Having finished William Morris's The Wood Beyond The World, I am quite curious as to why he refrained from giving names to all, save one, of his characters. In the first chapters of the novel that describe Golden Walter's unhappy life, even his wife that is the driving force that sends Walter into a quest for happiness and an easier wife is left nameless. This trend continues in the proceeding pages of The Wood Beyond The World when the persons of the mysterious trio that first connect Walter to the secondary world and play a vital part in the narrative is only ever referred to as the lady, the dwarf, and the maid. This inclination is especially curious to me in the case of the maid. If she is supposed to essentially be Walter's one true love why is she not given a name? (Honestly, he meets this beautiful girl in the middle of the woods and doesn't ask her name? Then again, he never asks for the stately lady's name and he has sex with her, but I digress.)
The only possible answers that I have been able to think of is that Morris is using the lack of names along with the archaic language to distance us from the text and disorient us if only a little bit more. Perhaps, Morris is only attempting to emphasize Walter's importance in the story or, on the other hand, maybe Morris simply didn't feel like naming them. Does anyone else have any ideas?
No comments:
Post a Comment