Landscape becomes the site of physical and metaphorical change in Woolf’s “Growing”. The change also suggest a disjuncture between the metropole and the colony- not merely physically but psychologically as well.
It starts with the “warm welcome” of the harsh tropics for the “innocent, unconscious imperialist” like himself: "the Colombo sun, which in the late morning hits one as if a burning hand were smacking one's face, the whole of my past life in London and Cambridge seemed suddenly to have vanished, to have faded away into unreality".
The new reality for him is this, the tropics. The climatic change becomes the first indicator of change- of the reality of his situation.
"The strange sense of complete break with the past, the physical sense or awareness of the final forgetting of the Thames, Tilbury, London, Cambridge, St. Paul's, and Brighton, which came upon me". The old memories and places have paved the way for these new sites of memory. The places and buildings become the second indicator of this new reality.
And finally, the fear of colonial administrators back in the metropole: "But I lived in it for many years... and it got into my heart and my bones… I lived inside it to some extent... so that something of its rhythm and tempo, like that of the lagoons and the jungle, crept permanently into my heart and my bones".
This is perhaps a final metamorphosis for the individual living in the colonies, perhaps? As indicated in the highlighted words- there’s a disjuncture from the past, a conjoining with the new. But of course, this does not necessarily mean that he no longer is an “English gentleman”. If so, the suggestion would be that memories and places maketh the [English] man.
It starts with the “warm welcome” of the harsh tropics for the “innocent, unconscious imperialist” like himself: "the Colombo sun, which in the late morning hits one as if a burning hand were smacking one's face, the whole of my past life in London and Cambridge seemed suddenly to have vanished, to have faded away into unreality".
The new reality for him is this, the tropics. The climatic change becomes the first indicator of change- of the reality of his situation.
"The strange sense of complete break with the past, the physical sense or awareness of the final forgetting of the Thames, Tilbury, London, Cambridge, St. Paul's, and Brighton, which came upon me". The old memories and places have paved the way for these new sites of memory. The places and buildings become the second indicator of this new reality.
And finally, the fear of colonial administrators back in the metropole: "But I lived in it for many years... and it got into my heart and my bones… I lived inside it to some extent... so that something of its rhythm and tempo, like that of the lagoons and the jungle, crept permanently into my heart and my bones".
This is perhaps a final metamorphosis for the individual living in the colonies, perhaps? As indicated in the highlighted words- there’s a disjuncture from the past, a conjoining with the new. But of course, this does not necessarily mean that he no longer is an “English gentleman”. If so, the suggestion would be that memories and places maketh the [English] man.
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Good, Nadia... but a little descriptive. To what purpose is this landscaping?
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