Review of Sam See’s ’The Comedy of Nature: Darwinian Feminism in Virginia Woolf’s Between the Acts’

摘要

In 'The Comedy of Nature,' Sam See delights in phrases such as "Woolf's campy cows," and "Woolf's concentrated camp" whilst discussing degeneration and atavism in relation to Hitler's Nazi regime (658). It is a clever engagement with ideas See describes in Between the Acts as "simultaneously humorous and disturbing" (643). While Between the Acts may get away with being a "strange concatenation of humour and horror" (642), one wonders if it is insensitive of the critic to have fun with campy concentration, while considering ideas of concentration camps. Of course Woolf's rejection of the human tendency to "sanitise death" (652) and her rejection of Hitler's extreme sanitisation, genocide, forces the characters in Between the Acts and, with them, the reader, to face the uncomfortable. From defecation to "f—ing" to death, See asserts, Woolf forces discomfort because these are biological truths (652). However, the examples See cites are rare occasions in Woolf's writing, which is often characterised as aristocratic. Indeed, Woolf was disgusted by the realism of Ulysses, and wrote the following in her diary: "An illiterate, underbred book it seems to me: the book of a self-taught working man, & we all know how distressing they are, how egotistic, insistent, raw, striking, & ultimately nauseating". Again, later in her diary, she wrote: "The pages reeled with indecency. I put it in the drawer of the inlaid cabinet." While See references Woolf's few forays into uncomfortable, gritty writing, he admits she redacts a word in her diary so it is written as "p—p". Woolf cannot bear to write directly about defecation: the forcing of biological truth seems as discomfiting to the author as to her readers. One of the cornerstones of the article is See's analysis of 'camp', both in Woolf's work and in the critical practice of the article. See argues initially that 'camp' is a category which "resists definition" (644), which may explain why it is so freely and flexibly used throughout his analysis of Between The Acts. The idea of camp is applied broadly, and can seem difficult to pin down in its resistance of definition. See rejects Susan Sontag's statement that "Nothing in nature can be campy" by effectively arguing that it is nature itself in Between The Acts that is 'camp'. Later, See argues that "to be good with bad aesthetics [is] a definition of camp itself" (645) which adds to the complex understanding (or challenge to understand) this particular consideration of camp. The free use of 'camp' in "The Comedy of Nature" could be considered a strength, because See argues for a similar complexity of camp in Between The Acts, but this aspect of the article may unsettle the critic who looks for solidity