ENG354 CREATIVE PROJECT

By Tram Nguyen

Online Access: issuu.com/ngoctramnguyen95/docs/eng354

Navigating the non-lieux London

This creative project, conducted as part of the course ENG354: Virginia Woolf,

presents a fictional story about the urban temporality of life in 20th century London. To

structure the narrative, I employed a systemic arrangement of 11 quotations from

Woolf’s novels (Mrs. Dalloway, The Years, Jacob’s Room, and The Voyage out), essay (A Room

of One’s Own), and article (“English roads and motor cars” in The Register). I used different

background colors (green, blue, purple, and black) in my illustration to elucidate that the

story is narrated from four different points of view (“we,” “she,” “he,” and “I”). The

narrators’ contemplations over the space of London together flow into a stream-of-

consciousness narrative, a literary style that Woolf had been developing throughout her

writing career.

In my story, there are no central scenes of urban stillness. Images of city traffic

presented in collage format instead delineate life in London as a collection of fragmented,

chaotic experiences. The frantic speed of the cars, the stops and starts of omnibuses, and

the varying rhythms of drivers and passengers marks the fickle movements of urban life,

mirroring the non-linear patterns of Woolf ’s modernist fiction. All four narrators in my

story find London to be an alienating place that calls for some sense of order,

completion, and wholeness.

Through this creative project, I argue that for Woolf, the city of London was not

simply an anthropological place, which is redolent of history, constitutes the identity of

its inhabitants, and builds a relationship between the individual and the space. London

had rather become a non-lieux, or non-place—a spatial concept proposed by the French

anthropologist Marge Auge in the essay “Non-Places: Introduction to an Anthropology

of Supermodernity.” The hypothesis advanced here is that modernity and

supermodernity produce non-places, which are defined by an excess of time, space, and

egos. For instance, ambivalent sites of transience, such as bus stops, taxi stands, and

highways, are all non-places, making up a purely functional, sanitized landscape.

Applying the concept of non-lieux to my artwork, I portrayed the city of London in

Woolf’s literary works as a non-place that is overcrowded with human presence, sustains

the qualities of excessive individuality, and hardly generates any feeling of attachment for

the occupant bodies. The characters in my story strived to navigate the modern London,

all the while reminiscing the old London that had already been destroyed by the fleetness

and latent violence of modernity. My story also suggests that due to the emergence of

non-lieux—or spaces with no relational, local, or historical connection, people struggled to

find a place of their own in an increasingly homogenized British society. The narrator “I”

particularly felt uneased with the chaos of modern London, and therefore chose to shut

herself off in her room to write fiction. Literature arguably allows the narrator “I” to

construct a more stable space for her identity to emerge.

In the end, the purpose of my creative project is to reflect more broadly on

Woolf’s perception of London, and how this city influences her literary creation. I

propose that as an ephemeral non-place, London is ripe for authorial interventions and

engagements of all kind. For Woolf, writing serves as a revolutionary “place-making”

technology through which she can transform non-places like London into places of

connection, memory, and history.

SOURCES OF QUOTATION

1) “London was like a workshop. London was like a machine. We were all being shot backwards and forwards on this plain foundation to make some pattern” (Chapter 2, p.26). Woolf, Virginia. A Room of One's Own. San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1989. Print. 2) “It’s not catastrophes, murders, deaths, diseases, that age and kill us; it's the way people look and laugh, and run up the steps of omnibuses” (Chapter 6, p.51). Woolf, Virginia. Jacob's Room. London: Published by L. and V. Woolf at the Hogarth, 1929. Print. 3) “Sitting on the bus going up Shaftesbury Avenue, she felt herself everywhere; not “here, here, here”; and she tapped the back of the seat; but everywhere” (p.231). Woolf, Virginia. Mrs. Dalloway. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co, 1925. Print. 4) “She had the perpetual sense, as she watched the taxi cabs, of being out, out, far out to sea and alone; she always had the feeling that it was very, very, dangerous to live even one day” (p.6). Woolf, Virginia. Mrs. Dalloway. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co, 1925. Print. 5) “Down Park Lane and Piccadilly vans, cars, omnibuses ran along the streets as if the streets were slots; stopped and jerked; as if a puzzle were solved, and then broken” (1910 chapter, p.160). Woolf, Virginia. The Years. London: Published by L. and V. Woolf at the Hogarth, 1937. Print. 6) “The cars behind him hooted persistently; they hooted and hooted. What at? He asked. Suddenly he realised that they were hooting at him. The light had changed; it was green now, he had been blocking the way. He started off with a violent jerk. He had not mastered the art of driving in London” (Present Day chapter, p.308). Woolf, Virginia. The Years. London: Published by L. and V. Woolf at the Hogarth, 1937. Print. 7) “The noise of London still seemed to him deafening. Everywhere there was profusion; plenty . . . Again the red light shone out; he pulled up. He looked about him. He was somewhere in Oxford Street; the pavement was crowded with people; jostling each other; swarming round the plate-glass windows which were still lit up” (Present Day chapter, p.309). Woolf, Virginia. The Years. London: Published by L. and V. Woolf at the Hogarth, 1937. Print.

8) “The English road is rapidly losing its old character-- its colour, here tawny-red, here pearl-white; its flowery and untidy hedges; its quiet; its ancient and irregular charm. It is becoming, instead... a mere racing-track for the convenience of a population seemingly in a perpetual and frantic haste not to be late for dinner.” Woolf, Virginia. “English roads and motor cars" in The Register (Adelaide, SA : 1901 - 1929) 4 Nov 1924: 10. Web. 18 Dec 2015 <http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article64054185>. 9) “The leaves were still falling… in London now; and I must ask you to imagine a room, like many thousands, with a window looking across people's hats and vans and motor-cars to other windows” (Chapter 2, p.20). Woolf, Virginia. A Room of One's Own. San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1989. Print. 10) “I feel so intensely the delights of shutting oneself up in a little world of one’s own, with pictures and music and everything beautiful” (Chapter 3, p.45). Woolf, Virginia. The Voyage out. San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1948. Print. 11) “A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction” (Chapter 1, p.4). Woolf, Virginia. A Room of One's Own. San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1989. Print.

IMAGE CREDIT Cover photo: jawena.deviantart.com/art/Westminster-London-Pigment-Liner-and-Watercolor-337626884 Photos in the collage: 123rf.com photobucket.com flickr.com devianart.com pininterest.com