On a spring day in London, Margaret Fry writes: "Years ago, after one of those discussions upon the methods of the arts which illuminated his long and happy friendship with you, Roger suggested, half seriously, that you should put into practice your theories of the biographer's craft in a portrait of himself." With these words, Virginia Woolf forewords the biography of her best friend from the Bloomsbury group. Roger Fry, art critic and post–impressionist painter, held a pivotal place in Virginia's life and literary career. His theories on aestheticism and art led Virginia to experiment with new writing techniques in an attempt to create a literary narrative which would be the pure reflection of reality. According to Roger, a purely realistic page could not contain any impure use of adjectives or metaphors, the usual writer's distortions. Fry guided Woolf in the crafting of some of her most painterly short stories,
Kew Gardens
, or
Monday or Tuesday
, and some of her most famous novels. Such an influential presence could not go unremembered. After Roger Fry's demise, Virginia Woolf wanted to honor his contribution to the world of art and literature by writing his biography, which she published in 1940.
Woolf's texts are often misunderstood or rejected by students. The reason I have been given many times is that Woolf's style of writing is difficult and seems to be a long collection of words with no particular meaning. This reaction has led me to research what or who guided Woolf to create such a distinctive writing style. My investigation has started with the Bloomsbury group, a group of writers and painters who regularly met at Virginia's home in London to discuss art in their respective fields. Among these friends, Roger Fry stands out as the most influential, with his innovative ideas that the arts of painting and writing were one. In his view, words should be used as painters treat paint, and this theory affected Virginia's writing style. For instance,
Kew Gardens
and
Monday or Tuesdays
seem the perfect reflections of Roger's vision. Each scene and every word are colors on a canvas. They reflect reality with the quiet contemplative pleasure Fry envisions for a viewer in front of a canvas. Fry's suggestions guided Virginia Woolf. Her written works lead the reader toward new emotional experiences. I want my students to discover this pleasure as I have found it.
My unit's goal is therefore to teach how to understand and appreciate Virginia Woolf's fictional and non–fictional works. One way to do this is to focus on the relationship between Woolf, the biographer, and Fry, her subject. In order to achieve these objectives, I will enlist my students' artistic talents to help them see relationships between written works and the visual arts. I want them to understand how writers and artists reach audiences, and how audiences, in turn, respond.
I will begin by having my students visit the art gallery in our school, and then the Yale Art Gallery or the British Art Center, to familiarize with how to interpret a visual image. The next step will be to introduce them to Impressionism and Post–Impressionism: through this, they will learn about style – how two artists can paint the same scene (or person) in very different ways. I want my students to describe what they see, and then explain how what they've seen makes them feel. From this, they will learn that no two viewers of a work of art will respond to it in just the same way.
This initial section of my curriculum unit will conclude with my students' own art project. They will choose a person who plays an important role in their life, take photographs first, and then paint or draw the same person. They can also choose to do a self–portrait. This assignment will help my students to experience how to create a life on a canvas. The skills they will learn in this segment of the unit can be transferred to the creation of life by using words instead of colors.
After this initial session on the reading and interpretation of visual texts, I will begin a session which focuses on the reading of Woolf's biography of Roger Fry. Since the unit addresses both the students who are in the Advanced Placement Literature class and the juniors who are in my College class, my approach to the biography will vary. The AP students will read extensive passages about Fry's childhood, his working experience in Europe and in America, his experiment with Omega (his studio in London), his vision of art, and his years of transformation as artist and art critic. Each chapter of this biography contains interesting insights about his artistic development. The same details clarify and explain Woolf's choices in her writing style.
The College students will read passages from the same biography, but my selection will have a different objective because I expect them to understand how to write a biography. These students will read mostly about Roger's childhood, and some other excerpts from the chapter on Transformation, so that they can see what events should be included in a biography –– these pages are also a good model to teach them critical thinking. Both groups will also read passages from Hermione Lee's biography of Virginia Woolf and from
Orlando
, Woolf's own spoof of biography, to compare the quality of her choices and those of her biographer.
A third session will include the reading of the short story,
Kew Gardens
. This part is reserved to the AP students and while we are doing this reading, we will compare Woolf's writing style to Fry's theories about art, and to some of the Post–Impressionism paintings. The College students will only compare the passages from
Orlando
to Fry's biography, and
Kew Gardens
to his vision of art and some visual texts. I also expect them to experience Fry's theories by completing a visual project. They can choose the topic or/and they can either paint it or take pictures. The same visual texts have to include a detailed written analysis.
Both groups will conclude the unit with two different assessments: the Advanced Placement students have to analyze the short story
Monday or Tuesday
, compare it to Fry's theories about art, and argue which of the two artists –Virginia Woolf or an Impressionist/Post–Impressionist painter (they can choose the artist they want) – have depicted realism more powerfully and accurately. The College students will conclude their experience by writing a personal essay which they can use for their college application.
