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B.A English Literature
[2nd Year, 3rd Semester]
British Literature
UNIT - 4 : Short Story
4.2. “A Haunted House” by Virginia Woolf
☝ Click the above link to get Tamil explanation for the Short story “A Haunted House” by Virginia Woolf
About
Author:
Virginia Woolf, (Adeline Virginia
Stephen) born on January 25, 1882, London, England and died on March 28, 1941.
She was a prolific writer of novels, short stories, essays, diaries, letters
and biographies.
Woolf was a significant figure in London
literary society and a central figure in the influential Bloomsbury Group of
intellectuals. Her most famous works include the novels Mrs Dalloway (1925), To
the Lighthouse (1927) and Orlando (1928), and the book-length essay A Room of
One's Own (1929), with its famous dictum, "A woman must have money and a
room of her own if she is to write fiction."
Virginia Woolf is known for using stream
of consciousness in her writing. Stream of consciousness is a narrative mode or
method that attempts "to depict the multitudinous thoughts and feelings
which pass through the mind" of a narrator.
About
Story:
“A Haunted House” was first published in
1921 as a part of Virginia Woolf’s short story collection Monday or Tuesday.
The collection, which contained eight short stories. Later It was appeared as
the lead story of another collection of stories, A Haunted House and Other
Short Stories (1944).
Text:
Whatever
hour you woke there was a door shutting. From room to room they went, hand in
hand, lifting here, opening there, making sure—a ghostly couple.
“Here
we left it,” she said. And he added, “Oh, but here too!” “It’s upstairs,” she
murmured. “And in the garden,” he whispered “Quietly,” they said, “or we shall
wake them.”
But it
wasn’t that you woke us. Oh, no. “They’re looking for it; they’re drawing the
curtain,” one might say, and so read on a page or two.
“Now
they’ve found it,” one would be certain, stopping the pencil on the margin. And
then, tired of reading, one might rise and see for oneself, the house all
empty, the doors standing open, only the wood pigeons bubbling with content and
the hum of the threshing machine sounding from the farm.
“What
did I come in here for? What did I want to find?” My hands were empty. “Perhaps
it’s upstairs then?” The apples were in the loft. And so down again, the garden
still as ever, only the book had slipped into the grass.
But
they had found it in the drawing room. Not that one could ever see them. The
window panes reflected apples, reflected roses; all the leaves were green in
the glass. If they moved in the drawing room, the apple only turned its yellow
side.
Yet,
the moment after, if the door was opened, spread about the floor, hung upon the
walls, pendant from the ceiling—what? My hands were empty. The shadow of a
thrush crossed the carpet; from the deepest wells of silence the wood pigeon
drew its bubble of sound.
“Safe,
safe, safe,” the pulse of the house beat softly. “The treasure buried; the
room…” the pulse stopped short. Oh, was that the buried treasure?
A
moment later the light had faded. Out in the garden then? But the trees spun
darkness for a wandering beam of sun. So fine, so rare, coolly sunk beneath the
surface the beam I sought always burnt behind the glass.
Death
was the glass; death was between us; coming to the woman first, hundreds of
years ago, leaving the house, sealing all the windows; the rooms were darkened.
He left it, left her, went North, went East, saw the stars turned in the
Southern sky; sought the house, found it dropped beneath the Downs. “Safe,
safe, safe,” the pulse of the house beat gladly. “The Treasure yours.”
The
wind roars up the avenue. Trees stoop and bend this way and that. Moonbeams
splash and spill wildly in the rain. But the beam of the lamp falls straight from
the window.
The
candle burns stiff and still. Wandering through the house, opening the windows,
whispering not to wake us, the ghostly couple seek their joy.
“Here
we slept,” she says. And he adds, “Kisses without number.” “Waking in the
morning—” “Silver between the trees —” “Upstairs—” “In the garden—” “When
summer came—” “In winter snowtime—” The doors go shutting far in the distance,
gently knocking like the pulse of a heart.
Nearer
they come; cease at the doorway. The wind falls, the rain slides silver down
the glass. Our eyes darken; we hear no steps beside us; we see no lady spread
her ghostly cloak. His hands shield the lantern. “Look,” he breathes. “Sound
asleep. Love upon their lips.”
Stooping,
holding their silver lamp above us, long they look and deeply. Long they pause.
The wind drives straightly; the flame stoops slightly. Wild beams of moonlight
cross both floor and wall, and, meeting, stain the faces bent; the faces
pondering; the faces that search the sleepers and seek their hidden joy.
“Safe,
safe, safe,” the heart of the house beats proudly. “Long years—” he sighs.
“Again you found me.” “Here,” she murmurs, “sleeping; in the garden reading;
laughing, rolling apples in the loft. Here we left our treasure—”
Stooping,
their light lifts the lids upon my eyes. “Safe! safe! safe!” the pulse of the
house beats wildly. Waking, I cry “Oh, is this your buried treasure? The light
in the heart.”
Summary:
A
"ghostly couple" is moving through the halls of a house, opening and
closing doors and sifting through the house’s contents, clearly looking for
something. They roam the house, opening and closing doors and drawing curtains
back. They whisper to one another quietly as they search, careful not to “wake
them.” The living man and woman have no knowledge of a treasure, such as gold
or money, hidden on their property.
When
they were alive, the ghosts had occupied the house more than a century before
the current residents. The woman died first, and her husband left the house to
travel the world soon after that. Eventually, he returned to their old home,
which had "dropped beneath the Downs." The Downs are a range of chalk
mountains along the southeastern coast of England.
After
the man died, he rejoined the woman ghost at the house they once occupied, the
same house where the living man and woman now dwell. As the ghosts search for
their treasure. Although they try not to disturb the living couple, the latter
can hear them now and then.
They
tell each other, “Here we left it,” “Oh, but here too!” and decide that thing
they’re looking for must be upstairs—or maybe in the garden.
The
narrator says that “one might” overhear the ghosts but continue to read quietly
as the ghosts carry on their search. When one becomes convinced that the ghosts
have finally “found it,” he or she might set the book down and get up to look
for the ghosts. However, that person would find the house completely empty,
doors all flung open, with the only sounds coming from the birds chirping
outside.
The
narrator asks himself or herself, "What did I come in here for?" and
notes that his or her hands are empty. Going upstairs to look for “it,” the
narrator just finds apples in the loft and heads back to the garden, which is
“still as ever.” Meanwhile, the ghosts have "found it" in the drawing
room, but they are invisible to the narrator. When the narrator enters the
drawing room, trying to catch a glimpse of the ghosts, all the narrator sees is
that an apple has shifted. Meanwhile, “the pulse of the house beat[s] softly,”
saying, “Safe, safe, safe.” Someone or something says “The treasure buried; the
room…” but trails off, and the pulse of the house stops abruptly. The narrator
wonders if “that is the buried treasure.”
A storm
rages in the dark outside, but the inside of the house is bright and still. The
ghosts continue to move through the house, “seeking their joy.” The ghosts
reminisce about their own life in the house as they approach the bedroom of the
narrator and the narrator’s partner, who are sleeping.
The
ghosts stand over the bed, peering down at the sleeping couple for a long while.
The female ghost says, "Here, sleeping; in the garden reading; laughing,
rolling apples in the loft. Here we left our treasure." The narrator,
wakes up due to the light from the ghosts’ lamp and exclaims, "Oh, is this
your buried treasure? The light in the heart."
After
an encounter with the ghost couple in their bedroom, the living couple realize
what the ghosts are seeking. The narration reveals that it is the rediscovery
of the places in and around the house where the ghosts spent little moments expressing
their love for each other.
That
the love and joy shared between the couple is the treasure of life.
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