Williams, Ned

English

The College at Brockport, State University of New York: Digital Commons @Brockport

Literary Onomastics Studies
Volume 11 Article 12
1984
The Plurisignificance of Names of Female
Characters in Virginia Wollf 's Between the Acts
Ned Williams
Brigham Young University, Hawai'i
Follow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.brockport.edu/los
This Conference Paper is brought to you for free and open access by Digital Commons @Brockport. It has been accepted for inclusion in Literary
Onomastics Studies by an authorized editor of Digital Commons @Brockport. For more information, please contact kmyers@brockport.edu.
Repository Citation
Williams, Ned (1984) "The Plurisignificance of Names of Female Characters in Virginia Wollf 's Between the Acts," Literary Onomastics
Studies: Vol. 11 , Article 12.
Available at: http://digitalcommons.brockport.edu/los/vol11/iss1/12
LOS 135 
THE PLURISIGNIFICANCE OF THE NAMES OF FEMALE 
CHARACTERS IN VIRGINI:A WOOLF'S BETWEEN � ACTS 
Ned Williams 
The critical insights brought to bear on the structure in Vir-
ginia Woolf's Between the Acts are indeed impressive; yet the prob-
lem of unity continues to plague readers of the novel. Recent 
critics have generally rejected F. R. Leavis's and Louis Kronen-
berger's �arly disenchantment with Woolf's n0vel and have �assed 
curious and persuasive support for the work's inner unity and 
1 conceptual harmony. Painfully reduced, the basic qisagreement 
about the novel's unity can be illustrated with two extreme opinions, 
one from Milton FriediDan and the other from Dorothy Brewster. 
Freidman.concludes that in Between the Acts, "a unifying principle 
2 is nowhere to be found." On the other hand, Dorothy Brewster 
believes that "Mrs. Woolf never did a more beautiful job in inte-
3 gratir\g the parts of her design than in this brief book." James 
Wilson's evaluation may be the most diplomatic of those critics who 
have attempted to arbitrate the ongoing disagreement. Wilson calls 
Woolf's book,. "A completed novel but perhaps an unfinished work of 
t ,4 ar . 
In a fresh approach to the question of unity, Jean Love has 
introduced an intriguing resolution to the critical conundrum 
surrounding the novel's unity by pointing out that instead of 
offering readers discord or ha�ony, Woolf's purpose in her work is 
"only the reiteration of the dialectics."5 There can be little 
doubt, however, even to the uninitiated reader that Woolf's thematic 
thrust is·toward fragmentation in its various manifestations; thus, 
LOS 136 
we do not have a perfectly balanced system of opposites as Professor 
Love would desire. Love's reading should be valued, nevertheless, 
for it provides us with a conceptual system previously overlooked, a 
psychoanalytical approach that leads us to the novel's deeper struc­
tures. 
It is from Love's book, Worlds in Consciousness1that I have 
taken the_term "plurisignificance" for my title and its definition 
as a guideline for analyzing various ·female names in Between the 
Acts. Love defines plurisignificance as "the ability of a symbol or 
symbolic form to refer to more than one lexical meaning and �here­
fore to signify more than one thing."6 Neither Love nor I am con­
cerned about the kinds of qualities of meaning in symbols; rather our 
focus is upon their suggestions. In order to probe the deeper 
structure of the novel, I have.chosen to examine the plurisignifi­
cance of the principal female �ames in Woolf's book and to show how 
Woolf's names become codes whose essential content is represented in 
larger dialectic tensions at other levels in the book. In other 
words, I believe that each feminine name reiterates revealing para­
doxes of sound and sense, underscoring Woolf's central 'themes con­
cerning the nature of existence, history, society, and art. 
Presenting us with laugh�le names of restoration characters-­
Sir Spaniel Lilyliver, Sir Smirking Peace-Be-With-You-All, and 
Harpy Harraden--Woolf clearly has in mind not only a parody on the 
names of the inner play's performers, but also a concern with the 
LOS 137 
very process of naming. Interest in the names of Woolf's characters 
in this book has largely been ignored; only Love and Hermione Lee 
7 have touched on them and both with glancing comment. What 
fascinated me from the first reading of Between �Acts were Woolf's 
unu�ual non-British British names, Oliver, Swithin, Isa, La Trobe 
and Manresa, foreign names of characters who are thoroughly familiar 
with British life. 
Oliver, for example, the name of the residents at Pointz Hall, 
best illustrates how Woolf combines antithetical suggestions in a 
single surname. Not only do we hear and read the words "O Live" in 
the ancestral name, but we also detect the opposite meaning, "All 
over." On the one hand, the vocative, "O live" resonates with 
audibles of positivistic promise, a celebration of the future; 
whereas "All over" harrows up prophecies of the extinction of the 
race, one of Woolf's pressing fears at the time of the composition 
of Between the Acts. "All over" also implies a complete dispersion, 
a thorough fragmentation of society, order, tradition .threatened by 
the oncoming world war, one of the central themes of the novel. 
�Moreover, Oliver carries in it the sound "all of her," which gives 
the family name a deeper compl�xity. "All of her" suggests a whole 
woman existing among the fragments of a weak patriarchal society 
embodied in the characters of Bart, Giles, Haines, Mr. Budge and 
William Dodge. 
Lucy Swithin and Isa Oliver are both Olivers. Lucy, though, has 
LOS 1)8 
dropped her surname, while .Isa has assumed it. Isa has several -names 
in the novel; Isabelle, Mrs. Giles Oliver, Sir Richard's daughter-­
all of which give her separate ideptities connecting her �ith the 
presiding patria�chy. Isa's major dilemma, to be sure, is the ques­
tion of who she is. Somehow h�r various labels fail to describe·her 
nearly _or fully. Woolf highlights Isa's confusion by associating her 
in seve.ral places with being "entangled" (p. 8), "prisoned" (p. 66), 
and "ambiguous" (p. 38).. Isa' s name can be read in at least two ways: 
"Is a • • . " or "I ·saw. " Much of Is a's quandary about her identity 
stems from the uncertainty about who she is in relationship to what 
she sees.· She is introduced as a mother in pigtails, indicating that 
she is not quite sure if she's an adult or an adolescent. She loves 
her husband but romanticizes excessively about Haines, wh�she 
rarely encounters. She claims to love her children, but wants to 
free herself from them. She is very much in the prison her name 
suggests. Either she must follow her private vision or accept her 
stifling . existence, her "i
_
sne�:>s, " if you will. When we are told 
that Isa "looked what she was ... (p. 16), Woolf succinctly fuses the 
anti thetic.al aspects of her character, for throughout the novel, she 
comes across as an entangled mass of contradictions. 
If Isa is a gainsayer, then Lucy SWithin "belonged to the 
unifiers" (p. 118). Lucy is a dimunitive of Lucinda,whoreroot (Luc) 
means "light." swithin, I believe, should be read as a deliberate 
play on the word "within." Herice, her name signifies "light is 
tl 
LOS 139 
witP.in." The paradox of her name suggests the tension between bound­
less emanating light and its containment within. Her religious, 
unifying vision, on the one hand, allows Lucy to sympathize with 
William Dodge (p. 67) and to appreciate the intention of Miss La 
Trobe's play (p. L52) ; but on the other hand, those close to her-­
Bart, who thinks her religion made her "imperceptive," and the ser­
van.ts, who call her "bat tie "-believe that Lucy's inner light is a 
form of blindness. Smug in her assurance that "all is harmony" 
(p. 175), Lucy is blind to her blind side. Woolf provides ample 
evidence that Lucy's vision is not to be trusted. 
Woolf establishes Lucy's double-vision from the beginning of 
the novel. We discover that "in mind time it took her so much longer 
than in actual time" to separate "Grace by herself, with blue china on 
a tray, from the leather-covered grunting monster who was about, as 
the door opened, to demolish a whole tree in the green steaming 
undergrowth of the primeval forest" (p. 9) . Once, when Grace, the 
house servant, startled her, Lucy "felt on her face the divided 
glance" (p. 9), anticipating the fact that "she couldn't fix her 
gaze" (p. 24) which, according to Bart, would have made her a clever 
woman had she been able to. Furthermore, we sense the division of 
her vision when she groups the books in the library into two cate­
gories: those she has read and those she has not {p. 59). This 
classification suggesQLucy's fragmentary knowledge of the past, 
also hinted at by her endless reading project, the Outline of History. 
LOS 140 
Our kriowledge of. her divided vision, her stance "between two 
fluidities" (p. 204), balances against the- supposed oneness of Mrs. 
Swithin's private, unifying vision. Therefore, the tension "is­
within" and the issue is inner and outer "light." Does she maintain 
insight or blindness or both or neither? The dialectic holds; no 
synthesis emerges within the character of Lucy Swithin. 
Unlike Lucy Swithin, Mrs. Manresa is defined from the point of 
view of other people who eddy around her. Childless, primitive, 
vulgar in dress and manner, this disrupting woman is described from 
one extreme as "a wild child of nature" (p. 56) and from the other 
as "the Queen of the pageant" (p. 93), demonstrating that her very 
nature encompasses the extremes of society. With William Dodge, 
Mrs. Manresa crashes the Oliver Party, energizes the members of the 
family, and to Isa's dismay, displaces her from the center of atten­
tion. She emerges as a foreign invader, rich, with an unknown past 
who "believes in superstition" (p. 50) and has the modern freedom 
and power to "do what she likes" (p. 55). 
Her name invites play. We never learn her f'irst name in the 
novel'; she is known to us only as Mrs. Manresa. Her name gives its 
bearer a foreign quality, an aspect that underscores a major signi­
ficance to her role.as an alien invader. Also, we hear the word 
"Man Ray," that. associates her with an eel-like bite and nature. 
Her sting, especially against uther women in the novel, is frequently 
felt. Another possible significance of her name can be linked to the 
LOS 141 
American artist, Man Ray, who photographed Virginia Woolf numerous 
times. The most revealing aspect concerning Mrs. Manresa's name 
points·to the dialectic tensions preoccupying Woolf's mind during 
the composition of the. novel: the future of "man" and "race." 
We can hardly miss Woolf's intentional association of Mrs. 
Manresa with the invading forces on the continent at the time. It 
is no accident that Mrs. Manresa's absent husband is a Jew (p. 40), 
that she was the "first to bite" (p. 102) when teas were served, 
that she manages to displace Bart from his chair in the very center 
of the audience during the performance of the pageant (p. 78). Men, 
young and old, follow her 11like leaping dolphins in the wake of an 
ice-breaking vessel" (p. 41). Her force, vulgarity, and appetite 
are· as overwhelm.ing as her sexuality, though she has "given up on 
her figure" (p. 42) in favor of following the primitive nature she 
calls "just human" (p. 102). 
Perhaps it is Mrs. Manresa's near animalistic, abnormal human-
ness that makes her suspicious as a character. Her influence is 
enormous, unreflectively destructive. Instead of teaching the 
women of the village to can fruit or keep house, she has them all 
weaving hats (p. 43). Uninvited, she is quick to seize control and 
att�ntion with her very presence, despite the fact that "she can't 
put two words together" (p. 62). Furthermore, she has no concern 
for social class; she "is on the servants' level," herself immature, 
culturally, yet physically overdeveloped. The future of man and 
LOS 142 
race is questioned in her telling recitation of the famous line from 
Hamlet: "to be or not to be, that is the question" (p. 54). Indeed, 
that is the question that ·man and race must answer; yet Mrs. Manresa·, 
in this passage,merely asserts the question and then nudges Giles to 
complete Hamlet's lines. Why,· we may wonder, do members of th� 
audience in the last scene of the play turn away from their reflec­
tions like a primitive horde, while Mrs. Manresa touches up her 
make-up in a·fragment of a shattered ancestral mirror? Either the 
others wish to avoid seeing themselves as they really are, or are 
perhaps 9iving Mrs. Manresa the mirror to inspect her face. Woolf 
implies that Mrs. Manr·esa, · too, has no vision beyond her own sur­
faces. Gazing at a reflection of herself, she fails to perceive 
the chaos she has caused. 
It· · is Miss La Trobe, however, who directed her cast to hold 
up the mirrors to the faces in the audience as the finale of the 
pageant. Through her, Woolf affirms the artist's creation. Unlike 
the chaos caused by' Mrs. Manresa, Miss La Trobe's gift to the 
residents, guests, and intruders· at Pointz Hall is one of ·unity, 
harmony, and radiance. Her name, La Trobe, reminds us of Atropos, 
the daughter of Themis, the inflexible fate who severs the thread 
of life. Woolf's . character, Trobe (Trope)· is one who "turns," as 
her name suggests, life into art. 
Miss La Trobe is single, contemplative and cultured; she is in 
the center of the backstage production, whereas Mrs. Manresa is in 
LOS 14) 
the center of the forestage performance. One is commissioned, the 
other uninvited, and this cont.rast, among others, illustrates the 
complex paradoxes between and within these two female characters 
in the novel. It is curious to note the various identities which 
accrue to Mrs. Manresa as opposed to the virtual namelessness of 
Miss La TrObe. In fact, the rep.orter, appropriately named Mr. Page, 
calls Miss La Trobe Miss Whatshername on three occasions (p. 150, p. 
184, p. 197), indicating either his unprofessional journalism or 
Miss La Trobe's unnameable identity. we learn about her initially 
' 1 
from the unnamed narrator: 
She was always all agog to get things up. But where 
did she spring from? With that name she wasn't presumably 
pure English. From the Channel Islands perhaps? Rumour 
said that she had �ept a tea shop at Winchester; that had 
failed. She had been an actress. That had failed. She 
had bought a· four-roomed cottage and shared it with an 
actress. They had quarrelled. very little was actually 
known about her. Outwardly she was swarthy, sturdy and 
thick set; strode about the fields in a smock frock; 
sometimes with a cigarette in her mouth; often with a whip 
in her hand; and used rather strong language--perhaps, then, 
she wasn't altogether a lady? At any rate, she had a 
passion for getting things up (p. 58). 
LOS 144 
The wonderful energy of Miss La Trobe and the destructive 
energy of Mrs. Manresa show the extreme difference between artistic 
sensitivity and barbaric intrusion. A bossy, irritable director, 
who is afraid that her w�rk is a failure, Miss La Trobe is Virginia 
Woolf's last portrait of the woman as artist. The task she under­
takes is more visionary than practical, for she attempts to 
apprehend the past, present and future in the moment of the day, 
to include her audience, the natural setting and the wildlife in a 
pageant, hoping someone will understand to some degree, the whole­
ness of her vision. Behind the tree gnashing her teeth, she scorns 
the cultural blindness of her audience, although for an instant she 
felt that she "made them see" (p. 98). Not only does Miss La Trobe 
embody powerful artistic.forces, but she is also one who works "like 
a nigger, ·scattering and foraging" (p. 150) backstage to advance the 
performance. Her rage at the audience's dispersion between the acts 
of her cyclic pageant parallels Giles' anger and frustration in view 
of eschatological ruin. The expanse of her encompassing outer vision 
compares in profundity to Lucy Swithin's inner religious delusions. 
Appropriately, it is·�ucy Swithin who has understood Miss La 
Trobe' s purpose., for both in their extreme ways share an 
enthusiasm for mystical ecstasy. · Invisible, passiona �e
.
, �espondent, 
aggressive, Miss La Trobe and ner foreign-sounding name seem to 
vanish from PointzHall at the end of the performance. In a local 
pub: 
LOS 145 
The cheap clock ticked; smoke obscured the pictures. 
Smoke became tart o� the roof of her mouth. Smoke obscured 
� 
� 
the earth-colored jackets. She no longer saw them, yet 
they upheld her, sitting arms akimbo with her glass before 
her. There was the h�gh ground at midnight; there the 
rock; and two scarcely perceptible figures. Suddenly the 
tree was pelted wtih starlings. She set down her glass. 
She heard the first words (p. 212). 
The first words she heard were possibly the first words of the "other 
play behind the play" (p. 63) �hat had been on her mind from the 
beginning of the village production. Perhaps her powerful illusion 
failed, and it may be that her enduring inner voice is the only gift 
she is giv�n for her efforts. If we take Miss La Trobe as a type 
of the artist, art, though failing often, has an affirmative purpose; 
it bridges gaps, holds fragments together, unifies the people. 
Ned Williams 
Brigham Young University 
Hawaii 
LOS 146 
NOTES 
1 See F. R. Leavis's "After To the Lighthouse," Scrutiny, No. 
10 (1942), pp. 295-297, and Louis Kronenberger's "Virginia Woolf's 
Last Novel," Nation, October 11, 1941, pp. 344-345. 
2 
Melvin Friedman, "Between the Acts," Scrutiny, No. 9 (1941), 
p. 145. Among other studies agreeing with Friedman see Bernard 
Blackstone, Virginia Woolf: � ·commentary .(New York: Harcourt, 
Brace and Co., 1949), p: 236; Jean Wyatt, "Art and Allusion in 
Between the Acts," Mosaic, No. 11 (l975), p. 91; and Leavis, p. 344. 
3 Dorothy Brewster, Virginia Woolf (New York: New York Univer-
sity Press, 1962}, p. 153. See also, Jill Morris, Time and Timeless-
ness in Virginia Woolf (Hicksville, New York: Exposition Press, 
1971), p. 97; Hermione Lee, The Novels of Virginia Woolf (London: 
Methuen and Co., 1977), �· 203; and Avrom Fleishman, Virginia Woolf: 
� Critical Reading (Baltimore: Johns-Hopkins University Press, 
1975), p. 195. 
4 
James.S. Wilson, "Time and Virginia ·woolf," Virginia Quarterly 
Review, Spring (1942), p. 273. 
5 Jean 0. Love, Worlds in Consciousness: Mythopoetic Thought 
in �Novels of Virg;inia Woolf (Berkeley: University. of Cali£ornia 
Press, 1970}, p. 224. 
6 
Love, p. 255. 
7 
Love, p. 222 and Lee, p. 212. 
8 
Virginia Woolf,. Between the Acts (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 
and Co., 1941}, p. 8, 13, and 48. All subsequent page referepces 
to this edition will appear in the text. 


The Plurisignificance of Names of Female Characters in Virginia Wollf\u27s Between the Acts

https://digitalcommons.brockport.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1091&amp;context=los

The Plurisignificance of Names of Female Characters in Virginia Wollf\u27s Between the Acts

Abstract

Similar works

Full text

Available Versions

The College at Brockport, State University of New York: Digital Commons @Brockport