Miracle of the Ordinary

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The Miracle of the Ordinary: Literary Epiphany in Virginia Woolf and Clarice LispectorAuthor(s): Terry L. PallsSource: Luso-Brazilian Review, Vol. 21, No. 1 (Summer, 1984), pp. 63-78Published by: University of Wisconsin PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3513078

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T h e M ir a c l e o f t h e Ordinary:Literary Epiphany in VirginiaW o o l f a n d C la r i c e LispectorTerry L. Palls

An artist's style is determined by the manner in which he orshe uses the technical devices of the medium. In most cases thesedevices are not original or new; however, the uses to which theyare put can be, and when they are, it is this originality which isunique and which gives the artist a peculiar stylistic identitywhich sets that total creative effort apart from any other andwhich, at the same time, endows it with a sense of unity withinitself.The contemporary Brazilian prose fiction writer, ClariceLispector (1925-1977), and the English authoress, Virginia Woolf(1882-1941), although separated by time, space, and language, arejoined by their choice of medium--the novel and the short story--and their overriding preoccupation with the "essence of being,"which both women attempt to elucidate through the use of a commonliterary device--the epiphany. Yet, although similar enough towarrant comparison, their stylistic identity remains distinctlyindividual. It is this difference which provides the basis forthis comparative study which raises once again the question: howcan an artist who shares the medium, preoccupation, and technicaldevices of another attain artistic originality and achieve adistinct stylistic identity? Perhaps this question will remainunanswered, but possibly, an analysis of the nature of epiphany inone work by each of these writers will help to clarify the basicissues involved in the question.The idea of epiphany is nothing new, yet its use in literarycriticism to describe an increasingly frequent device in modernliterature is.1 Since literature reflects the changing concernsof society and the individual, it would be enlightening to examinethe reasons for the increasing importance of this device in modernfiction.

Epiphany in the Western world has its origins in the Christiantradition: Paul's experience on the road to Damascus, the proph-ets' visions of God, the Spanish mystics' encounters with God, thenumerous conversion experiences in history. All of these moments

Luso-Brazilian Review XXI, 1 0024-7413/84/0063 $1.50? 1984 by the Board of Regents of theUniversity of Wisconsin System.


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Luso-Brazilizan Review 21:1of illumination or revelation stem from a mystical experience andhave much in common with literary epiphany. Both are individual,brief, sudden, intense moments which produce a new awareness whichmay be painful or exhilarating. However, whereas the formerrevelations are religious in nature, involve a denial of the selfand are thus impersonal, the latter are worldly in origin andintensely personal since they produce a distinct awareness of theself, usually vis-a-vis life and the surrounding world.Perhaps this shift of focus from the object revealed to theindividual reflected man's loss of faith in the ability of God orreligion to provide answers to the meaning of life and contributedto the secularization of the divinely inspired moment, and perhapsthe subsequent loss of faith in reason and logic provided byscience, which was substituted for religion as a source of knowl-edge, further personalized the moment of revelation to the pointthat in the twentieth century it is believed that knowledge oflife arises from within the individual as he is confronted withthe experience of living. Life itself then takes on more impor-tance, and since life is a composite of experiences which oftenhave significance only for the individual and which may appeartrivial to others, trivialities acquire importance and the subjec-tive, personal response to them becomes the potential source forinstantaneous awareness of the "essence of being." The stressthen falls on intuition and emotion rather than on reason ordivine revelation as a source of knowledge.The philosophical preoccupation of modern man with the natureof reality and the meaning of experience as reflected in litera-ture is certainly linked to the above-mentioned factors; however,there is also another explanation, more technical than philosophi-cal, which also accounts for the increased use of epiphany bymodern writers; that is the invasion of prose fiction by thecharacteristics, concerns, and standards of poetry. CharlesMauron explains these poetic concerns succinctly in his essay TheNature of Beauty in Art and Fiction.

The simplest entities that literary art admits are states ofmind, or perhaps one ought to say moments of the spirit. Theyare what we are at a given moment; the landscape that wecontemplate, the sentiment which agitates us, the wonderfulrhythm of a respiration, the movement of a palm tree. Theexternal reality blends with the interior, or rather there isonly one reality. Those divisions, useful enough for the lifeof action, into external objects, sensation, and sentiment, areabolished. It is the central principle of all lyric poetry.2It is when the philosophical concerns of the existentialistwriters are combined with the focus and the techniques of thepoets that a new type of prose fiction emerges; one in which thecomplex nature of human existence is subtly explored throughtechniques which focus on the internalization of external realityand its subsequent externalization in the form of an entirely newreality, a distillation of both, in an attempt to reflect the"nature of being." Hence the other reason for the increasing

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display of interest on the part of writers in apparently insignif-icant objects and trivial events--not in the way that the psycho-logical realist authors did in the nineteenth century, since theirconcerns are different--and hence the increased appearance of theepiphany as a central literary technique in modern fiction.James Joyce first uses the term "epiphany" to refer to aspecific type of prose genre in which he worked. He defines theterm in Stephen Hero:By an epiphany he [Stephen] meant a sudden spiritual manifesta-tion, whether in the vulgarity of speech or of gesture or in amemorable phase of the mind itself. He believed that it wasfor the man of letters to record these epiphanies with extremecare, seeing that they themselves are the most delicate andevanescent of moments.

From 1900-1904 Joyce wrote over seventy epiphanies, forty of whichhave survived. Robert Scholes points out that many of thesereappear in Joyce's writings in very modified form. He alsostates that Joyce never used the term to refer to a literarystructural device.4 More recently, Morris Beja, in his excellentstudy, Epiphany in the Modern Novel, uses the term to refer to aspecific literary technique which he defines as follows:. . a sudden spiritual manifestation, whether from someobject, scene, event, or memorable phase of the mind--themanifestation being out of proportion to the significance orstrictly logical relevance of whatever produces it.5

Beja has retained the essence of Joyce's definition but he hasextended it to describe a literary phenomenon which appears in theworks of many modern writers. This definition serves as the basisfor the discussion of epiphany in this article.Epiphany as a literary technique has many positive functions:as a structural device it may mark climaxes, it may introduce aflashback to provide necessary background information, or it mayserve to integrate seemingly unconnected threads of a narrativeinstantaneously. However, as Beja very accurately points out, ithas its limitations also. "Some of its tendencies--toward choppi-ness, toward interruption of the flow of the narrative, as well astoward an occasional overemphasis on things that in the end seeminsignificant no matter how we approach them--must be carefullycontrolled."6 Both writers under consideration in this studycontrol this technique very well: Virginia Woolf in her novel, Tothe Lighthouse (1927), and Clarice Lispector in her collection ofshort stories, Family Ties (1960).7Initially it might seem inappropriate to discuss the element ofcontrol when comparing short stories to a novel; however, theseworks were chosen as examples of the accomplished use of epiphanybecause they both focus on familial relationships as a prototypeof society and the position of the individual within it, andbecause although Lispector's thirteen short stories constitute

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In the first story of Family Ties, "The Daydreams of a DrunkWoman," the Portuguese wife of a successful Brazilian businessmangoes out to dinner with her husband and one of his importantassociates. During the course of the evening she eats and drinkstoo much, the associate makes a pass at her, she sees a beautifulyoung woman wearing a hat (she herself has not worn one), and anannoying fly alights on her ample bosom. All of these occurrenceselicit a variety of emotional responses in her. The next morning,as she recalls the previous evening's events, she suddenly becomesmomentarily deaf.It was at this moment that she became deaf: one of her

senses was missing. She clapped the palm of her hand over herear, which only made things worse . . . suddenly filling hereardrum with the whirr of an elevator . . . life suddenlybecoming loud and magnified in its smallest movements. One oftwo things: either she was deaf or hearing all too well. Shereacted against this new suggestion with a sensation of spiteand annoyance, with a sigh of resigned satiety. "Drop dead,"she said gently . . . defeated (FT, p. 35).This sudden awareness of life and its possibilities, brought on bythe intrusion of a common sound from the outside world--the whirrof an elevator--is annoying. She prefers to remain "protected bythe position she had attained in life" (FT, p. 33) as the wife ofa successful businessman. Nevertheless, even as she rejects anyother type of existence, she is clearly aware that she has prosti-tuted herself by the choice. The last lines of the story veryaptly indicate this: ". . . her vulgarity exploded in a suddenoutburst of affection: 'you slut', she cried out, laughing" (FT,p. 36). It is much more comfortable and secure to remain withinthe limits of the world she has created as an illusion of realitythan to risk the disconcertingly unknown possibilities inherent inthe reality of life which she cannot control.Similarly in the next story, "Love," Anna, a housewife andmother, goes happily about her daily activities, content in theknowledge that she is needed and that this is the life she haschosen. "She seemed to have discovered that everything wascapable of being perfected, that each thing could be given aharmonious appearance; life itself could be created by Man" (FT,p. 38). However, while riding the tram home from her marketing,she suddenly sees a blind man standing on the corner complacentlychewing gum. As she stares at him she becomes so agitated by thesight that she drops the eggs she is carrying and they break. Sheassociates the man's blindness and the simple joy he derives fromchewing gum with her own "blindness" which has permitted her toassume, naively, that her well ordered, uncomplicated existence is"living." After this moment when external reality in the form ofthe blind man, someone outside her family, intrudes upon herinternal world, she becomes aware that her life, although con-sidered by her to be perfect and self-contained, is just as

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Luso-Brazilian Review 21:1fragile as the eggs which broke when she dropped them. Annasuddenly realizes that the tram has long ago passed her stop andshe gets off at the next corner, wanders aimlessly down the streetand into a botanical garden. As she sits on one of the benchesher senses are assailed by the sight, sound, and smell of the lifearound her.

Agitated she looked around her. The branches swayed, theirshadows wavering on the ground. A sparrow foraged in the soil.And suddenly, in terror, she imagined that she had fallen intoan ambush. In the garden there was a secret activity inprogress which she was beginning to penetrate . . .As well as being imaginary, this was a world to be devouredwith one's teeth, a world of voluminous dahlias and tulips.The trunks were pervaded by leafy parasites, their embrace softand clinging. Like the resistance that precedes surrender, itwas fascinating; the woman felt disgusted, and it was fascinat-ing (FT, p. 43).Suddenly remembering her children, Anna gathers up her purchasesand hurriedly returns home. There she slowly allows herself toget caught up again in the details of her ordered existence and asthe story ends, "Before getting into bed, as if she were snuffinga candle, she blew out that day's tiny flame" (FT, p. 48). Shehas chosen her own comfortable, artificial existence over thedangers, uncertainties, and challenges of "living."In "The Chicken," a hen destined for Sunday's dinner flies outof the house up onto the roof and is finally caught and broughtback. In her excitement and fear she lays an egg and the familyerroneously assumes that this act is an expression of her affec-tion for them instead of a completely natural one for a chicken.They spare her life and treat her as a member of the family . . ."Until one day they killed her and ate her, and the years rolledon" (FT, p. 52). Until that day the chicken often recalls theexhilarating sense of freedom she experienced when she flew to thetop of the house, much as man cherishes the occasional momentswhen he transcends the mundane reality of his existence. Those"moments of vision" constitute the essence of 'living" and "being"and not the playing out of roles we adopt or which are assigned tous by society. The chicken's flight serves as a metaphor forthose occasional fleeting moments of the awareness of the "essenceof life.""The Imitation of the Rose" describes a rejection of thechallenges of life and living similar to that which appears in"Love" but with more serious results. Laura, a childless house-wife who is painstakingly trying to recuperate from a nervousbreakdown caused by a confrontation between her desire for perfec-tion and her inability to achieve this, contemplates the extremebeauty of a vase of roses which she has bought at the market. Asshe delights in their beauty and perfection, she recalls herexperience in school with Kempis' Imitation of Christ: ". .with the zeal of a donkey she had read the book without under-

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standing it, but may God forgive her, she had felt that anyone whoimitated Christ would be lost--lost in the light, but dangerouslylost. Christ was the worst temptation" (FT, p. 55). So too theroses constitute a temptation because they remind her of her ownimperfections and she resolves to send them to a friend at whosehome she and her husband will be dining that evening. Even as shemakes this decision she experiences a sense of loss because shehas rejected the possibility of beauty in life which the rosesrepresent. She retreats into herself and when her husband comeshome from work he finds her sitting there, ". . . once more alertand tranquil [without the disturbing beauty of the roses] as if ona train. A train that had already departed" (FT, p. 72). Thereno longer exists the suspense and the anticipation of the "trip."The station is empty, the train is gone, and with it the moment ofbeauty."Happy Birthday" focuses on an old woman's 89th birthday party.As her children and grandchildren arrive, the old lady sitssilently at the head of the table. After everyone has eaten andthe cake has been cut and devoured, she looks around at all of herprogeny "with senile scorn. They looked like a nest of jostlingrats, and this was her family" (FT, p. 80). At this moment shesees in them the bitter fruits of her lost youth and she becomesaware of the pasasge of time and of the inevitability of death.To affirm her existence, but also to protest this mortalityinherent in the human condition, she spits on the floor. This actis her comment on the yearly celebration of the day of her birthwhich, as she observes her family, becomes a painful reaffirmationof her death. Her knowledge is the ultimate knowledge of life."Death was her mystery" (FT, p. 87)."The Smallest Woman in the World" deals with society's reac-tions to an anthropologist's discovery of a tribe of pygmies inAfrica. As several families in his native country examine thenewspapers' picture of this tiny pregnant woman, they each en-vision her as a member of their family without ever consideringher as an individual. As the tiny pygmy woman stands in front ofthe anthropologist she suddenly smiles.

It was a smile that only someone who does not speak can smile.A smile that the uncomfortable explorer did not succeed inclassifying. And she went on enjoying her own gentle smile,she who was not being devoured [by the Bantus who netted thepygmies for food]. Not to be devoured is the most perfectsentiment. Not to be devoured is the secret objective of awhole existence (FT, p. 94).To be an individual in the midst of conformity is to be as uniqueas the smallest woman in the world and to experience a personalmoment of knowledge, the knowledge of what it means to be alive.Yet in all of her uniqueness, she is the same as other women, sheis about to have a child, about to endow another with life.Therein lies one of the paradoxes of the "essence of being."In "The Dinner," a man dining alone in a restaurant looks upand sees another man come into the room. "His appearance

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Luso-Brazilian Review 21:1suggested a man in his sixties, tall, corpulent, with grey hair,bushy eyebrows, and powerful hands. On one finger the ringsymbolizing his power. He sat down, broad and solid" (FT, p. 96).As the old gentleman proceeds through the various courses of hisdinner, the observer becomes increasingly aware of the minutemuscular contractions, facial contortions, and gestures whichaccompany the act of eating. He subsequently experiences compas-sion, disgust, and nausea as he contemplates this most basicanimal act of survival. After the gentleman leaves, the observersays:

But I am still a man.When I have been betrayed and slaughtered, when someone hasgone away forever, or I have lost the best of my possessions,or when I have learned that I am about to die--I do not eat. Ihave not yet attained this power, this edifice, this ruin. Ipush away my plate, I reject the meat and its blood (FT, p.101).The rejection of the flesh--meat and blood--and the affirmation ofthe spirit, brought about by the observance of the apparentlytrivial act of eating, produces in the observer an awareness ofwhat sets man apart from animals--the "essence of being.""Preciousness" is the story of a young girl's transition frompuberty to adulthood, her incorporation into the world, and herensuing loss of anonymity with the acquisition of an identity as awoman. As on many other mornings, a young girl leaves her homeand goes to take the bus to school, hoping that no one will lookat her so that she can remain secure in her lack of identity.However, this morning on her way to the bus, she meets two youthson the street and as they pass her, four hands touch her. Theboys flee in fear and she is left momentarily paralyzed. Fromthis moment on she is different. She returns home and thatevening at dinner demands a new pair of shoes.

"I need some new shoes! Mine make a lot of noise, a womancan't walk on wooden heels, it attracts too much attention!". . . There is an obscure law which decrees that the egg beprotected until the chicken is born, a bird of fire. And shegot her new shoes (FT, p. 113).

Even though her new shoes will not make noise, will not drawattention to her, she has experienced the danger of living and shecan no longer remain anonymous; she is no longer a child in theeyes of others. She has been removed from the protective nest andincorporated into life and living."Family Ties" explores the mysterious relationship which existsbetween mother and child. Catherine is married and the mother ofa small boy. Her mother has come to visit them and while the twoof them are in the taxi which will take her mother to the train toreturn home, there is a sudden stop and Catherine and her motherare thrown into physical contact. Suddenly, at this moment of

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physical intimacy which she had long forgotten, Catherine recalls"the days when she belonged to a father and a mother" (FT, p.116). From this moment of awareness things are different. Sherealizes that what she thought was lost is still there. On herway back home after her mother leaves on the train, she looks atthings differently: ". . . everything around her was so tenderand alive, the dirty street, the old tram cars, orange peel on thepavements--. . ." (FT, p. 119). She becomes aware of the privi-lege and power of motherhood and upon returning home she takes herson for a walk as her husband watches from the window.Preoccupied, he watched his wife leading the child away and hefeared that at this moment, when they were both beyond hisreach, she might transmit to their son . . . but what?"Catherine", he thought, "Catherine, this child is stillinnocent!" At what moment was it that a mother, clasping herchild, gave him this prison of life that would descend foreverupon the future man (FT, p. 122).

The mysterious relationship between mother and child is bothjoyous and terrifying because it binds them together foreverwithout choice, just as all men are linked together, for better orfor worse, by the inexorability of their human condition."The Beginnings of a Fortune," like "Preciousness," deals withan adolescent's discovery of the nature of life. Arthur issitting in the dining room with his parents one morning.The veranda was open but the cool air had congealed outsideand nothing entered from the garden, as if any influx mightdisturb the harmony. Only some brightly colored flies hadpenetrated into the dining room and hovered over the sugar bowl(FT, p. 125).

Flies appear in several of these stories and seem to represent thepersistent and undesirable intrusion of the external world into anenclosed and seemingly secure area (the fly hovering around thecake in "Happy Brithday," the fly which settles on the bosom ofthe lady in "The Daydreams of a Drunk Woman," the repeated refer-ences to insects in "Love"). In this case the flies are like thepersistent requests that Arthur makes of his parents for money.He has become aware that the possession of things is a sign ofidentity, of adulthood, and in his mind money represents the linkbetween childhood and manhood. In the course of his normal day atschool with his friends, he discloses his ambivalent feelingsabout money: he wants to have it but he resents spending it.". . .well it looks as if the moment somebody has any money,everyone comes on the scene ready to help you spend it, and toshow you how to get rid of it" (FT, p. 129). This resentmenttoward spending money surfaces again after he has taken a girl tothe movies with money he borrows from his friend. He begins tofeel that the girl has exploited him and in his thoughts he callsher an "ungrateful wretch." Arthur decides that what he likes

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Luso-Brazilian Review 21:1about money is having it because it gives him a sense of being,but he doesn't like giving it up because that means sharing partof himself. He feels somewhat frustrated, however, since he knowsthat in order to get things he must spend money. He has becomeaware of the paradoxical nature of the human condition: life isboth a sense of individuality and communication with others.Identity can only be achieved through interaction with others.Others are also an important factor in "Mystery in SaoCristovao," in which the fall of men into knowledge takes placeand the mystery of life is revealed. A family has laboriouslyconstructed its own paradise: a peaceful, harmonious, ordered,and secure world. Lispector paints this world with quick, deftbrushstrokes and even foreshadows its destruction.

On an autumn evening, with tall, erect hyacinths beside thewindowpane, the dining room of a house was lit up and peaceful.Around the table, motionless for a moment, the father,mother, grandmother, three children, and a slender nineteen-year-old girl. The cool perfumed night air of Sao Cristovaowas in no sense dangerous, but the way in which the members ofthe household were grouped inside the house precluded every-thing except an intimate family circle on such a cool Mayevening.There was nothing special about the gathering: they hadjust had dinner and they sat talking round the table, whilemosquitoes circled the light. What made the scene so particu-larly complete and the expression of everyone there so relaxed,was the fact that after many years one could almost feel, atlong last, the progress of this family (FT, pp. 133-134).Once again the inclusion of insects in this verbal still-lifepainting portends the annoying intrusion of the outside world intothis carefully constructed interior harmony.After dinner the family goes to bed and when they have allfallen asleep three boys dressed in bizarre costumes (a rooster, abull, and a knight with a demon's face), all suggesting malenessand virility, approach the house on their way to a party. Theydecide to enter the garden to pluck three hyacinths to wear. Asthe "rooster" reaches for the most perfect flower they detect amovement at one of the windows and look up. Paralyzed by fear,the three masqueraders and the girl at the window confront eachother in silence.

Paralyzed, the masqueraders stood peering at each other.The simple encounter of four masks on that autumn eveningseemed to have touched deep recesses, then others, and stillothers which, had it not been for the moment in the garden,would have remained forever with this perfume which is in theair and in the immanence of those four natures which fate haddesignated, assigning the hour and place--the same precise fateof a falling star. These four, having come from reality, hadbecome subject to the possibilities an autumn evening possesses

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in Sao Cristovao. Each humid plant, each pebble, the hoarsetoads--all of them exploiting the silent chaos in order to arrangethemselves in a better spot--everything in that darkness silentlyapproached. Having fallen into the ambush, they looked at eachother in fear: the nature of things had been surpassed and thefour figures spied each other with open wings. The rooster, thebull, the demon, and the girl's face had unraveled the marvels ofthe garden (FT, p. 136).At this moment the three boys jump over the garden wall and thegirl retreats screaming from the window. As her family surroundsher in the lighted hall,Her face grew small and bright--the whole laborious structureof her years had dissolved and she was a child once more. Butin her rejuvenated image, to the horror of the family, a whitestrand had appeared among the hairs on her forehead (FT, p.137).

Paradise has been destroyed, the garden has been violated, and thehyacinth hangs from its broken stalk. Harmony is a fragileillusion created by man in a futile attempt to insulate himselfagainst the reality of life.In "The Crime of the Mathematics Professor," a man abandons hisdog when he moves to another city and then feels so guilty aboutit that he attempts to bury his crime by burying a dead dog hefinds on the street. As he stands alone on the hillside overlook-ing the town beside the dog's grave, he realizes that one thingwhich separates man from animals is his freedom to act; nonethe-less, in accepting this freedom, man must also assume responsi-bility for these acts. He is condemned to be free. As the storyends, the mathematics professor unburies the strange dog, thuscoming face to face with himself and achieving authenticity byaccepting his crime, the crime of being a man.In the last story, "The Buffalo," a woman, scorned by herlover, goes to the zoo to learn to hate so she will not die oflove. But instead of the carnage and savagery she expected tofind there among the animals, she finds union and communion.Finally, when she is about to despair, she sees a solitary buf-falo. She stares into its eyes and, "terrified by the hatred withwhich the buffalo, tranquil with hatred, watched her" (FT, p.156), she falls to the ground, but not before she sees "the entiresky and a buffalo" (FT, p. 156). The sudden awareness that hatredis a solitary and isolating emotion, learned only from others inthe experience of living, is a discovery of yet another aspect ofthe human condition and the complex nature of life and living.The single most significant and unifying element of thesestories is the epiphany. There is one in each story and inkeeping with Beja's definition, they are intense, brief moments ofawareness triggered by very ordinary events or objects which areout of proportion or logically irrelevant to the significance ofthe spiritual awareness they produce. These same comments are

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Luso-Brazilian Review 21:1also applicable to Virginia Woolf's novel, To the Lighthouse;however, although both Lispector and Woolf use epiphanies as ameans to produce an awareness of the relationship of experience toliving and to explore the "essence of being," there are somefundamental differences in the way in which each of them achievesthis.Jxternal reality is an important element in epiphany because itis what triggers the "moment of vision." Woolf establishes asense of disorder, confusion, or complexity and then progressestoward order and harmony through the use of inconsequential ortrivial objects or events which cause numerous epiphanies.

But what have I done with my life? thought Mrs. Ramsay,taking her place at the head of the table, and looking at allthe plates making white circles on it. "William, sit by me,"she said. "Lily," she said wearily, "over there." They hadthat--Paul Rayley and Minta Doyle--[their budding romance] she,only this--an infinitely long table and plates and knives. Atthe far end, was her husband, sitting down, all in a heap,frowning. What at? She did not know. She did not mind. Shecould not understand how she had ever felt any emotion oraffection for him. She had a sense of being past everything,through everything, out of everything, as she helped the soup,as if there was an eddy--there--and one could be in it, or onecould be out of it, and she was out of it. It's all come to anend, she thought, while they came in one after another, CharlesTansley--"Sit there, please," she said--Augustus Carmichael--and sat down. And meanwhile she waited, passively, for someone to answer her, for something to happen. But this is not athing, she thought, ladling out soup, that one says (TL, pp.125-126).Often in this novel, the musings of the characters are in directcontrast to the triviality of their actions. Mrs. Ramsay pondersthe meaning of her life while she seats people in a specific orderat her table and ladles out soup. The orderly configuration ofthe plates on the table triggers this question about the disorderin her life.Another example of this ordering process occurs when Mrs.Ramsay leaves the room and her company after dinner. She stopsfor a moment after she leaves to ask herself:

Is it good, is it bad, is it right or wrong? Where are we allgoing to? and so on. So she righted herself after the shock ofthe event, and quite unconsciously and incongruously, used thebranches of the elm trees outside to help her stabilise herposition. Her world was changing: they were still. The eventhad given her a sense of movement. All must be in order. Shemust get that right and that right, she thought, insensiblyapproving of the dignity of the trees; stillness, and now againof the superb upward rise . . . of the elm branches as the windraised them (TL, p. 169).

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There are innumerable moments like this which take place in theminds of nine of the characters, including Mrs. Ramsay's, all ofwhich contribute to and culminate in the most important epiphanywhich occurs at the end of the novel when Lily Briscoe has her"vision" and finishes her painting. Lily's artistic progress withher picture throughout the work is the symbol of Woolf's creativeprocess in the novel from disorder to harmony. Lily starts herpainting at the beginning of the book and finishes it ten yearslater as the novel ends.With a sudden intensity, as if she saw it clear for a second,she drew a line there, in the centre. It was done; it wasfinished. Yes, she thought, laying down her brush in extremefatigue, I have had my vision (TL, p. 310).

It is significant that Lily's "vision" and her completion of thepainting coincide with the last words of the novel. The paintingis the result of Lily's (and the others') cumulative experiencesof Mrs. Ramsay and she is finally able to capture her essence whenshe returns to the house after Mrs. Ramsay's death, at which pointthese experiences are harmoniously ordered into a final andcomplete awareness of the essence of her being, just as Woolf'snovel is a literary depiction of the figure of Mrs. Ramsay com-posed of cumulative epiphanies which finally come together for thereader by the end of the book. The nine peoples' experiences ofMrs. Ramsay are woven into the fabric of the work and out of theseeming confusion and complexity comes a single, harmoniousentity. The reader then experiences an epiphany, a "moment ofvision" which parallels Lily's and which ultimately produces a newawareness of the nature of life--a tapestry made up of multiplethreads inextricably and complexly woven together to form a whole.Simultaneously the entire novel is Woolf's comment on the natureof art and the creative process.In contrast to Woolf's progression from disorder to order, fromconfusion to harmony, and to the positive role of external realityin this process, Lispector establishes a sense of harmony andorder in her stories which external reality intrudes upon anddisrupts, much as a water bug disturbs the surface tension of thewater. In other words, she progresses from a state of harmony toconfusion, from simplicity to complexity and the means of trans-portation from one state to the other is a moment of awareness, anepiphany, produced by the individual's contact with externalreality. Oftentimes harmony is restored for the characters butthe reader is aware of the altered nature of this harmony throughthe epiphany he personally has experienced.

The fundamental difference then becomes that, whereas inWoolf's novel the reader experiences one epiphany which coincideswith Lily's "vision," in Lispector's work, although he alsoarrives at one single awareness about the complexity of life aftercompleting the stories, it is the result of an accumulation ofthirteen "moments of awareness" he has experienced.It is interesting to note that neither Woolf nor Lispector

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Luso-Brazilian Review 21:1appears interested in the creation of an individual so much as indetailing the way in which that person experiences life andliving. The characters in Lispector's stories are all identifiedwith definite roles: mother, son, daughter, wife, but in effectthey are not identifiable as individuals. Mrs. Ramsay, althoughthe central figure in Woolf's novel, is memorable not so muchbecause of her individual personality traits but because of whatthe other characters and the reader experience as a result of herexistence.An analysis of the relationship of these figures to the "momentof being" or epiphany and the ways in which both writers set upthese moments stylistically provides an interesting insight intothe different use they make of this literary device. The peoplein both works are drawn toward the moment of awareness throughtheir senses; but, whereas this occurs almost imperceptibly inWoolf and the reader is often prepared for this event by questionssuch as "But what have I done with my life?" (TL, p. 125), "Howcould the Lord have made this world?" (TL, p. 98), "Who could helpher?" (TL, p. 264), "Where are we all going to?" (TL, p. 169), themoment surtaces much more suddenly and intensely in Lispector'sstories and the characters seldom ask themselves questions or museabout the significance of life. Instead, the moment stands byitself as a metaphor for the shocking inner awareness which isexperienced. Thus, the jostling of two bodies against each otherbecomes important in and of itself, as does seeing a blind manchewing gum, watching a man eat, plucking a hyacinth, staring intothe eyes of a buffalo, and hearing wooden heals echoing hollowlyon the pavement. Lispector's use of metaphor makes her epiphaniesmuch more intensely experienced by character and reader alikewhile Woolf's preference for similes and explanations makes hersmore cerebral. The higher degree of intensity present in Lispec-tor's epiphanies could be due to the fact that the novel is alonger art form requiring more development than a short story, butit could also be that Lispector's concept of the "moment ofvision" is that it is more disruptive, more jarring, more shock-ing. Epiphanies in Woolf are more tranquil, more clarifying, moreintegrative.The characters in FamiZy Ties respond negatively to stimuliwhereas those in To the Lighthouse respond positively. Perhapsthe reason for these differences lies in the singular focus eachof these writers displays in these works. Lispector's weltan-schauung is clearly existential.ll For her the world is hostileto man, and the solitude, anguish, and terror he experiences whenhe is confronted with life and recognizes the essential Nothing-ness are what Lispector wishes to convey through her epiphanies.Woolf, on the other hand, appears to be less concerned withexpressing her view of life and more interested in illustratinghow man arrives at an awareness of the "essence of being" and themeaning of life--the relationship between love, death, and conti-nuity. The process then is more important in Woolf's work thanthe discovery itself, which, in contrast, appears to be Lispec-tor's prime objective in FamiZy Ties.

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The use of epiphany by both writers as the central and mostimportant literary device in these works minimizes their separa-tion by time, space, and language. However, each author achievesa unique stylistic identity, thus making the question of influenceimmaterial in this case. The stylistic similarities both worksexhibit arise from the characteristics inherent in the deviceitself--the repetition of adverbs like "suddenly," "at thatmoment"; the communication of characters' thoughts and feelings insubordinate clauses after "feared," "knew," "ignored"; the exten-sive use of indirect interior monologue or narrated monologue;temporal pauses for reflection; the use of seemingly trivialevents, scenes, or statements to produce a moment of transcenden-tal awareness; the predominance of verbs in the past and pastperfect tenses; and short sentences or sentence fragments whichproduce a choppy style. Nevertheless, each woman impresses herown individual literary personality on her work by the focus sheimparts to it and the use to which she puts epiphanies in order toconvey her particular weltanschauung. Therefore, although anygiven artistic device or technique carries with it inherentcharacteristics and may not be new or unique, the use to which aparticular artist puts it may be, and this is what endows a workwith originality and what contributes significantly to the uniquestylistic identity of that artist.

NOTESISee Morris Beja, Epiphany in the Modern Novel (Seattle:University of Washington Press, 1971); Irene Hendry Chayes,"Joyce's Epiphanies," Sewanee Review, Vol. 54 (Summer, 1946):449-467; Robert Scholes, "Joyce and the Epiphany: The Key to theLabyrinth," Sewanee Review, Vol. 72 (Winter, 1964):65-77; FlorenceL. Walzl, "The Liturgy of the Epiphany Season and the Epiphaniesof Joyce," Publications of the Modern Language Association, Vol.80 (September, 1965):436-450; Robert Scholes and Florence L.Walzl, "The Epiphanies of Joyce," Publications of the ModernLanguage Association, Vol. 82 (March, 1967):152-154.2Quoted in Morris Beja, Epiphany . . ., p. 126.3James Joyce, Stephen Hero (New York: New Directions, 1955),p. 211.4Robert Scholes, "Joyce and the Epiphany: The Key to the

Labyrinth," Sewanee Review, Vol. 72 (Winter, 1964):65-77.Morris Beja, Epiphany . . ., p. 18.6Ibid., p. 22.7For this study I have used the following editions of theseworks: Clarice Lispector, Family Ties, trans. by Giovanni Pon-tieri (Austin & London: University of Texas Press, 1972); Vir-ginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse (New York: Harcourt, Brace &World, Inc., 1955). Reference to material quoted from these textswill be indicated in parentheses by FT and TL respectively.8Since there have been more studies done on Virginia Woolf'snovel than on Clarice Lispector's collection of short stories, I

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Luso-Brazilian Review 21:1have chosen to focus on the stories in Family Ties and compare theuse of epiphany in them to Woolf's use of the same technique inher novel instead of concentrating equally on both works.For those interested in information on Virginia Woolf's novel-istic technique in To the Lighthouse, consult: Morris Beja,Epiphany . . ., "Virginia Woolf: Matches Struck in the Dark," pp.112-148; David Daiches, Virginia Woolf (New York: New Directions,1963); Herbert E. Francis, "Virginia Woolf and the Moment," TheEmory University Quarterly, Vol. 16 (1960):139-151; Jean Guiguet,Virginia Woolf and Her Works, trans. Jean Stewart (New York &London: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1976); A. C. Hoffmann, "Sub-ject and Object and the Nature of Reality: The Dialectic of Tothe Lighthouse," Texas Studies in Literature and Language, Vol.XIII, No. 4 (Winter, 1972):691-703; Charles C. Hoffman, "Woolf'sTo the Lighthouse," The Explicator (Virginia), Item 13 (November,1951); Mitchell A. Leaska, Virginia Woolf's Lighthouse: A Studyin Critical Method (New York: Columbia University Press, 1970);James Naremore, The World Without A Self: Virginia Woolf and theNovel (New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 1973); HarvenaRichter, Virginia Woolf: The Inward Voyage (Princeton UniversityPress, 1970); Virginia Woolf, Moments of Vision (New York &London: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1976).9For a more complete discussion of the development of the shortstory in Brazil, see the following two articles by Alexandrino E.Severino: "The Brazilian Short Story: Reflections of a ChangingSociety," in Brazil in the Sixties, ed., Riordan Roett (Nashville,Tennessee: Vanderbilt University Press, 1972), pp. 375-396;"Major Trends in the Development of the Brazilian Short Story,"Studies in Short Fiction, Vol. VIII, No. 1 (Winter, 1971):199-208.10For information on Lispector's life and literary work, seeOlga de Sa's excellent book: A Escritura de Clarice Lispector(Petropolis, Brazil: Editora Vozes Ltda., 1979).1lMore detailed information on Lispector's ties to existen-tialism can be found in: Giovanni Poi.tieri, "The Drama of Exis-tence in Lagos de Familia," Studies in Short Fiction, Vol. VIII,No. 1 (Winter, 1971):256-267; and Massaud Moises, "Clarice Lispec-tor: Fiction and Cosmic Vision," Studies in Short Fiction, Vol.VIII, No. 1 (Winter, 1971):268-281.

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Miracle of the Ordinary

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