Between The Acts--Rewriting History

Virginia Woolf's last work Between the Acts, officially published in 1941, is unanimously regarded as a work both informative and inspiring. Between the Acts, telling a story which took place in a 500 year old village in the central part of England one day in June,1939, serves as a vivid panorama of countryside in England. The writer provides two threads of narration, the first following the story of the country squire Bartholomew Oliver's family, and another describes the story of Miss La Trobe directing villagers to perform pageant. Woolf draws together past and present, history and reality, art and life, society and nature, somebody and nobody, stage performance and real life by skillfully employing this method. My thesis will focus on the pageant—the play in play combined with the life story of characters in the novel in order to reveal Woolf's untraditional historical view.The whole thesis is divided into six parts:the first part presents an overview of the research situation of Between the Acts at home and abroad and research purpose and significance. Chapter One narrates the feminization of history. If we say that the history of women is only the iceberg exposing on the sea level while compared with the vast sea of historical records and literary texts, the real history of women is far more rich, which is the unmeasured darkness beneath sea level. Chapter Two narrates the carnivalization of history. History is not only serious and hierarchical, but also is filling with laughter and parody and without boundary. History is not only for heroes and emperors, but also for the common people. History not only belongs to higher ranks but also to those coming from the low. Chapter Three narrates the naturalization of history. Traditionally, history concerns only human beings, and nature is there for man to conquer. However, the fact is that nature exerts an indispensable part in history and the function is active not passive. Chapter Four tells the presentation of history. The past is what has happened and what has been experienced; the future is what will happen and what will be predictable; and the present is what is happening. The history of the past can be told, while the history of the present is notoriously hard to describe. Thus the literature always tells the story of the past and future; writers seldom enter into the area of the present and the realm of presentation of history. However, not only the present should be recorded as the history viewed tomorrow, but also the present as history deserves to write. The last part is the conclusion of the whole thesis.Through the analysis of the text, we find that Between the Acts is a kind of rewriting history. Woolf tries to change the central position and authority of the "History" (in which males, heroes, emperors and army, and the society of human beings occupy the whole of it, and history is the past) and attempts to promote the importance of "histories" (in which history is feminization, carnivalization, naturalization and presentation) in the whole course of history. All these points reveal Woolf's untraditional historical view.