In my altered book, I write two letters for Angela, the wife from "The Legacy" -- one to her husband and the other to her lover -- and I change the outcome of the tale giving it a feminist twist. It was in writing these two letters that I realized both were holding or trying to hold power over her. B.M. made his demands, and Gilbert made his -- that she stay childlike, stupid -- excuse me ignorant, and beautiful while on his arm. B.M. employed blackmail to try to force her into his demands. They ended up together in death.
For "Lappin and Lapinova" I found it sad that the one way she felt a connection to her husband, he killed. The honeymoon was over, and he grew tired of the childish game.
Mark Hussey claims that both of the stories of the married couples deal with the woman being subservient to the male-dominant society. Rosalind tried to compensate by living in a fantasy world where her husband did accompany her for a time, and Angela tried to escape by trying to find worth in charity.
"The Searchlight," I must say that I didn't get it; however, with these people living in an old castle, I was reminded of the book I Capture the Castle. If these stories are about ghosts, then this is the ghost of her great-grandfather. The ghost in "Lappin and Lapinova" is the marriage and the rabbit royalty. In "The Legacy" it would be the wife, B.M., and the child Angela never had (ghost of a chance of having a child?). Oliver is haunted by his ambition, his mother, and his poor childhood. Maybe the ghost is partiarchy. Well, not for Oliver...
Works Cited
Hussy, Mark. Virginia Woolf: A-Z. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995. Print.
Woolf, Virginia. “The Duchess and the Jeweler.” A Haunted House, and other short stories. eBooks@Adelaide. 26 July 2010. Web. 2 November 2010.
---. “Lappin and Lapinova.” A Haunted House, and other short stories. eBooks@Adelaide. 26 July 2010. Web. 2 November 2010.
---. “The Legacy.” A Haunted House, and other short stories. eBooks@Adelaide. 26 July 2010. Web. 2 November 2010.
---. “The Searchlight.” A Haunted House, and other short stories. eBooks@Adelaide. 26 July 2010. Web. 2 November 2010.