A ‘Structured’ Text

Abstract

In 1947 R. L. Chambers wrote that Virginia Woolf was not interested in what people do, only in what happened in their minds (Chambers, 1947, pp. 2–3). He cited business and India as things people do, not considering that these might also be experienced in the mind. The idea that Woolf’s novels relate only to immaterial matters coincided with the idea of the followers of the New Criticism that all literary texts should be studied in terms of their internal structures and with no apparent reference to the material world. This resulted in a great many symbolic and allegorical interpretations, some of which are still being produced. Unfortunately this kind of criticism, although fun to write, is boring to read. It shuts out its readers’ own experience of the text, imposing the critic’s finished interpretation. Its suggestions often seem arbitrary.