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Virginia Woolf, Class, Key: Yellow Box: Connection between the same…

- - - - “Woolf's own methods as a social critic, then, studiously avoid propaganda or direct statement. For her, fiction is a contemplative, not an active, art. She observes, describes, connects, provides the materials for a judgment about society and social issues; it is the reader's work to put the observations together” (69).
    - - While Mrs. Dalloway and the Social System does not mention Orlando, the way Orlando romanticizes Romani culture can be seen as they idealize natural forces to the offense of the Romani. Technically speaking, Orlando would be part of the Governing class which the article considers to be people of authority. It is the same people who perpetuate war and hurt those of the lower class, or in this case, foreigners.
  - - - Three Guineas: This term was used to address the women of educated middle/high class men. This group of women were often denied the same education as their fathers and brothers. This second class citizen treatment is said to come from father's fragile ego. They do not wish the women in their lives to be reliant on another man, even going as far as to pay off their daughters to reject a job offer.
        
        "For it was connected with manhood itseld - a man who could not support his family failed in his own conception of manliness"(126).
        
        “He offered to give her the money himself if she would refuse to take it from the college… Whatever interpretation the Dean might have put upon Mr. Jet-Blake’s behavior, we can have no doubt what emotion was at the root of it. He wished to keep his daughter in his own power”(121).
    - - This is an examples of how Woolf uses the character dynamics between the English high class and Septimus, specially through the party scene, to make a critique of those in power.
    - - Mrs. Dalloway and the Social System: One of the major points of this article is the power of the governing class. Not only are there those that help perpetuate war, but the governing class is expanded to include characters of authority like Sir William Bradshaw who control people like Septimus who is in clear need of help.
- - - - “The young man had killed himself; but she did not pity him with the clock striking the hour one two, three, she did not pity him, with all this was going on… She felt somehow very like him - the young man who had killed himself. She felt glad that he had done it; thrown it away”(186).
    - - While no explicit governing class is observed in the movie, the history of AIDs in the US is quite similar to Septimus' position in Mrs. Dalloway. Ronald Regan was silent for the major part of his presidency during the AIDs epidemic and there was a lack of funding for research. Regan was able to successfully garner a lot of attention when it came to matters related to the cold war but couldn't extend that ferver to a tragic epidemic. Similarly, the talk about conflict and political unrest in Mrs. Dalloway is ignoring the plight of those who are suffering the consequences of political unrest and war.
  - - - Time is a force that drives Clarissa to contemplate what she thinks is meaningful about her life. She frequently recalls bliss moments with Sally and Peter. When she returns to the present, she becomes upset at having those days in her past.
    - - Time functions similarly in both Orlando the movie and The Hours. Both cover lifetimes from people over decades and even centuries. The Hours is more non-chronological while Orlando just follows the same character over hundreds of years.
  - - - Both Orlando and Mr. Ramsay can be considered people with very high aspirations. They are both looking for greatness in their work, even though their work differs in scope. Time for them is different as well. Orlando has many more years to experience things than Mr. Ramsay did. Orlando was more an abstract figure not bound to the rules of gender and time. Compare this to Mr. Ramsay who is representative of victorian era rational and renaissance era rational.
      - "Is this... is this what people call life"(195).
    - - Mr. Ramsay's need for validation and need for greatness in his work stems from a fear of death, which is the losing of time without having accomplished what one would have hoped. This is a intersection of existentialism and time.
    - - There are different role that time plays in Mrs. Dalloway compared to the adaptation. The movie uses time as a mode of presentation and structure while Mrs. Dalloway the novel uses time to recall moments of nostalgia. While it too affects the structure of the novel, there is more lineararity compared to the adaptation. Personally I think the break in chronological time can be more effective in cinematography as there are many ways of doing it. Laura despite having left her family when she decides not to take her own life. It's the intersection between existentialism and time.
    - - The sense of living in the past, of being unable to take in or respond to the transformations of the present, makes the governing class in Mrs. Dalloway seem hopelessly out of step with its time" (72)
      - It's interesting how Clarissa uses her parties as a way to live in the present, yet she remains living in the past. The realization of living in the present doesn't come until she decides to go back to Peter and Sally, who are also now different people from their past selves. Clarissa still decides to go to the new them after thinking about Septimus. I think it suggests a coming to terms moment for Clarissa.
  - - - “The vast forces of the nonhuman world flow over and erase all the intricate structures of the human community. In such a context, the tragedies of the novel's human protagonists appear only as belated parenthetical asides, and centuries of humanist assumptions are overturned”(860).
- - - - “It serves to explain how restless they [men] are under her criticism; how impossible it is for her to say to them this book is bad, this picture is feeble, or whatever it may be, without giving far more pain and rousing far more anger than a man would do who gave the same criticism” (36).
    - - Orlando in a way experiences what A Room of One's Own describes. Once Orlando comes back to Britain, her intellect is not taken seriously. She is seen as a woman who is too emotional and couldn't possibly delve into men's conversations. A Room of One's Own demonstrates how socially, women are thought to be too emotional and non-rational. This is seen in Orlando when she returns to Britain and also when she spends time with the Romani people, although that is more of a comment on imperialism rather than gender roles. AROO also mentions how men's sense of superiority is threatened by any possible valid criticism that comes from women.
      - “A woman knows very well that, though a wit sends her his poems, praises her judgment, solicits her criticism, and drinks her tea, this by no means signifies he respects her opinions, admires her understandings, or will refuse… to run her through the body with his pen”(214).
  - - - Orlando and Laura both put on a performance to have society treat them in a certain way. It could be argued that Laura is performing the role of a happy house wife that obeys her husband to hide her queerness and lack of fulfillment as a wife. Orlando is slightly different in that she too performs femininity towards the end of the novel, but the this performance is not to hide, but to reveal what Orlando is on the inside.