Excerpt from 1985 Community Mini Course

Excerpt from 1985 Community Mini Course

…Mr. William ordered.” She’s talking about her own experience almost literally, here. And the part that’s particularly poignant, perhaps, is that the friends and relations of his patients just feel gratitude to the doctor, and further the “cure” on the patient. “Drink milk in bed,” and Virginia Woolf had to drink milk for the rest of her life. Leonard brought it to her, punctually. (Someone in audience chuckles, scoffing.) “Proportion has a sister, conversion is her name, and she feasts on the wills of the weakly,” and then the people that she lists on the bottom of 151? Are your average every-day social worker, teacher, do-gooder, who are out there to insist that you be like them. They know how the world is supposed to be, and you better be like them. Convert. Convert. She says that’s part of it, that sense that… you’ve got to make other people the same. You’ve got to make other people… you know what’s best for other people. That feeds right into it. “This lady too had her dwelling in Sir William’s heart, though concealed, as she mostly is, under some plausible disguise,” top of 152, “some venerable name; love, duty, self sacrifice. How he would work – how toil to raise funds, propagate reforms, initiate institutions! But conversion, fastidious Goddess, loves blood better than brick, and feasts most subtly on the human will.” And then she gives the example of Lady Bradshaw, of how her will has somehow, only through a slow, sinking monologue, disappeared into his:

“Sweet was her smile, swift her submission; dinner in Harley Street, numbering eight or nine courses…. Once, long ago, she had caught salmon freely: now, quick to minister to the craving which lit her husband’s eye so oilily for dominion, for power, she cramped, squeezed, pared, pruned, drew back, peeped through….”

This is what happens to the wives, (audience member laughs) yet very strong [???]. And, going on, she talks about how this is the force that will dominate the world. This is the force that makes war. This is the force that goes out to civilize empires. “Anything else is an unsocial impulse,” on 154. If conformity and conversion wanted help, they had “family affection; honor; courage; and a brilliant career” to support them. “All of these had in Sir William a resolute champion. If they failed him, he had to support police and the good of society, which, he remarked very quietly, would take care, down in Surrey, that these unsocial impulses, bred more than anything by the lack of good blood, were held in control.”

Now, I did some research on Virginia Woolf’s doctors; that’s the theory they were holding. If you were a woman and you did intellectual things (that were obviously men’s work, not women’s work), then you could affect the genetic makeup of your offspring. You were ruining the blood of the ruling race. (Someone in audience mumbles something about homosexuality, and chuckles.) And the British were worried about the blood of the ruling race, because they had administered an empire all over the world. And that’s what she’s talking about, here:

And then stole out from her hiding-place and mounted her throne that Goddess whose lust is to override opposition, to stamp indelibly in the sanctuaries of others the image of herself. Naked, defenseless, the exhausted, the friendless received the impress of Sir William’s will. He swooped; he devoured. He shut people up. It was this combination of decision and humanity that endeared Sir William so greatly to the relations of his victims.

It’s heavy stuff, particularly when you think that this is autobiographical, even though she put it in terms of Septimus Smith’s story, here, and that she did succumb to her life. So it was out of this vision… do you see how her whole vision, her critique of heterosexuality has led to her critique of patriarchy and imperialism? That it’s tied together by looking at how each of us participates in the ideology, the behavior… masculinity, civilization, femininity, and normality, doing the “right thing,” making sure other people do the “right thing”… now that was her task, here. Very radical. Very radical.

(Audience member asks, “So when are you going to write a book about this?”) I am writing a book about it. (Audience laughs.)

AUDIENCE DISCUSSION & QUESTION/ANSWER UNTIL THE END.

Transcribed in May 2010 by Hadley Smith. Brooklyn, NY.