk about authorial revisions without making refer-ence to the author. Authorial agency is nowhere more clearly visible than in the construction of a final text from early drafts. Grammar alone forces us to mention the author as agent, and the analysis of authorial revisions must necessarily account for intention and rationale in the changes intro-duced. What revisions reveal is that authors are thinking beings whose intentional meaning as expressed in words is subject to a re-visionary process. This process need not necessarily be fully consciously grasped, but it is nevertheless a process of production which shows that aesthetic aims are not always fully realised in first drafts and that they involve some careful consideration. As Redpath observes: ‘when a poet changes expres-sions in a poem during revision, is that not sometimes because he consid-ers that the words he is rejecting do not express as well as the new words, what he meant?’ (1976: 15).

One might object that when revisions take place after a longer period of time their execution is merely testimony to a development in the author’s aesthetic vision. While it is possible that this might be the case, more often revisions do not radically alter the work as initially conceived; they tend to intensify techniques already present, themes already established.

Revisions are most often stylistic, rather than about plot or event, and their careful unpacking can offer evidence for an interpretation that is based on a linguistic analysis, at the same time as the linguistic analysis can illuminate their meaning in the overall conception of the work.

Woolf’s novel Mrs Dalloway is, according to the editor of its earlier version

‘The Hours’, ‘not “final”, but is created from constant dialogue as it speaks to and out of its associate texts’ (Wussow2010: ix). These are: Woolf’s short

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stories ‘Mrs Dalloway in Bond Street’ and ‘The Prime Minister’ written in 1922, which ‘together are the first textual layer of Mrs Dalloway’ (Wussow 2010: ix–x); an early notebook from 1922 which contains notes on the composition of ‘The Hours’ and part of its opening section; and, the com-plete manuscript of ‘The Hours’, begun in June 1923 and comcom-pleted in October 1924. The English edition of the book from 1925 is based on a set of page proofs, now lost, but containing Woolf’s latest revisions.

The dialogic formation of the published text, as Wussow describes it, does not preclude the presence of authorial intention in the composition of the text. Even if the text of Mrs Dalloway is not final, the linguistic forging of Woolf’s technique still bears testimony to an aesthetic ideal that is pursued through different versions of the text. My exploration of Woolf’s revisions and their impact on the portrayal of narrative viewpoint will focus on ‘Mrs Dalloway in Bond Street’, which will be compared to the opening of the finished text of the English edition. That Woolf intended to insert this earlier material in the opening of Mrs Dalloway is proved by the fact that in her 1923 manuscript of ‘The Hours’, after a very short unnumbered section at the beginning of the first notebook, she begins a new section of the book and numbers it: III. The missing parts of the opening, then, are the short stories describing Mrs Dalloway’s early morning stroll around London and the episode recounting Peter Walsh’s and Clarissa’s meeting at her house, which was written in the notebook from 1922 (Wussow2010).

The first significant difference between the opening of the short story

‘Mrs Dalloway in Bond Street’ and the published novel is found in the two passages shown in Figure 10.1. Passage (A) contains a cluster of present-tense verbs that do not stem from the direct thought of the char-acter, but are rather the authorial present used in ‘aphoristic generic sen-tences’ (R. Fowler1977: 86). The generalising meaning of the first-person plural pronouns ‘we’ and ‘us’ confirms this interpretation, as do generic statements of the kind ‘there is nothing to take the place of childhood’.

Authorial present, as Fowler explains, is the vehicle of narrative authority, which is why ‘the generic sentence is a regular tell-tale of the intrusive, assertive, author’; its ‘moralistic and authoritarian connotations’ (R. Fowler 1977: 86) make it a favoured device by ‘outspoken, sententious writers’

(R. Fowler1977: 89). What we see here then is Woolf adopting a narratorial position that is consistent with an earlier tradition – that of nineteenth-century realism.

The second paragraph of (A) presents a more subjectively nuanced expe-rience of Big Ben. We find here the characteristic Woolfian disruption of perspective: the story had been oriented through Mrs Dalloway’s point of view, with some narratorial interruptions, up to this point; at the start of the new paragraph we are given an external glimpse of Mrs Dalloway through the perspective of another character. But the different perspec-tives are nicely contained within sentence boundaries. The sentences:

‘Big Ben struck the tenth; struck the eleventh stroke. The leaden circles dissolved in the air’, although using the past simple tense, can be aligned with Clarissa’s perception of the clock’s strokes, because of the iconic arrangement and repetition. The final sentence of this passage is most explicitly anchored in Mrs Dalloway’s consciousness, with its exclamative constructions, the use of the parenthetical ‘she thought’, the proximal temporal deictic ‘now’ and the modal verb ‘must’, which are all indices of free indirect style. So, the technique of rendering consciousness is already fully grasped by Woolf, but its execution is within traditional boundaries.

(A)‘Mrs Dalloway in Bond Street’ (B) Mrs Dalloway No doubt they were not all bound on

errands of happiness. There is much more to be said about us than that we walk the streets of Westminster. Big Ben too is nothing but steel rods consumed by rust were it not for the care of H.M.’s Office of Works. Only for Mrs Dalloway the moment was complete; for Mrs Dalloway June was fresh. A happy childhood– and it was not to his daughters only that Justin Parry had seemed afine fellow (weak of course on the Bench);flowers at evening, smoke rising; the caw of rooks falling from ever so high, down down through the October air– there is nothing to take the place of childhood. A leaf of mint brings it back: or a cup with a blue ring.

A charming woman, poised, eager, strangely white-haired for her pink cheeks, so Scope Purvis, C.C.B., saw her as he hurried to his office. She stiffened a little, waiting for Burthen’s van to pass. Big Ben struck the tenth; struck the eleventh stroke. The leaden circles dissolved in the air. Pride held her erect, inheriting, handing on, acquainted with discipline and with suffering. How people suffered, how they suffered, she thought, thinking of Mrs Foxcroft at the Embassy last night, decked with jewels, eating her heart out, because that nice boy was dead, and now the old Manor House (Durtnall’s van passed) must go to a cousin.

She stiffened a little on the kerb, waiting for Durtnall’s van to pass. A charming woman, Scope Purvis thought her (knowing her as one does know people who live next door to one in Westminster);

a touch of the bird about her, of the jay, blue-green, light, vivacious, though she was overfifty, and grown very white since her illness. There she perched, never seeing him, waiting to cross, very upright.

For having lived in Westminster– how many years now? over twenty,– one feels even in the midst of the traffic, or waking at night, Clarissa was positive, a particular hush, or solemnity; an indescribable pause; a suspense (but that might be her heart, affected, they said, by influenza) before Big Ben strikes. There! Out it boomed. First a warning, musical; then the hour, irrevocable. The leaden circles dissolved in the air. Such fools we are, she thought, crossing Victoria Street. For Heaven only knows why one loves it so, how one sees it so, making it up, building it round one, tumbling it, creating it every moment afresh; but the veriest frumps, the most dejected of miseries on doorsteps (drink their downfall) do the same; can’t be dealt with, she felt positive, by Acts of Parliament for that very reason:

they love life. In people’s eyes, in the swing, tramp, and trudge; in the bellow and the uproar; the carriages, motor cars, omnibuses, vans, sandwich men shuffling and swinging; brass bands; barrel organs;

in the triumph and the jingle and the strange high singing of some aeroplane overhead was what she loved; life;

London; this moment of June.

Figure 10.1: Comparison of extracts from‘Mrs Dalloway in Bond Street’ and Mrs Dalloway (Woolf1969: 6)

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In the revised passage from the novel cited in (B) Scope Purvis’s percep-tion of Mrs Dalloway is rendered in more complex syntax. The initial noun phrase ‘a charming woman’ is followed by the parenthetical ‘Scope Purvis thought her’ and by a non-finite clause in parentheses ‘knowing her as one does know people who live next door to one in Westminster’. The perception of Scope Purvis is then resumed with two loosely connected appositional phrases: ‘a touch of the bird about her, of the jay’ and a series of adjectives and a subordinate clause that describe Mrs Dalloway. This syntactic construction layers loosely linked phrases, not always expanded into complete clauses, to make the processing of the syntax when pre-sented in the written medium more difficult than the corresponding sentence in the short story. The perspective, although limited to that of one character, is frequently interrupted by asides, parentheses and appo-sitions, and results in a more fragmented style that follows mimetically the meandering thought of the character.

The first sentence of the new paragraph opens with the conjunction

‘for’, ambiguously linking Clarissa’s thoughts to something which is not actually present in the prior discourse but must be part of her own inner train of thought. The main clause of this sentence (‘For having lived in Westminster. . . one feels even in the midst of the traffic, or waking at night, . . . a particular hush, or solemnity; an indescribable pause; a suspense . . . before Big Ben strikes’) is interrupted three times: by an aside, semantically related to the initial clause, but not syntactically inte-grated in the sentence (‘how many years now? over twenty’), a parenthet-ical (‘Clarissa was positive’) and parentheses ‘(but that might be her heart, affected, they said, by influenza)’. The present tense of the main clause and the generic pronoun ‘one’ are here part of Clarissa’s interior mono-logue. The sentence structure thus mimetically follows the interruptions and digressions of spoken discourse, as well as iconically mimicking the paused expectation of the chimes of Big Ben. The passage continues in the interior monologue form with verbless clauses (‘There! Out it boomed.

First a warning, musical; then the hour, irrevocable’). Another use of the conjunction ‘for’ in: ‘For Heaven only knows why one loves it so, how one sees it so, making it up, building it round one, tumbling it, creating it every moment afresh’ poses a semantic challenge to the reader because it does not actually provide a semantic link, and is thus only loosely attached to the foregoing discourse. The causal meaning of ‘for’ is only to be inferred in relation to Clarissa’s train of thought, which is not made entirely explicit to the reader and which, by its nature of being thought, is elliptical and associative. This sentence returns to the present tense of Clarissa’s interior monologue and, as it progresses, makes use of several parallel constructions of participial clauses: ‘making it up’, ‘building it round one’,

‘tumbling it’, ‘creating it every moment afresh’. All of these are what Sylvia Adamson (1999) calls the free modifier: a construction characteristic of the style of the period which leaves the logical relationship between the

non-finite clause and the main clause unspecified because of the lack of conjunction. The lack of logical coherence explains why the free modifier is favoured by modernist writers in their attempts to dismantle the logic of written language. This sentence also makes a deictic reference to some-thing left vague in the surrounding discourse. Clarissa’s ‘it’ would be clear to her in her consciousness; to the reader, however, it emerges as a more definite reference towards the end of the next sentence, some way from its first mention when we learn what she loves: ‘life; London; this moment of June’. The colloquial omission of the subject in the clause ‘can’t be dealt with, she felt positive, by Acts of Parliament’ intensifies the orality effect.

The three long lists of noun phrases embedded in prepositional phrases that open the last sentence further contribute to the overall looseness and speech-like quality of the passage. The last sentence also makes another shift, less noticeable, to the past tense of free indirect style: ‘In people’s eyes, in the swing, tramp, and trudge. . . was what she loved.’

The revisions, introduced by Woolf in this passage, allow us to discern a marked evolution from a narrator-dominated narrative which might well belong to an earlier tradition of the point-of-view novel, towards a mod-ernist rendition of consciousness that is syntactically more verisimilar and that does away with the voice of the authoritative narrator altogether. The experimental technique of consciousness presentation in the later passage is the result of Woolf’s radical disregard for syntactic norms in the written medium. Her intention, therefore, can be uncovered on the basis of the transformation of her earlier text: to render consciousness in a verisimilar way by approximating spoken discourse in its grammatical construction.

The next extract I will consider – Clarissa’s meeting with her friend Hugh Whitbread – illustrates another feature that disrupts the syntactic continuity of Woolf’s discourse – the embedding of one discourse within another (Figure 10.2).

The main difference between the two extracts is that, in the earlier version, Woolf reports the conversation between Mrs Dalloway and Hugh Whitbread in its entirety using direct speech, whereas the later passage exhibits more complex modes of report and embedding. The complexity in the rendering of perspective in (C) is found in the syntactic construction of the paragraph following the direct-speech exchange that records Clarissa’s thoughts. The first sentence of this thought presentation contains two interruptions to its smooth syntactic surface – the parenthetical ‘she thought’, accompanied by a non-finite clause ‘walking on’ and the apposi-tion ‘fifty, fifty-two’ which gives a sense of an internal dialogue conducted in Clarissa’s mind. The main part of the sentence ‘of course, Milly is about my age’ is thus disjointed, but not incomprehensibly so. The next sentence, more fragmented, shows Woolf’s accomplished method of transcribing consciousness. The arrangement of the first three clauses (‘So it is probably that, Hugh’s manner had said so, said it perfectly’) relies not on logical linkage with a conjunction, but on asyndetic juxtaposition. A dash makes

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the sentence veer off onto some new association in the form of interior monologue (‘dear old Hugh’) which is never completed, but instead the continuation of Clarissa’s thoughts is rendered in internal narration (‘remembering with amusement, with gratitude, with emotion, how shy, like a brother – one would rather die than speak to one’s brother – Hugh had

(C)‘Mrs Dalloway in Bond Street’ (D) Mrs Dalloway

‘Good morning to you!’ said Hugh Whitbread raising his hat rather extrava-gantly by the china shop, for they had known each other as children.

‘Where are you off to?’

‘I love walking in London,’ said Mrs Dalloway.‘Really it’s better than walking in the country!’

‘We’ve just come up,’ said Hugh Whitbread.‘Unfortunately to see doctors.’

‘Milly?’ said Mrs Dalloway, instantly compassionate.

‘Out of sorts,’ said Hugh Whitbread.

‘That sort of thing. Dick all right?’

‘First rate!’ said Clarissa.

Of course, she thought, walking on, Milly is about my age– fifty, fifty-two. So it is probably that, Hugh’s manner had said so, said it perfectly– dear old Hugh, thought Mrs Dalloway, remembering with amusement, with gratitude, with emotion, how shy, like a brother– one would rather die than speak to one’s brother – Hugh had always been, when he was at Oxford, and came over, and perhaps one of them (dart the thing!) couldn’t ride. How then could women sit in Parliament? How could they do things with men? For there is this extra-ordinarily deep instinct, something inside one; you can’t get over it; it’s no use trying; and men like Hugh respect it without our saying it, which is what one loves, thought Clarissa, in dear old Hugh.

‘Good morning to you, Clarissa!’ said Hugh, rather extravagantly, for they had known each other as children.‘Where are you off to?’

‘I love walking in London,’ said Mrs Dalloway.‘Really, it’s better than walking in the country.’

They had just come up– unfortunately– to see doctors. Other people came to see pictures; go to the opera; take their daughters out; the Whitbreads came‘to see doctors’. Times without number Clarissa had visited Evelyn Whitbread in a nursing home. Was Evelyn ill again? Evelyn was a good deal out of sorts, said Hugh, intimating by a kind of pout or swell of his very well-covered, manly, extremely handsome, perfectly upholstered body (he was almost too well dressed always, but presumably had to be, with his little job at Court) that his wife had some internal ailment, nothing serious, which, as an old friend, Clarissa Dalloway would quite understand without requiring him to specify. Ah yes, she did of course; what a nuisance; and felt very sisterly and oddly conscious at the same time of her hat. Not the right hat for the early morning, was that it? For Hugh always made her feel, as he bustled on, raising his hat rather extravagantly and assuring her that she might be a girl of eighteen, and of course he was coming to her party tonight, Evelyn absolutely insisted, only a little late he might be after the party at the Palace to which he had to take one of Jim’s boys, – she always felt a little skimpy beside Hugh;

schoolgirlish; but attached to him, partly from having known him always, but she did think him a good sort in his own way, though Richard was nearly driven mad by him, and as for Peter Walsh, he had never to this day forgiven her for liking him.

Figure 10.2: Comparison of extracts from‘Mrs Dalloway in Bond Street’ and Mrs Dalloway (Woolf1969: 7–8)

always been’), only to be interrupted by another stretch of interior mono-logue between dashes. A further interruption to the subordinate clause (‘when he was at Oxford, and came over, and perhaps one of them (dart

always been’), only to be interrupted by another stretch of interior mono-logue between dashes. A further interruption to the subordinate clause (‘when he was at Oxford, and came over, and perhaps one of them (dart