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Virginia Woolf - Mrs Dalloway (Mrs Clarissa Dalloway (Characteristics: …
Virginia Woolf - Mrs Dalloway
Virginia Woolf
Thematic obsessions
Tunelling
Mystery of personhood
Subjectivity in time
What it means to be a person & relate to other people
The way we change over decades, and must reconcile ourselves to those changes
Woolf digs out caves behind her characters
Tells the past by installments
The caves meet at daylight in the present moment
Feminism
Confound gender expectations
Sexual oppression
Modernism
Realism
Stream of consciousness
Interior monologue
Free indirect discourse = Narration in 3rd person, but access given to 1st person consciousness
Gives access into multiple consciousnesses
Detailed experiences
Nuances of character
Contradictoriness of what it means to be a human being
Flying between past and present
Shows complexity of characters
Depicts their hidden fears, worries, obsessions, hope
Sexual oppression
Clarissa & Richard don't sleep in the same bed
Septimus married Rezia because he was afraid that he could not feel - did he have feelings toward Evans?
Desires oppressed by society's constraints
People's ability to cope with change
Septimus Warren Smith
Introduction:
"The world has raised its whip; where will it descend?"
Note/ tone of introduction associated with pain, punishment
Paranoia
Fear
Persecution
Indication of the dark side of Nationalism
In the name of his country, he has lost his sanity due to being sent to war
Has been broken by the very institution that the prime minister represents
Clarissa's double, opposite
Response to sky-writing aeroplane
Vacillates between
Part of his reaction to the war
Criticism of the Empire / Colonial project / endeavour of war
Promoted in the war
Suffers from shell-shock (PTSD)
= He has endured the insanity of war
Before the war he dreamed of being a poet
Was besotted with Miss Isabel Pole
Read a lot of Shakespeare in his youth
His sacrifices come back to haunt him after the war
Terrified that he cannot feel
= Perception of masculinity
Suppresses what is supposedly perceived as 'feminine'
Could not mourn the death of his friend, Evans
Crippling paranoia
Terrified that he has been singled out for punishment
Terrified that he cannot feel or love
Messianic fervour
Thinks of himself as a saviour
Believes he's anointed / special
Imagines that everything is gearing up to give him something meaningful / elevated
Thinks they are signalling to HIM
Extends his self to things around him (the birds, trees)
Makes of his environment something geared toward him
Believes he's imbued with supernatural powers
Thinks he's been singled out for a message
Discovers that all of it taken together meant the birth of a new religion
We ought not to dismiss him too readily as he has endured the insanity of war. His outrage may be the only reasonable response. Sanity in his insanity
Critique of war
Disturbed young war veteran
Characteristics:
Anti-humanist
Anti-nationalist
Has hallucinations and delusions of grandeur
Mrs Clarissa Dalloway
Characteristics:
Privileged, snobbish
Critical yet sympathetic
Fears her intensity diminishing
Good judge of character
Loves the bustling metropolis
"The perfect hostess"
Criticism by Peter
Implies that she will not amount to more than a hostess / she will host other important people but she will not be of importance herself
Why she feels ashamed of the superficiality of her parties
Fears that her life has been superficial and passionless
Constantly aware of mortality & loss
Her parties are her gift / art / form of creation
Juxtaposed with Septimus
Septimus
Throws his life away
Sanity in his insanity
Clarissa
Loves life
Positive affirmations
Insanity in her supposedly sane world (acceptance of privilege, war, colonial exploitation)
Moment of being
Ecstatic instance
Paradox: moment so meaningful that the passage of time is arrested and the character transcends time
Forster: "eternal moment" (paradox: a moment is time bound)
Joyce: "epiphany"
"She would not say of any one in the world now that they were this or were that"
She is critical, but yet reserves her criticism
She doesn't label people as successes or failures
Duality
"She felt very young; at the same time unspeakably aged."
"She sliced like a knife through everything; at the same time was outside, looking on"
Novel addresses the ambiguity of character, the ways in which we contradict ourselves
The prominent use of "Mrs." indicates that her character is socially defined by her marital status.
She has just turned 52. The novel takes place on a single day during which Mrs. Dalloway gives a large formal party.
Nationalism
Reverence for power, authority, institution
Brushed by greatness
Seductive power of authority
Renewed sense of national identity after the war
Spirit of empire & colony
Woolf: "I want to criticise the social system, I want to show it at work, at its most intense"
"Destrucive egotism of patriarchal values"
"Fear no more the heat o’ the sun
Nor the furious winter’s rages"
Counterpoints the Othello quote:
“if it were now to die ’twere now to be most happy.”
Indication: Cessation of intensity
All passion dying
Signifies her fear of passion/ intensity diminishing
Gets lost in reverie
Shakespeare quote (from a funeral song)
Suggest Clarissa's sympathetic link to Septimus
Modernism
A reaction to modernity in the early 20th century
E.M. Forster, James Joyce
Modern character or quality of thought, expression, or technique
Modernity
Technology
Sky-writing aeroplane
Novelty
Contemporary condition
Sir William Bradshaw
Woolf explicitly links "empire" & "war" & "colony"
Behaviours & their damaging effects
Inability of the Bradshaws & Dr Holmes to understand what is going on with Septimus or to make the relevant socio-political connections to the war = Probably because they don't want to accept critique of their society
Rest cure
Removal from life, no stimulation
Exiled in a darkened room (solitary confinement)
Big Ben
Time's relentless march
Minutes closer to our death
Reminds us of our own mortality
Marks the hours of the day
Free ourselves temporarily from time's relentless march through creative endeavours
Sally Seton
Flaunts gender expectations
Doesn't behave in the way a 'respectable woman' from the upper class ought to behave
Wild, daring, romantic , bold
Married a bald manufacturer from Manchester
Peter Walsh
Clarissa & Peter's identities are tied up together
They feel the need to explain themselves to each other
They both feel the regret of what could have been
He is critical of her luxury but also acknowledges the generative act of her parties
Pocket-knife is a symbol for his fragile masculinity - he is more scarred by Clarissa's rejection than he wishes to admit.
He is a representative of the colonial endeavour
Also afraid of getting older
Fears that he has not achieved all the things he set out to achieve
Dreams of himself as a conqueror / a romantic person
Fantasises about sexual adventures, follows women in the streets
Tries to recapture his youth - he's in denial about the fact that he is getting older
Wishes to marry a woman, Daisy, that is young enough to be his daughter
Doris Kilman
Intellectual person
Embittered religious fanatic