Virginia Woolf and Dora Carrington: The Experimentation Of Feminine Representation

What interested me most about the writings of Virginia Woolf were the various radical portrayals of women; no woman was completely comprised of a single characteristic, or “creed” of identity. We’ll never know for certain who exactly inspired her female characters. But there is little doubt there were plenty to choose from among her radical circle. One that caught my attention particularly was Dora Carrington, an artist and member of the Bloomsbury group that came to work for the Woolfs’ publishing press with her husband Ralph Partridge during the period in which Mrs Dalloway was being written. Already well-known to Woolf due to her devoted companionship with Lytton Strachey (one of Woolf’s closest friends) they became firm friends. Woolf was intrigued by Carrington and documented with fond fascination the goings-on of her unorthodox lifestyle. Perhaps she sensed a kindred spirit. Carrington flew in the face of convention in every way possible in her personal life. Woolf’s writings fiercely upbraided the restrictions society imposed upon women, barring them from developing their true characters. Carrington’s complicated relationship with her own femininity and  her guarded manner relating to her artwork depict someone who might well have been a heroine in one of Woolf’s novels.

Carrington’s attitude to her femininity was mixed. To begin with, she went to some lengths to cast off a traditional feminine visage- in 1911 she took the drastic step of cutting her long hair in the style of a pageboy crop. It was an open declaration of revolt (Gerzina, 28) and the beginning of a lifelong courtship with an androgynous appearance. The object was simple-making her gender secondary to herself. She went a step further with her admittance in a letter to her then-lover Mark Gertler that she “hated being a girl” (Gerzina, 45). Her initial fear of sexual relations further emphasizes her inner turmoil over her identity as a woman. Gertler’s relentless attempts to persuade her to lose her virginity to him, coupled with pressure from the Bloomsbury group who assisted him in this venture, were repulsed fiercely by Carrington. Her naivety as a consequence of her upbringing in a Victorian home and her passion for freedom contributed to her view that such pressure on her was an attempt to assert ownership (Gerzina, 303). Woolf’s own tentative attitude to sexual relations seems to mirror those of Carrington’s-most likely she would have sympathized with Carrington’s predicament. Mrs Dalloway is full of connotations that imply marriage and the sexual relations that follow as a form of male assertion of ownership. Hugh’s forceful attempt to kiss Sally to recompense her daring to disagree with him in public recalls Carrington’s fear of sex as a physical violation. Similarly, Carrington’s allusions in her letters to her own bisexuality when referring to an encounter with a female friend, “I longed to possess her in some vague way” (Gerzina, 184) are oddly reminiscent of Clarissa’s confusion over her feelings for women “she did undoubtedly feel what men felt [for women]” (Woolf, 26). Thus, Carrington’s tumultuous relationship with her femininity reflects the restrictions of the society in which she lived, and such conflicted portraits of women Virginia Woolf was all too apt at portraying in her work.

Carrington In Slade School Of Art

Another crucial part of Carrington’s identity was her role as an artist. She was clearly an artist of outstanding ability, and it has long been in dispute why she remained in the shadows while other Bloomsbury artists touted acclaim for their endeavours. David Garnett particularly accuses Strachey and Partridge of not taking Carrington’s artist ambitions as seriously as they should have done (Elinor, 31). Michael Holroyd disputes this strenuously in his biography of Strachey, insisting that he always expressed his admiration and encouragement of her work (Elinor, 31). Whatever the case, Carrington did confess to feeling intellectually inadequate whilst in the company of the “Bloomsburies”; she even confessed to feeling “stupid and hopeless about [her]self” (Elinor, 31). However, while she did not publicly exhibit her work, a compilation of her work arranged by her brother Noel Carrington brought her talents to light. What was remarkable about Carrington’s work was her ability to transform a project of domesticity, such as the designs of her own homes in Tidmarsh and Ham Spray, into an expression of her own artistic prowess. Her apt hand at landscape is reflected in her combination of the sublime and banal; the swan designs on the windows carry a distinctly romantic element, and the oranges of the building also lend a touch of the exotic. However, this is balanced by the cool blue and green of the sky and field that encompasses it. Her unique vision of creating her own ideal space within a conventional domestic sphere might not evoke radical artwork in its assumed terms, but that she does so is innovative and clever, changing convention to suit her. One can only imagine how coveted Carrington’s work may have been in her lifetime had it been made public.  Mrs Dalloway also reflects on how ambition has been cherished and yet inevitably been pushed to one side for the sake of the domestic through Clarissa, Peter, and Sally. Clarissa abandoned Peter, Sally and “all those plans” for the security offered by Richard Dalloway-and she is not without regret. It rears its head when she meets Peter once more, and reflects on how different her life could have been had she married him and pursued what they had once dreamed of. Perhaps Woolf was considering her own fellow female members of Bloomsbury and an anxiety for them to exercise their full potential.

Glass Painting By Carrington, Ham Spray House

Carrington’s Landscape Portrait Of Tidmarsh

Carrington’ eventual suicide, borne of grief over the death of Strachey, was deeply distressing to Woolf-particularly as Woolf had been the last person to speak to her before she died. She expressed a relief and gratitude to being alive, little realizing she herself would take the same tragic course of action years later. However, Woolf and Carrington’s artistic endeavours stand aloft from their tumultuous personal lives-almost “a room of one’s own”, the sphere where society did not oppose or oppress them, but allowed full expression of the self.

 

Dora Catrington At Slade School. Google Images.                                              <http://spartacus-educational.com/ARTnevinson.htm> 

Virginia Woolf. Google Images. <http://www.independent.co.uk&gt;

Elinor Gillian. “Vanessa Bell And Dora Carrington: Bloomsbury Painters”. Women’s Art Journal Vol.5 No.1. News Brunswick: Women’s Art Inc, 1984. <http://www.jstor.org/stable/1357882&gt;

Gerzina Gretchen. Carrington: A Life. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1989.

Glass Ensemble By Dora Carrington. Google Images. <http://www.pinterest.com&gt;

Portrait Of Tidmarsh House. Google Images. <http://paintingdb.com&gt;

 

Does Bohemia Still Exist?

As a lifelong fan of Stephen Fry, any of his interviews, address, comedy sketches or debates impress themselves on my mind as singularly magnificent pieces of rhetoric. However, recently I found myself repeatedly watching one particular piece of footage. In 2011, he addressed a gathering of students at the Oxford Union. His impassioned account of the life of Oscar Wilde was riveting to listen to, but his closing comments were an ode to Bohemia, “the land you should never ever leave”. It left me contemplating the actual meaning of the term “Bohemia”. Good old Wikipedia will offer you the most basic summary of the culture it is founded on- Bohemianism. “The practice of an unconventional lifestyle, involving musical artistic or literary pursuits”.

But does Bohemia, as a place, exist? In Fry’s speech, he seems to argue that such a place exists in the living space of the mind, that which drives creativity and freedom of thoughts. That said, it doesn’t mean that artistic innovators didn’t attempt to create an actual, physical manifestation of their liberal train of thought. With every generation of Bohemian culture, came an attempt to form a community whose society would thrive entirely on the principles of liberal art and life practices. Montmartre in Paris, the darling of the Belle Epoque, was a thriving community of art, music and literature. Artists such as Cezanne, Toulouse Lautrec and Van Gogh found a haven in which they could experiment with  groundbreaking art subjects and techniques (Frey, 4). However, by the end of the mid 1890s, this idyllic vision shattered with the commercialization of the Moulin Rouge, the centrepiece of Montmartre’s revolutionary aesthetic. Hardly twenty years later, London and Charleston in Sussex made a claim for the title of the Bohemian capital, as the homes of the Bloomsbury Group. According to Kate Whitehead, the group appeared to thrive on the concept of a community; the choice of Bloomsbury as a name would suggest so as it evoked an aesthetic of place (Blair, 813). Their position in society as a widely famous artistic circle seemed to cement the opportunity for a thriving bohemian sect to blossom in the west London district of Bloomsbury, or Charleston where the group later put down more permanent roots. Unfortunately, the deaths of various original members and a loss of focus on Bloomsbury as a body meant such aims fast faded. The worldwide resurgence of bohemian culture in the 1960s seemed to assure a physical sphere for the arts would soon exist. Greenwich Village came to prominence as an artists’ haven during this period, notably home to poets from the Beat Movement such as Allen Ginsberg (Greenwich Village Society For Historic Preservation, ONLINE) . However, once more the notion of a cultural capital died down with the disillusionment of the revolutionary aspect that had spearheaded the movement.

Moulin Rouge, Montmartre 1900

Stephen Family Home, Bloomsbury

Bloomsbury Plaque

Greenwich Village, 1960s

Still, the point of the matter remains that these cultural hubs existed. For landmark artistic development there was a physical thriving locale, however temporary. They offered an aesthetic of the kind of communities artists sought to flourish within. Perhaps most importantly, the very presence of these communities gave the assurance of support to artists, the comfortable knowledge of a united front for their cause. To this end, they were very public. Is there such a place for artists today? An area that loudly proclaims itself first and foremost an artists’ dominion, a haven for its residents to experiment with and further their talents? The answer is most likely to be no. The closest resemblance to an artist’s community at the present day is Hollywood, which can never quite portray the liberating spirit that pioneered their forerunners as they are primarily a commercial enterprise. Commercial is dictated by what is popular, and does not represent the communal spirit of art. Lyotard hints about the dangers of exchanging art for the mechanical and modern  (Lyotard, 143-144); therefore  Hollywood as purely a neutral celebration of the aesthetic  stumbles due to its heavy emphasis on film as a commodity rather than an art.

In a world with more avenues for artistic endeavour than had previously existed, it seems astonishing that a community that offers a haven to devotees of the arts has not made itself known.  Benjamin’s examination of mass production concentrates on film possessing a faster method of reaching its audience physically and psychologically. This is an example of the modern day.  Surely when art forms are within easier reach than they have ever been, it offers ample opportunity for establishing an art capital? Then again, when art reaches the masses in such an immediate form, it detracts from the need of a gathering in a particular area. In each of the revolutionary art phases of the previous decades, a community of the arts was founded on a need to be in that particular place. More often than not, cities held the keys to artist society, thus people would travel to be there and these trademark communities were created.

Maybe this once more goes back to what Mr Fry spoke of.  We each create our own Bohemia through the life of the mind with the information we possess, our own world of liberal ideals that manifests itself in our artistic creations. Nevertheless, you cannot but help musing with some nostalgia at the past, when the art capitals of our imagination actually took form and, for however short a time, were upheld as a dream that became reality.

Works Cited

Stephen Fry-Full Address. YouTube. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IporlmXXDeY&gt;

Village History. The Greenwich Village Society For Historic Preservation. <http://www.gvshp.org/_gvshp/resources/history.htm#bohem&gt;

Frey, Julia. Toulouse-Lautrec: A Life. London: Weidenfield & Nicholson, 1994.

Blair, Sara. “Local Modernity, Global Modernism: Bloomsbury And The Places Of The Literary”. EHL Vol. One No.3 (Fall, 2003). Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2003. <http://www.jstor.org/stable/30029943&gt;

Modernism/Postmodernism. Peter Brooker (ed). Essex: Pearson Education, 1992.

Moulin Rouge, Montmartre. Google Images. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moulin_Rouge&gt;

Bloomsbury Group Plaque In Bloomsbury, London. Google Images. <http://openplaques.org/plaques/1972&gt;

House Of The Stephen Family. Google Images. <http://www.londra.us/Bloomsbury_Holborn_Fitzrovia.html&gt;