Here and Now

The Politics of Social Space in D.H. Lawrence and Virginia Woolf

Youngjoo Son

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781135491871
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

Working at the crossroads of contemporary geographical and cultural theory, the book explores how social spaces function as sites which foreground D. H. Lawrence and Virginia Woolf's critiques of the social order and longings for change. Looking at various social spaces from homes to nations to utopian space brought into the here and now the book shows the ways in which these writers criticize and deconstruct the contemporary symbolic, physical, and discursive spatial topoi of the dominant socio-spatial order and envision a more liberating and inclusive human geography. In addition, the book calls for the need to redress the tendency of some spatial theories to underestimate the political potential of literary discourse about space, instead of simply and mechanically appropriating some theoretical concepts to literary criticism. One of the central findings in the book, therefore, is that literary texts can perform subversive interventions in the production of social space through their critical interaction with dominant spatial codes.

Part One
Rewriting Private and Public Spaces

Part One Introduction

As recent scholars have noted, every society has prevalent ways of structuring, producing, and conceptualizing space that reflect its dominant ideologies and social order. The physical and conceptual division between private/domestic and public spaces, for example, has been integral to maintaining the patriarchal social order. Whereas places outside the home have been used and viewed as basically places for men, domestic space has been regarded as the place where women should be. This spatial dichotomy has justified patriarchal oppression by restricting women’s access to public space and legitimizing the exploitation of women’s labor in private/domestic space.

In this section, I investigate the ways in which Lawrence and Woolf criticize or reverse the conventional conceptualization and representation of public and private spaces.¹ Most simply, by private and public space in this section I mean domestic/familial and extra-domestic/familial spaces respectively. By analyzing Lawrence’s and Woolf’s treatment of various places through the concepts of social space and spatial code, I demonstrate that the spatial politics in their writings is closely connected with gender and class politics, and social criticism in general.

At first glance, it seems that the gap between Lawrence’ and Woolf’s attitudes toward the patriarchal discourses about private and public spaces could not be wider. Roughly speaking, whereas Woolf interrogates and challenges the cultural connotations and ideological implications embedded in these terms, Lawrence, especially at his worst, appears to take them for granted and even reinforce them. In contrast to Woolf who criticizes the ideology of separate spaces, Lawrence—even when his problematic gender politics is not blatant— makes occasional observations that may provoke outcry from feminist readers. In his essay, “Matriarchy,” for example, the anonymous narrator’s attack on bullying husbands’ obsession with asserting masculine authority at home takes a curious turn as it leads to rather a condescending admonition for men to stop fussing over all too little (i.e., the desire to be master at home) and instead, to seek to develop their “social cravings” and freedom by simply giving women their independence as “mothers and heads of the family” (552). Thus, the initial criticism of man’s preoccupation with authority which the writer attributes to man’s jealousy and fear of women’s growing advancement into the social world, turns out to be no better than a trap to confine women to the female zone of home so that men can develop their “social instinct” in their proper place—the public/social realm of “clubs and public-houses … free from the tight littleness of family” (552).²

Nevertheless, there are similarities in Lawrence’s and Woolf’s treatment of space. In particular, in exploring the psychological state of their childhood, both Lawrence and Woolf often unite home and the mother through the image of a provider of comfort, harmony, and stability. For example, in A Sketch of the Past, Woolf’s most extended autobiographical writing, much of her recollection of the early years centers on the childhood home bound up with the mother. She writes of her mother: “Certainly there she was, in the very center of that great Cathedral space which was childhood; there she was from the very first” (81). In the memoir, her mother permeates the entire house to such a degree that the maternal body is nearly identified with the house: “[A]nd of course she was central. I suspect the word ‘central’ gets closest to the general feeling I had of living so completely in her atmosphere that one never got far enough away from her to see her as a person…. She was the whole thing; Talland House was full of her; Hyde Park Gate was full of her” (83). Similarly, in Sons and Lovers which was based on Lawrence’s own experience, the protagonist’s childhood life and his gradual initiation out of it revolve around the solid ground/home/mother—the “one place in the world that stood solid and did not melt into unreality: the place where his mother was” (273).

In a sense, the association between home, mother, and the sense of stability in Lawrence and Woolf is not exceptional. Victorian intellectuals such as John Ruskin often likened the house to a container of childhood memories revolving around the relationship with the mother and the power of resisting the vicissitudes of life.³ The psychological dimension of domestic space that is tied up with the childhood experience of the maternal body also reverberates in the French philosopher Gaston Bachelard’s book, The Poetics of Space— a phenomenological study of “intimate places.” Using the image of the house that appears in literary texts as a “tool for analysis of the human soul,” Bachelard shows how the house—especially when it is evoked in relation to childhood— functions as an indicator of a psychic state (xxxiii, 72). Noting that “the poetics of the house” points to the value of the intimate space that provides protection from mutability and “illusions of stability,” Bachelard contends that the house not only contains but also constitutes the memory of childhood and that its virtue as a shelter and refuge has been often aligned with the comforting maternal body (19, 5). Quoting a line from O. V. de Milosz’ poem, “Melancholy”—“I say Mother. And my thoughts are of you, oh, House. /House of the lovely dark summers of my childhood”—Bachelard notes how “the mother image and the House image are united” (45).

As scholars like Doreen Massey have suggested, despite their emphasis on psychological aspects, patriarchal discourses about home are socio-cultural products. As a matter of fact, the association of the childhood home with the maternal and a sense of stability that we see in Lawrence, Woolf, Ruskin, and Bachelard, is an outcome of a patriarchal society where early child-rearing is almost entirely in the hands of women, a society founded on a gendered division of space and labor. Indeed, Massey observes that “the place called home in Western culture” has often been framed around women who have been forced to stay behind and to take the role of providing stability and security for men (166–67). As we shall see, however, what makes the similarities between Lawrence’s and Woolf’s treatment of space so intriguing is not so much their shared adoption of dominant spatial codes as their challenges to them. Indeed, in a number of instances, Lawrence and Woolf reveal their keen awareness that the current picture and discourse of domestic space is a socio-cultural construction subservient to the dominant social order, an awareness that enables them to mock, interrogate, and challenge ideological implications embedded in conventional spatial discourses and practices, thus overcoming the ideological limits of Ruskin and Bachelard.

One of the most problematic aspects of the image of home as a maternal space in patriarchal discourse is that it helped to confine women to domesticity, naturalized their labor in home, and erased their individuality. Within this space, a woman became a “ghostly figure of desire [with] no place to occupy in the social order,” losing her identity and fading into the man’s house (Armstrong 186). Indeed, in Bachelard we witness the ways in which the name of “builder” of home that is granted to women works to erase their suffering and even eulogize their drudgery. According to Bachelard, the harmonious home is “built” by “the housewife” who “awakens furniture” by ceaseless polishing while her husband “build[s] a house from the outside” without knowing about this “wax civilization”(68). In addition to naturalizing the division between female/interior and male/exterior, Bachelard suppresses women’s labor in the household by asserting that this housewifery is beneficial even for women because it “cheers” their “heart” instead of exhausting their mind and body (81). In this respect, we can see that Bachelard’s valorization of domestic space in terms of timelessness, stasis, order, and maternity (79) at once reflects and transmits a male-dominant cultural heritage.

In addition, the image of home as a private, changeless, safe haven that prevails in Ruskin and Bachelard (contrasting with the image of changeable, social, and historical public space) has served to maintain unequal power relations not only between different genders but also between different classes by naturalizing or obscuring the social relations, conflicts, and tensions that exist in domestic space. For a theorist like Henri Lefebvre—who insists that every space is a social space entangled with specific material, and historical contexts—Bachelard’s theory of domestic space thus manifests one of the deplorable symptoms of a modernity that has obscured the materiality of space and the social relations of production (The Production of Space 94). Criticizing the tendency to dismiss the materiality and historicity of space, Lefebvre endeavors to locate “lived” space in the realm of culture and history (39, 46).

Anticipating Lefebvre’s theory of social space, Lawrence and Woolf disrupt the equation of private/domestic space with maternity, femininity, harmony, and changelessness. Fighting the dominant spatial discourse that erases the exploitation of the marginalized in domestic space, these writers constantly bring to the fore the incessant and unrewarded toil of women and/or working class people, the confinement of women, and the conflicts that issue from unequal relations and domination. At the same time, Lawrence and Woolf excavate the multiple meanings of domestic space, refusing to offer a homogenized vision of it—that might render domestic space static and unalterable. In Woolf, the home is a place from which she felt estranged because of the privilege of the male member of the family. It is also a place of confinement—the place where she had to remain while her brothers left home for education. At the same time, it is a place divided by class where her mother as a Victorian matron supervised and dictated to lower class people, a place that opened Woolf’s eyes to class disparities and her own class privileges. Similarly, domestic space in Lawrence is a socio-cultural place ridden with conflicts between different genders and classes, a heterogeneous place of nurture, feminine subjugation, masculine violence, and resistance.

Even when Lawrence and Woolf take recourse in the comforting maternal domestic space as an ontological ground and a resource for their artistic imaginations, their private/domestic spaces do not end up being an entirely harmonious, ahistorical, and changeless realm. In Woolf, for example, there are instances where even the most maternal space of stability is interrupted by moments of change and unsettlement. In A Sketch of the Past, for example, the moment when the domestic/maternal space of childhood expands to “vast space” or “a great hall” is immediately disrupted by a vision of movement and change: “A great hall I could liken it [childhood] to; with windows letting in strange lights; and murmurs and spaces of deep silence. But somehow that picture must be brought, too, the sense of movement and change. Nothing remained stable long” (79). In a similar vein, Lawrence reverses the conventional association of home and mother with stability and stasis in a work like The Rainbow by aligning them with a vision of perpetual journey and movement. By excavating the so-far muted spatial code of the marginalized, Lawrence and Woolf offer a corrective to the dominant picture of home that mainly reflects the perspective and the experience of the privileged.

Interestingly, the ways in which Lawrence and Woolf render domestic space as being dynamic, multifaceted, and open invite us to look critically at the ideological limits of Lefebvre’s view of domestic space. Despite his apt criticism of Bachelard, Lefebvre also tends to depoliticize and dehistoricize domestic space. For example, Lefebvre views domestic space as an example of what he terms “appropriated space”—space of resistance and emancipation that challenges the dictate of the state.¹ What is problematic here is Lefebvre’s rather romanticized view of domestic space founded on the assumption that domestic space is inherently independent of and immune to the power imbalances and oppressive social relations operative in the space outside of the home. Lefebvre’s association of domestic space with nature, interiority, and enclosure further confirms my point. He advocates for the “natural space” of home or “the indoor space of family life,” as if the home were a natural space free of domination and conflicts in contrast with the “outside space of the community” (117, 166). Moreover, Lefebvre sticks to the division between the private and the public by drawing on the language that is akin to the Victorian ideology of separate spheres. “The real requirements of the present situation,” he states, are that “[t]he sphere of private life ought to be enclosed, and have a finite, or finished aspect. Public space, by contrast, ought to be an opening outwards” (147). In this respect, Lefebvre’s valorization of domestic space shares Bachelard’s blunder of dehistoricizing and depoliticizing the home by rendering it as natural, independent, closed, and static. In contrast, Lawrence and Woolf neither idealize private space as a place of resistance and emancipation nor relegate it to a purely oppressive domain. In their writings both private and public spaces are multifaceted and dynamic social spaces that are filled with unequal social relations and yet open to resistance and changes.

The similarities and complexities of private/domestic space in Lawrence and Woolf hold true for their depictions of public space as well. Both Lawrence and Woolf are keenly aware of the cultural connotations and ideological implications embedded in the physical and conceptual referent of public space. Their challenges to the conventional practices and conceptualizations surrounding public space are multifold. To begin with, these writers critically show the monopolization of public space by men and the limited access of women to the world of politics, education, profession, and so forth. Lawrence and Woolf understand that the advancement of women’s status requires their equal access to public space. And yet, they do not see women’s entrance into public space as desirable nor do they believe that such an entrance would immediately bring about women’s independence and self-realization, since they detected problems and dangers in the way public space was produced, used, and conceptualized. Going beyond criticizing the male monopolization of public space, therefore, these writers seek a more radical intervention into the production of public space. They argue for the need to reshape the very conceptual and physical ground of public space by exposing various ideologies that have supported and legitimized the production of the space—space which society has called “public” and privileged over private space as a place of self-realization and emancipation. Woolf’s feminist demand that woman share all the benefits that public space promises, for instance, is frequently accompanied by her rigorous attack on problems associated with that very space. Likewise, despite his occasional limits, Lawrence does not always represent public space as an ideal alternative to the stifling home. He also offers a penetrating criticism of the male-centered public space as a construct which represses both men’s and women’s individuality and sound relationships with other people. Pointing out how the male-centered space has cultivated and justified nationalism, imperialism, and militarism, as well as dehumanizing institutionalization and industrialization, both Lawrence and Woolf press for a restructuring and reconceptualization of public space. For these writers, public space, like private space, is a dynamic, multifaceted, and alterable space open to change and resistance; it is a space that is not reducible to either a purely oppressive or liberating structure but remains at once an oppressive and emancipating social space.

In sum, my argument in Part I is that Lawrence and Woolf disrupt the dominant socio-spatial order by refiguring private and public spaces. These writers locate both private and public spaces in a historical and cultural realm by featuring them “not as an empty and neutral milieu occupied by dead objects but rather as a field of force full of tensions and distortions” (Lefebvre 145). They echo and adopt dominant spatial discourses, but they also interrogate and reverse them. In this sense, the terms private and public spaces in Lawrence and Woolf are highly complex ones that are under constant interrogation and reconfiguration rather than referring to something socially and culturally fixed. While Lawrence and Woolf were keenly aware of the negative impact of the conceptual and physical production of private and public spaces and the ideological division between them, they also knew that such spatial productions and conceptualizations are not absolute, but constructed, and thus can always be modified and remolded.

In Chapter One, I argue that much of Lawrence’s gender and class politics involves his critical response to the dominant spatial code. His writings frequently uncover the unequal relations between different genders and classes, reversing the patriarchal discourse about gender and space. Such works as “Discord in Childhood,” “Master in His House,” and Sons and Lovers, shatter the current cultural myths of domestic space as a harmonious, safe, maternal haven. Home in these works is a multifaceted socio-cultural space filled with power imbalances between different genders and classes. Instead of providing a stereotypical picture of the home seen from the patriarch’s perspective, these works uncover the suffering, labor, and agony that all family members undergo in one way or another. I move on to show that home in Lawrence disrupts the Victorian picture of the home as a maternal space of nurturing, food, and warmth, as evidenced by the violent but caring father haunting the hearth—the “female realm” in a patriarchal household (Lefebvre 247). Addressing space in a larger social, cultural, and historical context, The Rainbow invites us to understand Lawrence’s gender politics from a new angle. By examining such places as a house, a cottage, a cathedral, a school, or “The Man’s World” in this novel I will demonstrate how these places emerge as sites where women’s spatial codes and practices challenge and reverse the patriarchal discourse about gender and space.

Chapter Two investigates the political significance of Woolf’s treatment of domestic and public spaces. Exposing unequal class and gender relations and the contestation between diverse spatial codes and practices, Woolf locates domestic space (such as a dining room, a house, or a party table) in a social and historical realm in A Sketch of the Past, “Great Men’s Houses,” and Mrs. Dalloway. Essays like “The Docks of London” and “Oxford Street Tide” from The London Scene dismantle the dominant socio-spatial order by employing multiple spatial codes. These essays foreground the experience of the marginalized—women and/or the working class—in the urban landscape and highlight their conflicting spatial codes that challenge authoritative and homogenizing rendering of London. In Woolf as in Lawrence, both domestic and public spaces thus surface as heterogeneous, dynamic, and flexible social spaces open to perpetual remolding and change.

Chapter One

In a number of instances, domestic spaces in Lawrence’s writing shatter the Victorian myth of the home as a maternal, timeless, harmonious haven—an ideological rendering that works to maintain the dominant social order by obscuring soci...