2 `Letter to Frank`: a letter from Joyce`s Eveline in the style of Virginia

2
‘Letter to Frank’: a letter from Joyce’s Eveline in the style of
Virginia Woolf.
Source Text 1: ‘Eveline’ (short story) – James Joyce
Source Text 2: ‘987: To Vanessa Bell [13 November1918] (letter) – Virginia
Woolf
Source Text 3: To the Lighthouse – (novel) Virginia Woolf
Source Text 1: ‘Eveline’ – James Joyce
Source Text 2: ‘987: To Vanessa Bell’ – Virginia Woolf
Source Text 3: Extract from To the Lighthouse – Virginia Woolf
Top Copy
Dearest Frank,
Etiquette inclines me to assume that you deserve better than to hear
from me after we parted among the swaying crowd in the station at the North
Wall – so now that’s said. The truth is that it’s still very difficult for me to settle
to anything [in every moment that time expends I glimpse the blackness of the
boat, lying in beside the quay wall, with illuminated portholes, I hear the
mournful whistle blown into the mist]. My hands still clutch at the iron railing in
frenzy amid the seas where my cry of anguish will forever exude.
The truth is, Frank, that in my passive existence I am eternally in my
mind in the sea, with you, steaming towards Buenos Ayres where you will fold
me in your arms [where you save me from the odour of dusty cretonne and
the yellowing photograph hung on the wall above the broken harmonium
beside the coloured print of the promises made to Blessed Mary Alacoque
that greets me every day, and has done so for the past nineteen years]. I
must endure the impulse of terror that invades my peace, that awakes a
nausea in my body in knowing I will never see you again and during my
eternity on this earth and keeps my lips moving in silent fervent prayer. [I pray
to God to direct me, to show me what is my duty, but a bell clangs upon my
heart and all the seas of the world tumble about it]. Do you ever feel that your
entire life is useless – passed into a dream, into which now and then these
brutal buffaloes come butting? Or are you always certain that you matter, and
matter more than other people? Frank, you are very kind, manly; openhearted.
The happiest moment I can recall so far is when we we’re introduced
so kindly by fate [how well I remember the first time I had seen you; you were
lodging in a house on the main road where I used to visit. You were standing
at the gate, your peaked cap pushed back on your head and your hair
tumbled forward over a face of bronze]. You used to meet me outside the
Stores every evening and see me home. [You took me to see The Bohemian
Girl and I felt elated, and when you sang about the lass that loves the sailor I
always felt pleasantly confused]. I am worried, Frank, about the invariable
squabble for money on Saturday nights – it has began to weary me
unspeakably. I always give my entire wages – seven shillings- and Harry
always sends up what he can, but he (you know father and his ways) still says
that I squander, that I have no head; that he isn’t going to give his hard
earned money to throw about the streets – but it is my duty to buy the
Sundays dinner.
I think of you Frank [I look at these familiar objects from which I will
never be divided, and I wonder where on earth all the dust comes from and
how it accumulates so quickly and frequently]. Now that you, Harry (who is in
the church decorating business – he is nearly always down somewhere in the
country) and Earnest (who is dead) have gone, there is no one to protect me
from him [and I know it is this that has given me the palpitations; latterly he
has began to say what he would do to me only for my dead mothers sake].
Now I must go – but I feel as if I could write you sheets every day. I do not
expect that you write back, but I do wish to apologise that I have left you for
this wretched house (even in his state someone needs to mind father). I bid
you my final fair farewell. Oh – how I wish I could see you again!
[Most sincere wishes for a dutiful life – how I hope you can be happy].
Yours truly,
For ever and always,
Poppens – (your dearest Evvy).
Commentary
My initial idea for this piece stemmed from a seminar activity in which I was
instructed to write back against Silvia Townsend Warner’s A Correspondence
in The Times1. The text manipulates highly archaic, rhetorical language; I
concluded I would investigate letter writing in a different context, as my
attempt did not acknowledge this. I decided I would adopt the idea of writing a
letter through the persona of Joyce’s ‘Eveline’2 (Source Text 1), to her lover
Frank. Transforming ‘Eveline’ into a letter, I investigated, could be an
interesting experiment when additionally combining Woolf’s stylistic
aesthetics. I investigated Woolf’s letters, choosing ‘987: To Vanessa Bell [13
November1918]3 (Source Text 2) as another source text. Virginia Woolf, in
her novels, manipulates a high linguistic register thorough iteration and
parenthesis; phrases like ‘someone had blundered’4 are iterated throughout
To the Lighthouse (Source Text 3). Brackets are intrinsic to Woolf’s writing;
Joyce’s ‘symbolic or allegorical’5 writing and Woolf’s ‘strategies,’ that ‘may be
as complicated as a whole section written from the point of view of the
passage of time, or as simple as a pair of brackets,’6 could form an interesting
combination.
In my letter I adopted the voice of Eveline, who, ‘caught yet in another
variety of the Dublin paralysis,’7 hesitates and does not find the courage to
leave her drunken father for her lover Frank, whom was bound for South
America. I highlighted passages from ‘Eveline,’ arranging them into the
1
Silvia Townsend Warner, “A Correspondence in The Times,” The Secret Self: Short Stories by Women, ed.
Hermione Lee (London: J. M. Dent & Sons Ltd, 1985) 81-85. 2
James Joyce, “Eveline,” Dubliners (London: Penguin, 1968) 34-39. 3
Virginia Woolf, “987: To Vanessa Bell” The Letters of Virginia Woolf: Volume Two 1912 – 1922, ed. Nigel Nicolson
and Joanne Trautmann (USA: HBJ, 1976) 292-294. 4
Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse (London: Penguin, 2000) 23. 5
Matthew Hoggart, James Joyce: A Student’s Guide (London: Routledge, 1978) 44. 6
Hermione Lee, “Introduction”, Woolf ix. 7
Hoggart 46. structure of a letter and changing the narrative to first person so to be spoken
from Eveline’s point of view. In ‘Eveline,’ Joyce arguably manipulates free
indirect discourse in order to portray Eveline’s thoughts: ‘Home! She looked
around the room... perhaps she would never see again those familiar objects
from which she had never dreamed of being divided’8 describes both
Eveline’s actions and reveals her inner thoughts (‘she had never dreamed of
being divided’). Free indirect discourse has been described as ‘ambiguous’;
the description of Eveline looking ‘around the room,’ spoken in third person
narration after portraying her familiarity with her surroundings ‘Home!’ could
arguably be perceived as the ‘merging of a narrator with a character’;
however, Galbraith (1995: 44) suggests that free indirect discourse can ‘more
adequately be described as the absence of a narrator’9; in ‘Eveline’, the third
person narrator is very much present. In changing the form of the short story
into a letter, in this sense, can significantly alter Joyce’s narrative techniques;
it is interesting to explore the notion of whether or not it is possible to echo
free indirect discourse in the form of a letter. In my final draft of the letter I
have attempted to use Woolf’s parenthesis in order to articulate Eveline’s
thoughts that are not directly addressed to Frank.
To start the letter, I used Woolf’s letter to Vanessa Bell as a starting
point to establish tone and, initially, style. Woolf’s register is somewhat formal:
I have introduced Eveline’s voice in changing Woolf’s opening ‘Modesty
requires me to say that you will be sick of the sight of my handwriting’10 to
‘Etiquette inclines me to assume that you deserve better than to hear from
Joyce 34. Joe Bray, “The Dual Voice of Free Indirect Discourse: a Reading Experment,” Language and Literature, 16:1 (2007)
40. 10
Woolf ed. Nicholson and Trauttman, 292. 8
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me,’ adopting a similar voice while mirroring the content of Woolf’s letter. For
the most part, I have altered passages from Joyce’s ‘Eveline’ to suit the letter
genre, attempting to create pathos through my chosen passages. In the
opening paragraph adapted from Woolf’s letter I have inserted text from
‘Eveline’: I have inserted Joyce’s visual description of the station, ‘I glimpse
the blackness of the boat, lying in beside the quay wall, with illuminated
portholes, I hear the mournful whistle blown into the mist,’ portraying it as
Eveline’s recollection of her memory. In my final draft, I attempted to imitate
Wolf’s writing style from To the Lighthouse; to do this I inserted brackets
around the passages that appeared to indicate Eveline’s thoughts: ‘The
happiest moment I can recall so far is when we we’re introduced so kindly by
fate [how well I remember the first time I had seen you...’ opens with Eveline
directly addressing Frank, following by a recollection of her memory; memory
is intrinsic to To the Lighthouse: I have attempted to imitate Woolf’s style
through Eveline’s interior monologue, in a similar way to that when Woolf
provides access into the character of Lily Briscoe for the reader11.
In an article, Bellard-Tomson has investigated a ‘stylistics discourse,’
analyzing the ways in which stylistic elements of a text work to create a
particular effect12; in this sense, is it interesting to explore the ways in which
different styles of writing can merge to create a variety of effects.
Woolf ed. Lee xii. Carol Bellard-­‐Tomson, “How Student’s Learn Stylistics: Constructing an Empirical Study” Language and Literature, 19:1 (2010) 37. 11
12
Primary Sources
Joyce, James. “Eveline,” Dubliners. London: Penguin, 1968.
Woolf, Virginia. “987: To Vanessa Bell”, The Letters of Virginia Woolf: Volume
Two 1912 – 1922, ed. Nigel Nicolson and Joanne Trautmann. USA: HBJ,
1976.
Woolf, Virginia. To the Lighthouse. London: Penguin, 2000.
Secondary Sources
Lee, Hermione. The Secret Self: Short Stories by Women. London: J. M. Dent
& Sons Ltd, 1985.
Hoggart, Matthew. James Joyce: A Student’s Guide. London: Routledge,
1978.
Bray, Joe. “The Dual Voice of Free Indirect Discourse: a Reading Experment,”
Language and Literature, 16:1 (2007) 37-52.
Carol Bellard-Tomson, “How Student’s Learn Stylistics: Constructing an
Empirical Study” Language and Literature, 19:1 (2010) 35-57.