Written from 1939 to 1941, Between the Acts was the final novel produced by Virginia Woolf. The novel explores survival amidst loss. It was a personal and a social call, given the dreadful position the world was in. The story happens on a summer day in June 1939; Virginia carefully chooses a date before the official declaration of the Second World War. There are two parts to the story. The “Act” is a country pageant depicting English history from the past to the present (at the time of writing), which takes place in an old country house. “Between the Acts” is the speech acts and mind acts of the audience.
While the “Act” gives Virginia the platform to build the story, it is clear that Virginia’s focus was on “between the acts”. The speech acts and the mind acts of the audience disclose that life is also a pageant. That is the reality. Just like the scenes of the act expose from past to the present the social reality of human life, the speech and mind acts of the audience unveil our reality – love, hate, betrayal, loss, isolation, fear, and death. In short, both the “act” and “between the acts” unmask the nature of human suffering.
As is customary with Virginia, a lot must be read between the lines. She uses an abundance of metaphoric allusions. The War is a dominant undercurrent in the story.
“The doom of sudden death hanging over us”, he said. “There’s no retreating and advancing for us as for them.”
And that undercurrent is followed by the restlessness they all felt.
They were all caught and caged; prisoners; watching a spectacle. Nothing happened. The tick of the machine was maddening.
There is also anger and sorrow at the loss of humanity and peace. Virginia was well-known for her anti-imperialistic views, so the German invasion of the continent and a possible invasion of England was to her another type of the same coin, only more dictatorial, destructive, and inhuman. In Three Guineas, Virginia strongly criticized patriarchy and imperialism as the cause of wars, and she maintained the same in Between the Acts. Nothing good came out of them except misery and suffering.
And then the shower fell, sudden, profuse. No one had seen the cloud coming. There it was, black, swollen, on top of them. Down it poured like all the people in the world weeping. Tears, Tears. Tears. “O that our human pain could here have ending!” Isa murmured. Looking up, she received two great blots of rain full in her face. They trickled down her cheeks as if they were her own tears. But they were all people’s tears, weeping for all people.
Yet, even in the oppressive darkness, Virginia saw a beacon of light – a new England in a new civilization that would be rebuilt through collective human effort, strengthened by the shared knowledge of human misery and suffering.
The rain was sudden and universal. Then it stopped. From the grass rose a fresh earthy smell.
Between the Acts is another novel attempt at experimenting. It is so heartbreaking to think that she didn’t live to continue with them. We know that she committed suicide soon after the first draft was finished. The increasing isolation and despondency brought a revival of mental health struggles that she had been fighting all her life. Reading the novel made me so sad and melancholic, and I couldn’t help wishing that if only Virginia had held onto the very hope she advocated in the novel.
Rating: 4/5
