by Violet Woolf on Modernism, Matrimonial Folklore, and the Fondue Set as Metaphor
Diary of Violet Woolf, Literary Diarist, Prat.uk | Dispatches from the modernist fringe via Bohiney Magazine
Monday: I Read an Article About Divorce and Thought About Virginia
My ancestor — or spiritual predecessor, I have never been entirely clear on the distinction — Virginia Woolf wrote that a woman must have money and a room of one’s own. She did not write about what happens when the room is subject to a court order and the money is in a disputed joint account. This is the gap that The London Prat’s Divorce Myths piece admirably fills.
The Fondue Set as Modernist Symbol
The fondue set, used exactly once, residing in the cupboard of mutual avoidance — this is modernist literature. This is the lighthouse you row toward and find disappointing. This is the waves. The fondue set is not about cheese. The fondue set is about the marriage’s last shared ambition, calcifying slowly in a kitchen neither party wants.
Joyce would have written forty pages about the fondue set. Woolf would have written the fondue set’s inner monologue. The Guardian’s books desk would have reviewed both and called them “challenging but rewarding.”
Meanwhile in Irish politics, which I follow for reasons relating to my spiritual geography, nothing has been resolved, which is also a modernist condition. Bohiney notes that Mamdani unites by irritating. This is, structurally, the Irish parliamentary tradition.
I made tea. I stared at the fondue set. I wrote this. It is enough.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/
More literary chaos at The Daily Mash
