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[Abstract] As one of Woolf’s most famous short stories, Kew Gardens is innovative in many aspects, when compared with conventional fiction. And this essay is intended to explore some of them from the perspective of structural organization, writing technique as well as characterization.
[Key words] Kew Gardens innovation form technique characterization
1. Introduction
Kew Gardens is an short story written by the English female author Virginia Woolf.It was first published privately in 1919, then more widely in 1921 in the collection Monday or Tuesday, and subsequently in the posthumous collection A Haunted House (1944).
As one of Woolf’s most famous short stories, Kew Gardens is innovative in many aspects, when compared with conventional fiction. And this essay is intended to explore some of them from the perspective of structural organization, writing technique as well as characterization.
2. A Brief Summary of Kew Gardens
The story was set in a botanic garden in London on a hot July day, and the narrative cast brief glimpses of four groups of people as they passed by a flowerbed. In the beginning of the story, the author gave a painting-like vivid description of the oval-shaped flowerbed. The most amazing technique she used here is to mix the colors of the flower petals with the seemingly random movements of the visitors, which she further linked to the apparently irregular movements of the butterflies.
The first group of passers-by was a married couple together with their children. The man, named Simon, recalled his visit 15 years ago when he proposed to a girl called Lily, but was rejected. Here the author connected the apparent randomness of the girl’s decision to the flying of a dragonfly; its settling on a leaf would indicate that Lily would say yes. But unfortunately, the dragonfly kept flying around in the air.
Different from the man’s bitter recalling, his wife, Eleanor, had a sweet memory of the gardens, which was much earlier when she and other little girls sat near the lake painting pictures of the water lilies. She had never seen red water lilies before, and at this time, an old grey-haired woman kissed her on the back of the neck. This experience had remained with her ever since as the “mother of all kisses”.
As the couple with their children walked out of sight, the narrative began to focus on a snail in the flowerbed. It appeared to have a definite goal, and then the narrator described the vista in front of it as well as the obstacles it had to overcome. After that, the narrative shifted the focus back again to the passers-by.
This time is was two men standing at the flowerbed. The younger man was called William, while the older, a somewhat crippled man, was unnamed. The older man was talking about heaven and making oblique references to the war. He then appeared to mistake a woman passing by for someone in his thoughts, and prepared to run off to her, but was quickly apprehended by the young man who managed to distract him by pointing out a flower. Then the old man leaned close to the flower as if he was listening to a voice inside it. As the old man was talking on, the young man’s stoical patience grew deeper.
Following the men came two elderly women, who were described by the narrator as being of the lower middle class. They were fascinated by the old man’s behaviors, but unable to determine if he had mental health problems or was simply eccentric. The narrator recounted apparently isolated words and phrases, such as “he says, she says, I say”, “Sugar, flour, kippers, greens” and so on. Then the stouter women became detached from the conversation, drowsily staring at the flowerbed, and finally, she suggested that they find a seat and have their tea.
Then the narrative returned to the snail again, which was still trying to reach its goal. After making a decision on its progress, it moved off as a young man and a young woman approached the flowerbed. The former remarked that on Friday admission to the gardens was sixpence, to which the latter was unhappy and asked if it was not worth sixpence. He asked what “it” meant. She replied “anything”. As they stood at the end of the flowerbed, they both pressed the young woman’s parasol into the soil. His hand rested on top of hers. This action expressed their feelings for each other, as did their insignificant words. The narrator stated that these were words with “short wings for their heavy body of meaning”. Their feelings were evident to the two of them as well as others. Then the young man suggested that they have their tea now. She asked where they should have tea in the gardens. However, when she looked over a long grass path, she quickly forgot about the tea and wanted to explore the gardens.
One couple after another moved through the gardens with the same aimlessness. Then the narrative dissolved the snatches of conversation into flashes of color, shape and movement, wordless voices of contentment, passion, and desire. Children’s voices echoed with freshness and surprise. Finally, the focus pulled out beyond the gardens, contrasting the murmur of the city with the voices and color of the gardens.
3. The Innovations of Kew Gardens
3.1 Plot-less in Structural Organization
Conventional fiction usually has a clear and logical storyline, along which the conflicts between characters are arranged in a “beginning-climax-ending” model. Kew Gardens, however, is plot-less, having no conflicts, no climax, no ending, and even no interrelated characters. It, like an omniscient video-camera, which can gain an insight into both human and animals, provides its reader with a series of fragmentary recordings, including two impressionistic scenery painting, two close-up descriptions of a snail’s activity and four dynamic shots of garden visitors, i.e. one for each group of visitors. The only connection between these snatches is that they share the same setting – an oval-shaped flowerbed in Kew Gardens and the same time – a certain moment in a day of July. Unlike the linear relationship between parts in conventional fiction, i.e., one part naturally growing out of another, the relationship between these snatches is “horizontal”, i.e., they are not coherent to each other, yet equally related to the same topic, and that makes the whole story like an assorted cold dish.
3.2 Innovations in Writing Technique
Firstly, impressionistic painting technique is brought in. The identifying feature of impressionism lies in its preference for a lighter, more brilliant palette and objective recording of nature in terms of fugitive effects of color and light.
In Kew Gardens, there are at least two examples. One is the description of the oval-shape flowerbed at the beginning; colors such as “red”, “blue” and “yellow” are used four times to emphasize the strong visual impression given by flowers, while words such as “pass”, “stain”, “fall”, “expand” and “settle” are adopted to show the dynamics of light and the interpenetration between light and color. The other is the mocking of two women’s dialogue in the middle; the listing of seemingly meaningless words and sentence fragments, is in fact, the true reality of their conversation. Names such as “Neil, Bert, Lot, Cess, Phil, Pa” and “My Bert, Sis, Bill, Grandad, the old man” indicate the two women’s acquaintance, while broken sentences such as “he says, I says, she says, I says, I says –” reveal their frequent turn of dialogue. Moreover, the random listing of things such as “sugar, sugar, flour, kippers, greens, sugar, sugar, sugar” discloses the tedious, trivial content of their dialogue. Here the narrator objectively conveys the strong audio impression the women’s dialogue has given to him or her, as if the words are “falling over” him or her like some kind of solid substance, and he or her can only intuitively stretch out hands, capturing some of them, and then show them to the reader.
Secondly, the literary technique of stream-of-consciousness is adopted. Contrasted with conventional fiction which puts its emphasis on showing the developing process of events, Kew Gardens makes great efforts in mocking the working of human mind.
Initially, such ungrammatical sentence as “from the oval-shaped flower-bed there rose perhaps a hundred stalks spreading into heart-shaped or tongue shaped leaves half-way up and unfurling at the top red or blue or yellow petals marked with spots of color raised upon the surface” is used to show the smooth and quick flowing of consciousness.
In the second place, psychological time and space is integrated with their scientific counterpart to simulate the endless expanding of consciousness. In Kew Gardens, scientific time is defined by the movement of the snail, and scientific space is set around the flowerbed. Psychological time and space, however, goes far beyond than that. For example, in addition to Simon’s recalling of his proposal to Lily fifteen years ago and Eleanor’s memory of the kiss she got from an old woman twenty years ago, the old man talked about “the forests of Uruguay which he had visited hundreds of years ago in company with the most beautiful young woman in Europe”.
Last but not the least, to imitate the free association of ideas and thoughts, both rhetorical strategy and a snail are employed for a natural and seamless transition from one snatch to another. For example, at the end of the first paragraph, rhetorical order was used for a change of attention from flowerbed to people, “then the breeze stirred …and the color was flashed into the air above, into the eyes of men and women…”. Then between the first and the second, the third and the fourth group of visitors, a snail was introduced for a coherent connection in the way like: “before he had decided…there came past the bed the feet of other human beings”, and “he had just inserted...when two other people came past outside on the turf”.
3.3 Innovations in Characterization
The first one is, contrasted with the protagonist-centered web-like relations in conventional fiction, the relationship between the characters in Kew Gardens is parallel in a sense. Firstly, there is no central character and all characters are equally important. Secondly, each group of visitors did not, does not and even will not have any relationship with the other three groups; they just happen to appear at the same place at the same moment.
Secondly, conventional fiction usually spends lots of ink in portraying its characters’ physical appearance, surroundings and social activities, while Kew Gardens goes to the opposite extreme. It discloses little external information about its characters, except their gender and approximate age. Instead, it makes every effort to explore and reveal the mental world of its characters.
Finally, animals, in conventional fiction, are usually in an inferior position to that of human beings, in Kew Gardens, however, they are juxtaposed with human beings. This can be evidenced from two aspects. First, animals are personified and promoted to an extremely high position. For example, dragonfly was given the final say on whether Simon’s proposal would be accepted, “And my love, my desire, was in the dragonfly”. Moreover, snail was said to “have a definite goal in front of it” as a contrast to human beings’ “irregular and aimless movement”. Second, human beings are demoted to possess some features of animals. For example, “The figures of these men and women straggled past the flower-bed with a curiously irregular movement not unlike that of the white and blue butterflies who crossed the turf in zigzag flights from bed to bed.”
4. Conclusion
As a woman who was always trying to break the confinement of traditions and kept challenging herself, Virginia Woolf has made a lot of important innovations in writing. Although Kew Gardens is just a short story, it does not stop us stealing a glance at some of those innovations.
Reference:
[1] Goldman, J., The Cambridge Introduction to Virginia Woolf, Shanghai: Shanghai Foreign Language Education Press, 2008.
[2] 李新博. 论《邱园记事》的叙事反叛与创新[J]. 外语教学, 2009(5): 90-92.
[3] 许丽莹. 后印象主义的会话技巧在伍尔夫短篇小说中的运用[J]. 四川外语学院学报, 2006(5)：37-41.
[4] 陈琳. 从《邱园记事》管窥伍尔夫小说创作时空观[J]. 淮北煤炭师范学院学报（哲学社会科学版）, 2010(1): 48-51.
作者简介:
王优优（1982—），女，河南偃师人，河南工业大学国际学院讲师，研究方向：语言学与应用语言学，英语教学。
[Key words] Kew Gardens innovation form technique characterization
1. Introduction
Kew Gardens is an short story written by the English female author Virginia Woolf.It was first published privately in 1919, then more widely in 1921 in the collection Monday or Tuesday, and subsequently in the posthumous collection A Haunted House (1944).
As one of Woolf’s most famous short stories, Kew Gardens is innovative in many aspects, when compared with conventional fiction. And this essay is intended to explore some of them from the perspective of structural organization, writing technique as well as characterization.
2. A Brief Summary of Kew Gardens
The story was set in a botanic garden in London on a hot July day, and the narrative cast brief glimpses of four groups of people as they passed by a flowerbed. In the beginning of the story, the author gave a painting-like vivid description of the oval-shaped flowerbed. The most amazing technique she used here is to mix the colors of the flower petals with the seemingly random movements of the visitors, which she further linked to the apparently irregular movements of the butterflies.
The first group of passers-by was a married couple together with their children. The man, named Simon, recalled his visit 15 years ago when he proposed to a girl called Lily, but was rejected. Here the author connected the apparent randomness of the girl’s decision to the flying of a dragonfly; its settling on a leaf would indicate that Lily would say yes. But unfortunately, the dragonfly kept flying around in the air.
Different from the man’s bitter recalling, his wife, Eleanor, had a sweet memory of the gardens, which was much earlier when she and other little girls sat near the lake painting pictures of the water lilies. She had never seen red water lilies before, and at this time, an old grey-haired woman kissed her on the back of the neck. This experience had remained with her ever since as the “mother of all kisses”.
As the couple with their children walked out of sight, the narrative began to focus on a snail in the flowerbed. It appeared to have a definite goal, and then the narrator described the vista in front of it as well as the obstacles it had to overcome. After that, the narrative shifted the focus back again to the passers-by.
This time is was two men standing at the flowerbed. The younger man was called William, while the older, a somewhat crippled man, was unnamed. The older man was talking about heaven and making oblique references to the war. He then appeared to mistake a woman passing by for someone in his thoughts, and prepared to run off to her, but was quickly apprehended by the young man who managed to distract him by pointing out a flower. Then the old man leaned close to the flower as if he was listening to a voice inside it. As the old man was talking on, the young man’s stoical patience grew deeper.
Following the men came two elderly women, who were described by the narrator as being of the lower middle class. They were fascinated by the old man’s behaviors, but unable to determine if he had mental health problems or was simply eccentric. The narrator recounted apparently isolated words and phrases, such as “he says, she says, I say”, “Sugar, flour, kippers, greens” and so on. Then the stouter women became detached from the conversation, drowsily staring at the flowerbed, and finally, she suggested that they find a seat and have their tea.
Then the narrative returned to the snail again, which was still trying to reach its goal. After making a decision on its progress, it moved off as a young man and a young woman approached the flowerbed. The former remarked that on Friday admission to the gardens was sixpence, to which the latter was unhappy and asked if it was not worth sixpence. He asked what “it” meant. She replied “anything”. As they stood at the end of the flowerbed, they both pressed the young woman’s parasol into the soil. His hand rested on top of hers. This action expressed their feelings for each other, as did their insignificant words. The narrator stated that these were words with “short wings for their heavy body of meaning”. Their feelings were evident to the two of them as well as others. Then the young man suggested that they have their tea now. She asked where they should have tea in the gardens. However, when she looked over a long grass path, she quickly forgot about the tea and wanted to explore the gardens.
One couple after another moved through the gardens with the same aimlessness. Then the narrative dissolved the snatches of conversation into flashes of color, shape and movement, wordless voices of contentment, passion, and desire. Children’s voices echoed with freshness and surprise. Finally, the focus pulled out beyond the gardens, contrasting the murmur of the city with the voices and color of the gardens.
3. The Innovations of Kew Gardens
3.1 Plot-less in Structural Organization
Conventional fiction usually has a clear and logical storyline, along which the conflicts between characters are arranged in a “beginning-climax-ending” model. Kew Gardens, however, is plot-less, having no conflicts, no climax, no ending, and even no interrelated characters. It, like an omniscient video-camera, which can gain an insight into both human and animals, provides its reader with a series of fragmentary recordings, including two impressionistic scenery painting, two close-up descriptions of a snail’s activity and four dynamic shots of garden visitors, i.e. one for each group of visitors. The only connection between these snatches is that they share the same setting – an oval-shaped flowerbed in Kew Gardens and the same time – a certain moment in a day of July. Unlike the linear relationship between parts in conventional fiction, i.e., one part naturally growing out of another, the relationship between these snatches is “horizontal”, i.e., they are not coherent to each other, yet equally related to the same topic, and that makes the whole story like an assorted cold dish.
3.2 Innovations in Writing Technique
Firstly, impressionistic painting technique is brought in. The identifying feature of impressionism lies in its preference for a lighter, more brilliant palette and objective recording of nature in terms of fugitive effects of color and light.
In Kew Gardens, there are at least two examples. One is the description of the oval-shape flowerbed at the beginning; colors such as “red”, “blue” and “yellow” are used four times to emphasize the strong visual impression given by flowers, while words such as “pass”, “stain”, “fall”, “expand” and “settle” are adopted to show the dynamics of light and the interpenetration between light and color. The other is the mocking of two women’s dialogue in the middle; the listing of seemingly meaningless words and sentence fragments, is in fact, the true reality of their conversation. Names such as “Neil, Bert, Lot, Cess, Phil, Pa” and “My Bert, Sis, Bill, Grandad, the old man” indicate the two women’s acquaintance, while broken sentences such as “he says, I says, she says, I says, I says –” reveal their frequent turn of dialogue. Moreover, the random listing of things such as “sugar, sugar, flour, kippers, greens, sugar, sugar, sugar” discloses the tedious, trivial content of their dialogue. Here the narrator objectively conveys the strong audio impression the women’s dialogue has given to him or her, as if the words are “falling over” him or her like some kind of solid substance, and he or her can only intuitively stretch out hands, capturing some of them, and then show them to the reader.
Secondly, the literary technique of stream-of-consciousness is adopted. Contrasted with conventional fiction which puts its emphasis on showing the developing process of events, Kew Gardens makes great efforts in mocking the working of human mind.
Initially, such ungrammatical sentence as “from the oval-shaped flower-bed there rose perhaps a hundred stalks spreading into heart-shaped or tongue shaped leaves half-way up and unfurling at the top red or blue or yellow petals marked with spots of color raised upon the surface” is used to show the smooth and quick flowing of consciousness.
In the second place, psychological time and space is integrated with their scientific counterpart to simulate the endless expanding of consciousness. In Kew Gardens, scientific time is defined by the movement of the snail, and scientific space is set around the flowerbed. Psychological time and space, however, goes far beyond than that. For example, in addition to Simon’s recalling of his proposal to Lily fifteen years ago and Eleanor’s memory of the kiss she got from an old woman twenty years ago, the old man talked about “the forests of Uruguay which he had visited hundreds of years ago in company with the most beautiful young woman in Europe”.
Last but not the least, to imitate the free association of ideas and thoughts, both rhetorical strategy and a snail are employed for a natural and seamless transition from one snatch to another. For example, at the end of the first paragraph, rhetorical order was used for a change of attention from flowerbed to people, “then the breeze stirred …and the color was flashed into the air above, into the eyes of men and women…”. Then between the first and the second, the third and the fourth group of visitors, a snail was introduced for a coherent connection in the way like: “before he had decided…there came past the bed the feet of other human beings”, and “he had just inserted...when two other people came past outside on the turf”.
3.3 Innovations in Characterization
The first one is, contrasted with the protagonist-centered web-like relations in conventional fiction, the relationship between the characters in Kew Gardens is parallel in a sense. Firstly, there is no central character and all characters are equally important. Secondly, each group of visitors did not, does not and even will not have any relationship with the other three groups; they just happen to appear at the same place at the same moment.
Secondly, conventional fiction usually spends lots of ink in portraying its characters’ physical appearance, surroundings and social activities, while Kew Gardens goes to the opposite extreme. It discloses little external information about its characters, except their gender and approximate age. Instead, it makes every effort to explore and reveal the mental world of its characters.
Finally, animals, in conventional fiction, are usually in an inferior position to that of human beings, in Kew Gardens, however, they are juxtaposed with human beings. This can be evidenced from two aspects. First, animals are personified and promoted to an extremely high position. For example, dragonfly was given the final say on whether Simon’s proposal would be accepted, “And my love, my desire, was in the dragonfly”. Moreover, snail was said to “have a definite goal in front of it” as a contrast to human beings’ “irregular and aimless movement”. Second, human beings are demoted to possess some features of animals. For example, “The figures of these men and women straggled past the flower-bed with a curiously irregular movement not unlike that of the white and blue butterflies who crossed the turf in zigzag flights from bed to bed.”
4. Conclusion
As a woman who was always trying to break the confinement of traditions and kept challenging herself, Virginia Woolf has made a lot of important innovations in writing. Although Kew Gardens is just a short story, it does not stop us stealing a glance at some of those innovations.
Reference:
[1] Goldman, J., The Cambridge Introduction to Virginia Woolf, Shanghai: Shanghai Foreign Language Education Press, 2008.
[2] 李新博. 论《邱园记事》的叙事反叛与创新[J]. 外语教学, 2009(5): 90-92.
[3] 许丽莹. 后印象主义的会话技巧在伍尔夫短篇小说中的运用[J]. 四川外语学院学报, 2006(5)：37-41.
[4] 陈琳. 从《邱园记事》管窥伍尔夫小说创作时空观[J]. 淮北煤炭师范学院学报（哲学社会科学版）, 2010(1): 48-51.
作者简介:
王优优（1982—），女，河南偃师人，河南工业大学国际学院讲师，研究方向：语言学与应用语言学，英语教学。