Craftsmanship

Did Virginia Woolf really die in 1941? Are we sure she didn't just disappear, only to resurface later in a French guise under the name Jacques Derrida? Because I tell you, this entire essay of "Craftsmanship" (broadcast?) is like reading a proto-rumination on the differance in language. Even the example she gives: "Passing Russell Square," and how those three words have many different meanings depending on how you approach them, is reminiscent of a Derridian text I read in 310, about assumptions we make about the function of language. I think Woolf really, truly, understood, before it was espoused later, the myriad intricacies of language. By no means do I think she was the only one, however I've yet to come across an author from this period, even my beloved Hemingway,who puts it in quite such perfect terminology.

I also find this statement interesting: "But they combine--they combine unconsciously together. The moment we single out and emphasize the suggestions as we have done here they become unreal..." What this, and the following argument, is tantamount is basically the explanation for every esoteric and impenetrable English class we and the rest of the populace are subject to at some point in our schooling. When we, even we, yes, English majors, decry a type of criticism or an idea put forth by this type of criticism, this is what we're railing against, the notion of unconscious understanding. My AP English Teacher, may he rest in peace, put this in no uncertain terms when I was questioning the veracity of a quasi-feminist reading about Wuthering Heights--it was something about how the dogs dragging in one of the female characters was symbolic of the male marginlization and suppression of women. I was like...yeah I don't think Bronte was going for that, and that was when he explained the idea that authors, even if they are unaware of it, can imprint on the novel an unconscious shadow of interpretation. This same thing works both ways; the reader can intuit a subconscious/unconscious interpretation that affects them even if they are unaware of it--I believe this is what Woolf speaks on here. Furthermore, I believe--and this is a personal belief, but one I am vehement about--that this unconscious understanding can be grasped from any single work of fiction, self-published, genre, forumlaic, literary or otherwise. The amount of layers might be different, but as long as the tacit standards of quality are up-kept, I believe every work of fiction has something to offer to readers, leaves some indelible and oftentimes unrecognized bend to the path of the readers' lives. Which is why oftentimes when you describe a particularly dense symbolic element to someone who may have read the same book but not had the privilege of paying 5000 dollars to take a class on it, said person's eyes will light up and they'll go "Oh yeaaaah! I see that now!" See? Cause they understood it all along. It was just unconscious.