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Introduction
Two things the literary world accepts as fact: 1) English author Virginia Woolf was consciously experimental with the form of her fiction novels. 2) Jacob's Room, Woolf's third novel published in 1922, was her first and biggest separation from the conventional novel form. Woolf was searching for a new form of the fiction novel, one which relied on more than just plot and character development to explore its themes. This, combined with her distinguishable stream-of-consciousness prose, creates in Jacob’s Room an abstractness uncharacteristic of fiction of the time and admittedly a little hard to understand. The novel presents its main character, Jacob Flanders, a young man who's given every opportunity to be successful but whose life is cut short by war, almost entirely through the perspective of the characters around him. Many claim that Woolf's main character is devoid of his own identity, that he is unknowable as an individual, and that the novel lacks a definitive plot line and necessary closure. However, knowing that Woolf was preoccupied with form, one may read Jacob’s Room with special attention to its physical structure, and in doing so, will find there is more to understand about the title character than previously thought. This structure illuminates narrative meaning beyond the text itself, humanizing Jacob as a character and expanding upon Woolf’s themes and ideas.
"There's no doubt in my mind that I have found out how to begin (at 40) to say something in my own voice." - Woolf's diary, July 26th, 1922, after just finishing the manuscript for Jacob's Room.
Versions of Jacob's Room
To uncover the meanings within the structure of Jacob’s Room I will be comparing different versions of the novel. To do this I will use two sources. The first is a version of the novel purchased for Digital Literacy, a class at Clemson University taught by Professor Gabriel Hankins, first published by Dover Publications, Inc. in 1998. The book features a bibliographical note explaining that it is an “unabridged republication of the work originally published by Harcourt Brace & Company, New York, 1922.” Second I will be using Virginia Woolf’s Jacob’s Room: The Holograph Draft, transcribed and edited by Edward L. Bishop and published by Pace University Press, New York, 1998. The Holograph version depicts Woolf’s writing process by showing the changes she makes to the text as she writes it. An excerpt from the introduction of the book offers some insight into the discoveries I hope to illuminate through this project:
“Virginia Woolf had been turning over the ideas for ‘ a new form for a new novel’ for three months when she sat down that rainy April morning to sketch out a plan. The preliminary note (MS 1) seems to indicate that the focus and structuring principles were clear in her mind from the outset. But Woolf’s intentions were not at all certain: she will ‘perhaps’ call the book “Jacob’s Room”; she says ‘Let us suppose that the room will hold it together.’ And further, what is ‘it’? The Voyage Out was about the maturation and early death of a young woman. Jacob’s Room is more elusive. The book was not written simply as an experiment in style, but neither—to take the other extreme—was it conceived as an anti-war polemic. Whether one takes the book to be about a particular young man named Jacob (who resembles Thoby Stephen), or the generation lost in the war… or about the relationship between the narrator and her subject, or about the process of perception and the nature of being, or all of this and more, one finds in the manuscript a gradual, and often very tentative, process of discovery as both the subject matter and the form evolve together.”
Searching
Woolf's Gaps
In Virginia Woolf’s Jacob’s Room, the reader comes into contact with a narrative form and group of characters much different than the predictable novel offers. Woolf’s writing style reads more like a stream of consciousness than a constructed plot, and it has often been argued that her title character, Jacob, is hard to understand. Is Jacob Flanders a knowable, humanized character? Or is he empty – too vague to understand – and unknowable? To answer this question one must consider how Woolf structured her novel and why. In her original published version, the narrative units of Jacob’s Room were separated by distinctive gaps in the text varying in size from 1 line to 4. In the following American publication, and many publications since (including the version I purchased for class), the original format of these gaps disintegrated, as did their meaning. Woolf’s original format illuminates emotional characteristics of Jacob that otherwise go undetected. The character development found within the gaps allows the reader to understand Jacob’s interior condition and better identify with him, creating in him a more identifiable and knowable character. This can be seen in a passage on pages 74 and 75 of the novel. The passage starts with a stream of consciousness that edges away from the plot of the novel and then abruptly returns to Jacob, concluding with a page break:
“Such faces as one sees. The little man fingering the meat…Shawled women carry babies with purple eyelids; boys stand at street corners; girls look across the road…Every face, every shop, bedroom window, public-house, and dark square is a picture feverishly turned – in search of what? It is the same with books. What do we seek through millions of pages? Still hopefully turning the pages – oh, here is Jacob’s room.”
All of the people of varying ages, genders, and walks of life, followed by descriptions of physical locations in which all people could easily find themselves, seem to suggest that this passage encompasses all of humanity. She then uses the pronoun “we” with respect to a search – “for what?” We are all still (hopefully) searching – “oh, here is Jacob’s room.” This passage is punctuated by Woolf’s gap (highlighted by the messy orange line on the picture below), substantially longer in the original version than in the American printed version. The gap, when present, creates a space in which the reader must consider the relationship between the narrator, these people and Jacob. Perhaps the point of the passage and gap is to demonstrate that the narrator is still searching. Or maybe it is that Jacob himself is still searching. This moment humanizes him, placing the character among those who are indeed still searching. It makes him more relatable, as Virginia herself is searching for a new form of novel, her audience is still turning the pages to find an understanding of Jacob, and humanity is, hopefully, still searching for understanding as well.
Empty Spaces
Structural Editing
In the Holograph version of the novel, Woolf’s own editing is shown on a page for the reader. This helps one to envision the text as a physical object, with shape and form, as if Woolf was sculpting the novel out of clay rather than combining letters on a page. Just as a sculptor carves away at his or her piece to reveal the final artwork, Woolf carves away many of Jacob’s emotions from the manuscript, leaving a negative space where a positive space once was. Bishop’s Holograph allows us to see this physical restructuring.
In the moment depicted above, Woolf specifically chooses to eliminate a direct statement of Jacob’s internal monologue. Originally, the reader sees Jacob struggling to verbalize his romantic feelings for Ms. Clara Durrant: “I want to say it I can’t say it. Clara! Clara!” However Woolf removes these lines, forming an empty space in which the reader must infer Jacob’s feelings instead. This change explains Woolf’s search for a new form of novel. She places the burden of duty for much of the emotional characterization of Jacob on the reader. While this may be frustrating, it does not create an empty character that seems inhuman. Rather it forces the reader to envision how love and emotions function within themselves and within all humans in order to understand Jacob’s strife.
In addition, the structure of the narrative mimics the words the reader does see. In the printed American version, Clara walks past Jacob towards the greenhouse door as she thinks, “You’re too good – too good.” Jacob, however, is immobile. In this scene Clara moves and Jacob does not, just as Clara’s thoughts are exposed to the reader while Jacob’s are not. The physical structure of the narrative parallels the characters’ movements and emotions. Considering this aids a reader who has no knowledge of the manuscript version in understanding Jacob as a character.
Conclusion
Two things should happen in order for a reader to understand Jacob’s Room in its entirety: 1) The American published versions should retain the original gaps as Woolf wrote them and, more importantly, 2) The reader should consider the physical aspects of the text and narrative. By doing this, one can understand much more about Jacob as a character, and Woolf as a writer. It is in the physical space of the book where one finds the themes Woolf explores in her most daring attempt at creating a new form of fiction.
Works Cited
"To Sit, to Stand, to Write." CABINET //. Web. 28 Feb. 2016 <http://www.cabinetmagazine.org/issues/32/pendle.php>.
"Jacob's Room." Feedbooks. Web. 7 Feb. 2016. <http://www.feedbooks.com/book/6656/jacob-s-room>.
"Jacob's Room - a Tutorial, Study Guide & Commentary." Mantex Jacobs Room Comments. 2012. Web. 28 Feb. 2016. <http://www.mantex.co.uk/2012/05/06/jacobs-room/>.
"The False Feminist: Virginia Woolf and the Sexist Canon - UCL's Arts and Culture Journal." UCLs Arts and Culture Journal. 2014. Web. 28 Feb. 2016. <http://www.savageonline.co.uk/our-journal/the-false-feminist-virginia-woolf-and-the-sexist-canon/>.
Woolf, Virginia. Virginia Woolf's Jacob's Room: The Holograph Draft: Based on the Holograph Manuscript in the Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of English and American Literature at the New York Public Library. Ed. Edward Bishop. New York, NY: Pace UP, 1998. Print.
Woolf, Virginia. Jacob's Room. Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 1998. Print.
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