Letters

As we have briefly touched upon in class, letters are important to the novel. It starts out with Betty Flanders writing a letter to Barfoot. And letters have been scattered here and there (the letter of marriage proposal to Betty, the letter from Betty to Jacob when he's with Florinda), but they are directly addressed in the beginning of chapter eleven: "the post, with all its variety of messages, envelopes, addressed in bold hands, in slanting hands...the post was about to scatter a myriad messages over the world. Whether we gain or not by this habit of profuse communication it is not for us to say..." (97)

Letters don't have to be read immediately, and immediate thoughts are captured and held until the reader's leisure, as we saw with the Jacob and Florinda incident, and also with the marriage proposal. Letters can be many-paged and tear-stained and still not capture the full emotion of the writer, as we saw with Betty in the beginning. People send and recieve so many letters that they do not carry as much importance or priority as their contents sometimes require. Is this what Woolf is saying? Letters are also so one-dimensional. They do not allow for an experience such as the one Woolf provides for us in her book. With letters, there is limited information that can be taken in. Is this a criticism of letters? I hardly want to believe it. 1201144464