A cultural divide?

[damigella]

"here encountering the first knot in the smooth skein of her argument." (V. Woolf, Orlando: A Biography)
"the smooth skein of his imagination had encountered the first knot:" (my fic A Member Of The Wedding)

How come quotations from Gone With The Wind, The Muppet Show or The Little Mermaid (Disney, not Andersen) are immediately recognized while a sentence lifted almost verbatim from Virginia Woolf goes unnoticed? 
Maybe I should use precise quotations. Maybe it's a US/UK issue. Feedback appreciated.

Comments

[cuddyclothes.livejournal.com]

Because we're illiterate?

[selkie3.livejournal.com]

Well, I've never read Virginia Woolf other than what was required in high school :)! Though I have been meaning to read Orlando for ages... I don't think it is a US/UK issue, rather an issue of what literature is popular today.

[knitty-woman.livejournal.com]

I rarely recognize quotes unless they are insanely famous. And in any case, the author should allude to the original author in some fashion. "Orlando" isn't one of Woolf's more widely read works in the US - "Room of One's Own," "Mrs. Dalloway," and "To the Lighthouse" are more familiar, and to a much smaller audience. In fairness, Shakespeare is recognized (and oft misquoted) by many in the US.

[pgrabia.livejournal.com]

I've never read Virginia Woolf and I read Gone With the Wind when I was nine. But I have read classics lie Persuasion by Jane Austen, The Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad, Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut, To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, Who Has Seen The Wind? by W.O. Mitchell, The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood and Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury. Also, George Orwell's 1984 and Animal Farm. Anything Shakespeare I'd probably recognize. But no Woolf or Charlotte or Emilie Bronte. So is it cultural? I don't don't know. I've read Ukrainian literature (in Ukrainian) and other foreign literature (translated to English. I've never been good with foreign languages though I did take a little German in university).

Edited because I hit the return button by mistake:-o

[alternatealto.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately, in the general U.S. culture almost any quote from a television show or movie is more likely to be recognized than a quote from a book, unless the book is extremely famous or (as others have mentioned) is routinely assigned in schools.

Most people would recognize quotes like "Call me Ishmael", or "It is a fact universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife", because both Moby Dick and Pride and Prejudice are very often used as assigned reading at the high school level.

If Woolf, on the other hand, is assigned at all it is far more likely to be at the university level, and then only in courses taken by people focusing on British literature, or twentieth-century literature, or women writers, or some other course usually taken by students who plan to make English lit. a major part of their curriculum. People taking only the general literature requirements are less likely to encounter her writing, and thus less likely to recognize a quote from it.

And, of course, a lot depends on when you went to college and what your literature professors' favorite line of country was. I had a strong focus in English literature, but it was thirty years ago at a small and extremely conservative college -- with the result that we read almost entirely in the works of dead white men, except for Austen and Bronte (who were safely back in the far 19th century when women knew their place). Flannery O'Connor was the sole twentieth-century exception, and that was because she was a strong exponent of the school's approved religious thought (white conservative evangelical Christianity).

Hence, although I'm fairly well-read, I'm likely to miss even direct quotes from anybody writing later than about 1950, or who wasn't white or male. I suspect that I'm not the only one this has happened to, even without a strong religious component to the school.

[cuddyclothes.livejournal.com]

I agree with the others about quotes from tv shows or movies being more recognizable than literary quotes. (Shameful confession: when I saw Kenneth Branaugh's movie of "Hamlet", I thought, "Wow, who knew so many famous quotes came from this play"? Actually, we saw "Hamlet" early in the day and "Beavis And Butthead Take America" in the evening, so we could say we saw the highest and lowest culture in one day.)

I've read a lot of Virginia Woolf (for class) and never liked her. I have, however, read everything George Orwell wrote. Everything. Not kidding. Except his grocery lists. Also everything by F. Scott Fitzgerald.

[flywoman.livejournal.com]

I've read most of Woolf's works including Orlando, almost all for fun, but that doesn't mean that I would recognize a quotation like that one without context. Maybe if that book were a particular favorite that I had read several times, but maybe not.

I recognize quotes from movies or tv shows I've seen more easily because I replay dialogue in my head a lot (as you can probably sense from my fics).

[menolly-au.livejournal.com]

I must admit to having read only two 'classic' novels - Pride & Prejudice and Great Expectations (both at school) so I wouldn't know a quote from Woolf if I feel over it in a dark alley :)

I only recognised one of the Gone With the Wind quotes, and not the muppet show one and I wouldn't recognise a Little Mermaid one either if that helps :)

Generally I think in most countries around the world more people will recognise movie/tv quotes than book quotes because they tend to find their way into popular culture a lot.