Jacob’s Room & Time
I feel the heavy weight of time throughout Virginia Wolf’s Jacob’s Room. From the onset, day-to-day events are couched in terms of imminent decay and terrible night. For example, on the first page Betty Flanders writes about a “ little yacht … bending like a wax candle in the sun.” The image is a simile between a dying candle and a yacht which folds into itself and sinks. But then, “she winked again. The mast was straight” (1). Just like Betty’s blink, the notion of decay flickers in and then out of our consciousness, and we continue reading on.
The first chapter ends watching a crab try to escape from the “steep side[s of a bucket]; trying again and falling back, and trying again and again” (10). I think this fixation with infinite processes and decay a portent, a sign-post from our narrator that declares “watch out for time.”
In fact, the narrator has a certain disregard for time as a linear process. In a matter of a few statements, we leap from watching Jacob and the boys as children to watching him as a “fine young man” (19). To emphasize passing so many years in so few sentences, the narrator uses wording like “he recognized [Jacob] after three seconds” (19) to describe the way in which Mr. Floyd recognized the man after the passing of many years. Years and seconds—another signpost, obviously pointing to time.
As a hypothesis, I propose that natural time does not apply to Jacob Flanders. Jacob is a man unfettered by the linear flow of time. Somehow, I believe it’s a key part of the book that we watch him transcend the popular conception of time. As described in his luncheon with friends, “he mistake[s] the time” (34). We shall see if Jacob continues to disregard a force that most men consider normative.
This entry was posted on Monday, March 7th, 2005 at 11:49 am and is tagged with infinite processes, weight of time, linear flow, steep side, natural time, room time, wax candle, flickers, portent, wolfs, signpost, heavy weight, narrator, flanders, fixation, disregard, simile, decay, luncheon, mast. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback.