A woman’s roles in the novels of Hortensia Papadat-Bengescu and Virgina Woolf (I).
The Wife, the Mother, the Daughter, the Sister
The present study deals with the comparative analysis of four of the main roles played by the woman within her family – the Wife, the Mother, the Daughter and the Sister – as considered in the novels of Hortensia Papadat-Bengescu and Virginia Woolf. What is new, as compared to the female characters of the predecesor women writers, is that the identity of women, as understood by men at the beginning of the XXth century as centered wholly around the domestic realm, tends to become less obvious.The two authors have in common the fact that they both appreciate the institution of marriage but, the British novelist has her female characters make the appology of marriage by mentioning its benefits, whereas Hortensia
Papadat-Bengescu’s heroines offer the reader the reverse of the coin as a negative example.
What differentiates the female characters of the two novelists is, on the one hand, the extent to which the respective writers managed to combine the roles of the characters to make them more interesting and more credible and, on the other hand, the way in which the authors present the family conflicts. With Virginia Woolf ’s novels the family conflicts are very discreet as compared to those outspoken in the Romanian novelist’s, due to the fact that
the former presents fewer negative characters, whereas the latter’s work presents hardly any ‘positive’ female character proper.
Keywords: Hortensia Papadat-Bengescu, Virginia Woolf, a woman’s roles, the Wife, the Mother, the Daughter, the Sister
1. „…Virginia Woolf nu ţinteşte să creeze o atmosferă de comedie de familie şi situaţii sociale complicate ce trebuie rezolvate la sfârşitul cărţii, ci să analizeze sensibilitatea şi emoţiile personajului.”Mihai Miroiu, Virginia Woolf–monografie, Editura Univers, Bucureşti, 197, p. 90.
2. „Susan`s corporeal substance, her closeness to thenatural world, is confirmed in her motherhood; Jinny expresses herself through her body; Rhoda`s psychic fragility is throughout espressed as a «facelessness».”. Laura Marcus, Virginia Woolf, Northcote House, London, 1997, p. 13.
3. „Feminist criticism has initiated a move towards the rewriting of the canon by bringing into prominence the first two novels/The Voyage Out and Night and Day) and The Years, in particular, because of their concern with, among other things, the social role of women, and also the jeu d’esprit Orlando, in which the central character changes from one sex to another.” Stella McNichol, Reference Guide to English Litterature, St. James Press Chicago/London, 1984, pp. 1420-1421.
4. Romanul „Balaurul” face trecerea de la prima perioadă de creaţie a Hortensiei Papadat-Bengescu, cea confesiv feminină (din „Ape adânci”, „Sfinxul”, „Femei în faţa oglinzii”) la cea obiectiv creatoare din romanele ciclului Hallipa. „Balaurul” este singura carte a autoarei noastre care transpune în artă o experienţă directă, aceea de soră voluntară în gara din Focşani unde soseau trenurile cu răniţi de pe front.
5. Comentând romanul „Doamna Dalloway”, Stella McNichol remarcă: „The focus is on family life, but Woolf reaches beyond the personal relationships to explore man’s wider relation to
the universe. The book embodies the search for answers in a state of cosmic confusion, a point of harmony and stability in the midst of disorder and instability.” Stella McNichol Reference Guide to English Litterature, second edition, St James Press Chicago/London, 1984, pp.1420-1421.
6. Concise Dictionary of British Litterary Biography, vol VI, Modern writers, A Bruccoli Clark Layman Book, Gale Research Inc.Detroit, London,1984, British Novelists, Virginia Woolf, p.36
7. La cina organizată de ea, doamna Ramsay este prezentată astfel: acelaşi tip de soţie-desăvârşită şi amfitrioană;„unveiling each of these people…without effort, like a light stealing under water.” idem Laura Marcus.
8. Imaginea incompletă a doamnei Ramsay are povestea ei. Virginia rămăsese orfană de mamă la treisprezece ani şi stră-mătuşa romancierei, pe care o cheamă Cameron, îi dă
fotografiile pentru ca figura mamei să se întipărească în mintea copilei. Natura indiferentă – florile continuă să crească în jurul casei, dar oarbe. Dacă personajul Cameron, fiica doamnei Ramsay se străduieşte să păstreze memoria unei figuri luminate de frumuseţe şi gingăşie, în plan simbolic, scrierea acestuiroman este asimilată matricidului. Virginia Woolf mărturisea în memoriile ei: „My mother obssessed me, in spite of the fact that she died when I was thirteen, until I was forty-four. Then, one day walking round the Tavistock Square I made up, as I sometimes times make up my novels, To the Lighthouse, in a great ,
apparently involuntary rush… I wrote the book very quickly; and when it was written, I ceased to be obssessed by my mother. I suppose that I did for myself what psychoanalists do for their patients. I expressed some very long and deeply felt emotion. And in expressing it I explained it and then laid it to rest.” Virginia Woolf, Moments of Being, p. 94, apud. Laura Marcus, Virginia Woolf, Northcote House, London, 1997, p. 93.
9. Nicolae Manolescu, Arca lui Noe. Eseu despre romanul românesc, vol II, Editura Minerva, Bucureşti, 1981, p. 47.
10. „Rachel has many bildungsroman encounters, including some explicit conversations questioning the roles and education of young women in society of the time.”. Concise Dictionary of British Litterary Biography, vol 6, Modern writers, A Bruccoli Clark Layman Book, Gale Research Inc. Detroit, London, 1984, British Novelists, Virginia Woolf, p.36.
11. Portretul lui Cameron şi al doamnei Ramsay din „Spre far” este prezentat un reproşmut adresat tatălui atunci când, după moartea mamei are loc mult aşteptata călătorie spre
far. „For Cam, sitting in a boat, the island shore recedes into unreality, a place of ghosts, as remote and silent as the „little town” pictured on Keats`s Grecian Urn, that elegiac
vessel, without a soul to tell- Why thou art desolate. „Turning away from the past towards the future, Cam is caught up in the adventure of the trip to the lighthouse.” Laura Marcus, Virginia Woolf, Northcote House, London, 1997, p. 112.
12. „The Pargiters makes explicit not only the effects of censorship and repression by its mechanisms. The Pargiter daughters, denied education and freedom to moce around
the city they live (…) Eleanor and Milly and Delia could not possibly go for a walk alone, save in the street around Abercorn Terrace”. idem Laura Marcus, pp. 36-37.
Hortensia Papadat-Bengescu
Virginia Woolf
