In the Orchard

Introduction

“In the Orchard” is a short story written by Virginia Woolf and published in the Criterion in April 1923. Though it is not Woolf’s most well-known work, “In the Orchard” is an excellent representation of the evolution of some modernist writing practices in Woolf’s work. Aside from Woolf, the Criterion published high-brow pieces from authors such as T.S. Eliot (who also served as editor for the periodical) and George Saintsbury. Therefore, “In the Orchard” represents the Criterion’s tendency to publish high-brow pieces, and, in addition, it also illustrates the way the periodical promoted the edgier and newer modernist styles of writing, a goal Eliot had when he started the periodical. Banerjee notes, “[Eliot] also believed that it was through the journalistic channel that he could promote the kind of revolutionary poetry that he and friends like Ezra Pound, James Joyce, and Wyndham Lewis were writing” (234). Woolf was attempting the same type of “revolutionary” (234) writing as Eliot and his contemporaries in her short stories, and, thus, the Criterion was a good option for publishing her work. In the Criterion, Woolf could practice experimental ways to tell short stories using methods such as free indirect discourse and epiphany in the writing she published there. This experimentation, typical of modernism, can certainly be seen in “In the Orchard.”

“In the Orchard” serves as an excellent example of Woolf’s writing style because it includes experimental practices from modernism, such as a focus on interiority, the use of free indirect discourse, and the significance of a possible epiphany. The story is divided into three sections, with each section focusing on the same scene of Miranda in an orchard, and it illustrates the influence of external forces on internal thoughts. Woolf conducts a similar examination of the impact of exterior objects on the inner workings of the mind in “The Mark on the Wall” when she examines the ways in which, as Gordon notes, “a mark on the wall sends the writer's thoughts racing on different tracks, on the history of the house and its occupants or the question of death and after” (Gordon). However, “In the Orchard” specifically examines the ways in which Miranda’s external surroundings prompt her towards the realization that she should defy societal expectations, especially the unfair expectations of women.

Aside from experimenting with modernist practices such as the epiphany and a focus on interiority, “In the Orchard” also challenges the societal issue of inequality between men and women. Woolf’s commentary on the tempestuous time for women in which Woolf lived—a time “In the Orchard” describes as women still being “churched” (244) after childbirth because they were considered unclean. Woolf shows the impact of these external forces upon Miranda’s own internal thoughts. Ultimately, this progression towards a possible epiphany is significant because it shows previous patterns from Woolf’s writing, such as the use of external surroundings to prompt internal trains of thought—what Gordon describes as “follow[ing] [a] mental track” (Gordon)—to following the relationship between exterior settings and interiority in a progression towards a specific epiphany, a demand for greater equality for women.

Transcription

MIRANDA slept in the orchard, lying in a long chair beneath the apple-tree. Her book had fallen into the grass, and her finger still seemed to point at the sentence "Ce pays est vraiment un des coins du monde où le rire des filles éclate le mieux . . ."^[1]“This country is really one of the corners of the world where girls’ laughter breaks out best…” Probably a reference to a novel by Pierre Loti. Loti, Pierre. “Chapter 14.” Ramuntcho, Paris: Calmann Lévy, 1905, page 134. Hathi Trust Digital Library. as if she had fallen asleep just there. The opals on her finger flushed green, flushed rosy, and again flushed orange as the sun, oozing through the apple-trees, filled them. Then, when the breeze blew, her purple dress rippled like a flower attached to a stalk; the grasses nodded; and the white butterfly came blowing this way and that just above her face.

Four feet in the air over her head the apples hung. Suddenly there was a shrill clamour as if they were gongs of cracked brass beaten violently, irregularly, and brutally. It was only the school children saying the multiplication table in unison, stopped by the teacher, scolded, and beginning to say the multiplication table over again. But this clamour passed four feet above Miranda's head, went through the apple boughs, and, striking against the cowman's little boy who was picking blackberries in the hedge when he should have been at school, made him tear his thumb on the thorns.

Next there was a solitary cry—sad, human, brutal. Old Parsley was, indeed, blind drunk.

Then the very topmost leaves of the apple-tree, flat like little fish against the blue, thirty feet above the earth, chimed with a pensive and lugubrious note. It was the organ in the church playing one of Hymns Ancient and Modern. The sound floated out and was cut into atoms by a flock of field fares flying at an enormous speed—somewhere or other. Miranda lay asleep thirty feet beneath.

Then above the apple-tree and the pear-tree two hundred feet above Miranda lying asleep in the orchard bells thudded, intermittent, sullen, didactic, for six poor women of the parish were being churched^[2]The practice in multiple religions of giving women blessings after childbirth, usually following a separation from society. and the Rector was returning thanks to heaven.

And above that with a sharp squeak the golden feather of the church tower turned from south to east. The wind had changed. Above everything else it droned, above the woods, the meadows, the hills, miles above Miranda lying in the orchard asleep. It swept on, eyeless, brainless, meeting nothing that could stand against it, until, wheeling the other way, it turned south again. Miles below, in a space as big as the eye of a needle, Miranda stood upright and cried aloud: “Oh, I shall be late for tea!”

 

Miranda slept in the orchard—or perhaps she was not asleep, for her lips moved very slightly as if they were saying, “Ce pays est vraiment un des coins du monde ... où le rire des filles ... éclate ... éclate . . . éclate . . .” and then she smiled and let her body sink all its weight on to the enormous earth which rises, she thought, to carry me on its back as if I were a leaf, or a queen (here the children said the multiplication table), or, Miranda went on, I might be lying on the top of a cliff with the gulls screaming above me. The higher they fly, she continued, as the teacher scolded the children and rapped Jimmy over the knuckles till they bled, the deeper they look into the sea—into the sea, she repeated, and her fingers relaxed and her lips closed gently as if she were floating on the sea, and then, when the shout of the drunken man sounded overhead, she drew breath with an extraordinary ecstasy, for she thought that she heard life itself crying out from a rough tongue in a scarlet mouth, from the wind, from the bells, from the curved green leaves of the cabbages.

Naturally she was being married when the organ played the tune from Hymns Ancient and Modern^[3]A collection of hymns used by the Church of England., and, when the bells rang after the six poor women had been churched, the sullen intermittent thud made her think that the very earth shook with the hoofs of the horse that was galloping towards her (“Ah, I have only to wait!” she sighed), and it seemed to her that everything had already begun moving, crying, riding, flying round her, across her, towards her in a pattern.

Mary is chopping the wood, she thought; Pearman is herding the cows; the carts are coming up from the meadows; the rider—and she traced out the lines that the men, the carts, the birds, and the rider made over the countryside until they all seemed driven out, round, and across by the beat of her own heart.

Miles up in the air the wind changed; the golden feather of the church tower squeaked; and Miranda jumped up and cried: “Oh, I shall be late for tea!”

 

Miranda slept in the orchard, or was she asleep or was she not asleep? Her purple dress stretched between the two apple-trees. There were twenty-four apple-trees in the orchard, some slanting slightly, others growing straight with a rush up the trunk which spread wide into branches and formed into round red or yellow drops. Each apple-tree had sufficient space. The sky exactly fitted the leaves. When the breeze blew, the line of the boughs against the wall slanted slightly and then returned. A wagtail flew diagonally from one corner to another. Cautiously hopping, a thrush advanced towards a fallen apple; from the other wall a sparrow fluttered just above the grass. The uprush of the trees was tied down by these movements; the whole was compacted by the orchard walls. For miles beneath the earth was clamped together; rippled on the surface with wavering air; and across the corner of the orchard the blue-green was slit by a purple streak. The wind changing, one bunch of apples was tossed so high that it blotted out two cows in the meadow (“Oh, I shall be late for tea!” cried Miranda), and the apples hung straight across the wall again.