Modernist Politics

In reviewing the previous week, one is struck by several things in A Room of One’s Own. In the contemporary sense (our contemporary period, not that of Virgina Woolf), one is forced to wonder how Woolf would react to the notion of Affirmative Action. I suspect that Woolf would be supportive of the idea, though perhaps with deep ambivalence. Her assertion that women have been hindered - and must be caught up – lends credence. Indeed, her passage of the two runners, one bound, one not, with the unbound runner saying that he would unbind the other once she has caught up could easily be a ringing philosophical endorsement of the policy.

Had Woolf taken a program of study at Cambridge, I wonder which one she would have chosen – the normal or protractedly-paced course. Would she choose to be a lady or a governess?

I suspect lady.

Concerning the politics of the Modernists, one is indeed struck by Blair’s noting of the fact that Modernism’s definition, so fluid, makes easy categorization of the its political bent difficult. One finds the conservatives (Pound, Eliot, Lewis) drifting toward (if not wholeheartedly embracing) Fascism. One finds the progressives reaching toward socialism – even the “moderation” that Forster projects leans that way. I believe, however, one can find a single unifying force on all sides.

Organization.

Take, for example, Leornard Woolf’s “Fear and Politics.” “Civilization consists in acting and thinking like the ordinary man – the ordinary man being, in this connection, obviously an ordinary man or woman of the upper middle class.” Look also to Woolf’s contention in A Room of One’s Own that a woman needs 500 pounds per year to write. Both place their worldviews firmly among the establishment – part of the dominant structure that will protect and value their lifestyles. Consider Fascism and the Heroic Modernists – a stratified power structure embraced by those who would put themselves forward as the ubermensches of the literary world. Both seek a monolithic society that serves their purposes.

Is there not a chilling, depressive acknowledgment of this at the end of “Fear and Politics” when the elephant proclaims the virtues – the essential security – of captivity? Leonard seems too intelligent to argue for so simple a claim, but the element is troubling. Indeed, recalling his rejection of the paternalism of colonialism, one finds it difficult to believe that he would argue for yet another suffocating master. That said, his contention that political and societal evolution can be boiled down to fear and the reaction to said fear is probably one of the most apt sociological analyses ever written.

Forster himself acknowledges the desire for structure: “I believe in aristocracy.” Yea though he rejects an aristocracy of power, is not any ordering or stratification an affirmation of power or influence? He proposes that the erudite have power, not the forcibly mighty.
Would that not place the power in his hands – he, among the most erudite of his age?
Is there truly any real difference between Forster’s desire for an aristocracy of the sensitive and Eliot’s desire to be the great literary taste maker of his era?

When faced with conflict, though, one sees the deftness of the Woolfs’ flexibility. Indeed, during World War II, they were faced with one of the great conundrums for the pacifist: What if your foe is actually as terrible as one can imagine? World War I was a conflict custom-made for conscientious objection – it was a war whose provocation (Archduke Ferdinand’s bullet-riddled corpse aside) existed wholly on paper. World War II, however, was fought against one of the few groups that could be viewed as genuinely evil – the Nazis. Refusing to fight a German who fights merely to support his country is one thing. Refusing to fight a genocidal fascist is another.

And, yet, Woolf finds hope and humanity even during an air raid. Woolf remarks that a downed pilot may be courteous and that his English captors may offer him tea. This peace – almost comical, were it not so desperately hopeful – seems to explain the Woolfs’ pacifism. If enemies can share tea after an air raid, perhaps peace among nations is not so unlikely.

Heaven save us from great men.