“…the mind of an artist, in order to achieve the prodigious effort of freeing whole and entire the work that is in him, must be incandescent…There must be no obstacle in it, no foreign matter unconsumed”
Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own
“One ever feels his two-ness,-an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder”
W.E.B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk
A Narrative from and of the Mind: Du Bois and Woolf Tackle Discrimination and Oppression
Writing during times of political, social, and cultural change, Virginia Woolf and W.E.B. Du Bois confront the discriminatory issues plaguing their ethnicity and gender. Implementing fictional literary techniques, both authors portray the difficulties with which African Americans and women, respectively speaking, deal with on a daily basis. In The Souls of Black Folk, Du Bois immerses himself in the southern African American population during post Reconstruction America in an attempt to understand the cultural and social differences that exist between the north and south. In her novel, A Room of One's Own, Virginia Woolf confronts the patriarchal dominance of the early twentieth century in order to explain the reason for a lack of strong female voice in literature prior to the eighteenth century, all the while asserting the necessity of personal space and money for women in order to produce works of literary genius. Both Du Bois and Woolf employ a perspective that rests outside of the norm in an effort to better understand the social discrepancies of their time; however, Du Bois deeply submerges himself in a culture unknown, adopting attitudes and habits foreign to his own, whereas Woolf becomes deeply involved with her gender in order to better understand the history responsible for and leading up to the status of women in the early twentieth century.
Du Bois writes with the voice of an educated man from the North, eager to familiarize himself with the social inner-workings of the Deep South. He immediately confronts the foremost issue that plagues African Americans in the mid to late nineteenth and into the early twentieth century: “The Negro is a sort of seventh son, born with a veil, and gifted with second-sight in this American world,-a world which yields him no true self-consciousness, but only lets him see himself through the revelation of the other world” (Du Bois 2). Du Bois carries the concept of “the veil” throughout the rest of the narrative, often referring to it as a main reason for the lack of progress within the African American community. More importantly, perhaps, he asserts that all African Americans undergo a battle on a daily basis-this dualistic battle of conflicting mentalities-which he claims should not and cannot have a specific winning side. According to Patterns in Western Civilization, The Souls of Black Folk maintains the goal of “the reconciliation of these apparently conflicting drives, one toward full equality in a modern republic, and the other toward preservation of a glorious African-American culture” (246). In order to express the absolute importance of preserving one's ethnic background and identity, Du Bois documents firsthand accounts with African Americans in the South who experience more exposure to their primary heritage using a narrative voice and style not only rich in fact and research, but also tinged with the eloquence of prose: “…[The Souls of Black Folk]addresses questions of culture and sociology through an artistic, almost poetic writing style commonly used more in literature than in social science” (Patterns in Western Civilization 245).
Virginia Woolf too identifies a specific problem women face in gaining recognition in the literary world. She argues, “…a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction; and that, as you will see, leaves the great problem of the true nature of woman and the true nature of fiction unsolved” (Woolf 4). Like the struggle of an African American individual to accept competing aspects within him, a woman's struggle to acquire proper accommodations and funding in order to reach great literary status are necessary opposing forces which must be overcome. Many times throughout the narrative, Woolf again addresses this central most problem of a lack of privacy and monetary allowance, each time urging the reader to make more of an effort in obtaining these materials.
Woolf's narrative style mimics the free association method of therapy devised by Sigmund Freud. She switches back and forth between her consciousness and the reality of the present moment and in doing so creates a work of fiction accompanied by visually-based fact. Throughout her narrative, she constantly reminds the reader of her presence, at times utilizing dashes and parenthetical interjections to indicate a breach in the narrative to which she contributes her own thoughts and insight into the minimal plotline of the story. According to Patterns, “She is categorized as one of the early "stream of consciousness" writers. There is little emphasis on plot or action, and the story proceeds via the inner narrative of the character so that the reader has, more or less, a window on the soul” (290). This method of writing provides the reader greater access to Woolf's thoughts and inquiries on a personal individual level. In A Room of One's Own, she exemplifies the stream of consciousness process in passages such as this: “-here I listened with all my ears not entirely to what was being said, but to the murmur or current behind it. Yes, that was it-the change was there. Before the war at a luncheon party like this people would have said precisely the same things but they would have sounded different, because in those days they were not accompanied by a sort of humming noise” (12). This excerpt concerning the difference in society's overall attitude prior to and after WWI reflects Woolf's ability to truly observe her surroundings, and in doing so draw conclusions otherwise unnoticed based simply off of careful detailed analysis.
