The Gender of Atheism in Virginia Woolf's "A Simple Melody"
1998; Volume: 35; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
0039-3789
Autores Tópico(s)Modernist Literature and Criticism
ResumoPosthumously published, the 1925 short story Simple Melody is one of the most pivotal works in Virginia Woolf's corpus, signaling a decisive break with her first four novels, yet anticipating the central issues of her last five. Typical of Woolf's fiction, the story features a main character who is an atheist, a man who, like Woolf, mocks those who in God: in indeed! says George Carslake, When every rational power protested against the crazy and craven idiocy of such a saying! (203).(1) While it is quite normal early Woolf to make her protagonist an (Rachel Vinrace, Mary Datchet, Katharine Hilbery, Clarissa Dalloway, Mrs. Ramsay), Simple Melody is unique because it represents Woolf's first effort to give her reader a sympathetic portrait of a male atheist. are, to be sure, male atheists in Woolf's early novels (Terence Hewet, St. John Hirst, Jacob Flanders, Timmy Durrant, Fraser), but in all instances, Woolf gives her readers significant reasons not sympathizing with their particular motivation rejecting God--as I will argue below. By 1927, however, when she published To The Lighthouse, Woolf finally took a more balanced look at male atheists, specifically considering the negative nonbeliever (Charles Tansley) and the positive one (Mr. Ramsay, who becomes a positive example only in the final moments of the novel, when he appears to James as if he were saying, There is no God [207]), though it is in the character of George Carslake from Simple Melody that Woolf first made an effort to the male atheist.(2) A close look at this story will not only shed light on Woolf's attempt to rework her understanding of male atheism: it will also clarify why she considers atheism necessary the development of healthy human relationships. 2 On the surface, Simple Melody is an uncomplicated story, a tale that documents Carslake's response to a landscape painting: It was a of a heath: and a beautiful picture (201). But reflecting on his aesthetic response leads him to reconsider his view of humans. After first considering the painting, he thought [a]ll human beings were simple underneath (201), but later in the story, having reflected a little on this simple-minded view of `human nature,' he reconsiders his earlier claim, wondering if his reduction of the human is not a conceptual imposition (206).(3) Given the radical reconsideration of his view in such a short story (six pages), the obvious question readers is: what accounts Carslake's rejection of his earlier belief in humans as very simple underneath? In what follows, I discuss the specific aesthetic experience that leads Carslake to reject his simple concept of human nature, but because Woolf strategically places Carslake's reflections on at the center of this story, it will be important to incorporate the story's atheism into Woolf's aesthetic. To understand the male in Woolf's early works, it is important to note a recurring pattern. In contrast to the female atheists, who take their non-belief seriously, many males proclaim themselves atheists, yet their behavior suggests that they remain believers. Furthermore, Woolf makes it clear that the male atheist's surreptitious belief legitimates the male's privileged position within the body politic. To get a clear sense of the distinction between the male and female in Woolf's first four novels, we need only consider Peter Walsh and Clarissa Dalloway. Not for a moment did Clarissa believe in God (29), whereas Peter is by conviction an perhaps (57). An categorically denies God's existence, so saying that Peter is an atheist perhaps makes him more of an agnostic, and since Woolf's father wrote voluminously about agnosticism, we can assume that she was familiar with this discourse. This pattern is no anomaly. For instance, after Rachel Vinrace declares in The Voyage Out that she does not in (250), she tells Helen that she will no longer attend church (261), but Terence Hewet, a male who touts a progressive feminist ideology, betrays his covert faith by attending church (229), despite his overt apostasy (144). …
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