Please enable JavaScript.

Coggle requires JavaScript to display documents.

VIRGINIA WOOLF, virginia-woolf-suicide-note , Virginia Woolf's…

- - - - As Lily Briscoe's painting grows and changes in To The Lighthouse, so does she. In various ways, she feels that she will never be good enough. This is supported by Mrs. Ramsay's persuasive efforts to get her to marry and Mr. Tansley's misogynistic commentary. However, through artistic expression, she is able to better understand Mrs. Ramsay's way of life and her experiences in the lighthouse
    - - The central argument of A Room of One's Own is that in order for women to write fiction, they must have money and a room of their own, but women have not been given these privileges. By writing fiction, women can fight against patriarchal institutions that suppress the voices of women in history.
        
        Alice Walker in "In Search of Mother's Gardens" argues that a room of one's own and monetary compensation is only possible for white, privileged women: "What are we to make of Phillis Wheatley, a slave, who owned not even herself" ("In Search of Our Mother's Gardens," 404). By replacing white women's names with inspirational black women and inserting experiences of black women in Woolf's quotes, Walker points out Woolf's inherent bias and exclusion of black women from her feminist argument. This also paints Woolf as somewhat of a hypocrite; she bashes men for not seeing the perspectives of others while actively not seeing the perspective of black women.
    - - In Three Guineas, Woolf changes her argument slightly, asking for a dismantlement of the current inequitable education system. Instead of improvement, she asks for it to be replaced entirely with an egalitarian system that places women on the same level as men.
  - - - In A Room of One's Own, Woolf argues that balancing both male and female thought is much more productive than focusing on a single gender. In other words, she wants people to remain mentally androgynous: "It is when this fusion takes place that the mind is fully fertilized and uses all its facilities. Perhaps a mind that is purely masculine cannot create, any more than a mind that is purely feminine, I thought" (A Room of One's Own, 82). By conforming to single-gendered thinking, creativity is stifled.
- - - - "Clarissa's partly is strictly class-demarcated." ("Mrs. Dalloway's Social System," 73). Characters such as Septimus and Miss Kilman are unable to enter. They are a reminder and threat to the upper class' collective forgetting of the war.
  - - - As read in Mrs. Dalloway, the "shell-shocked" Septimus is the embodiment of various intersecting trauma during this time period. Throughout the novel, we witness how the cost of war and illness affect him psychologically, leading to PTSD, survivors' guilt, and eventually, death. From the war alone, a large array of psychological disorders were experienced by the population. However, given the added turmoil of the influenza pandemic, many began to experience delirium, schizophrenia, and other psychoses ("On Seeing Illness: Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway, 125). Through Septimus's character, we can understand how accumulating traumas shape one's perception of reality, or rather, unreality.
      - The rise of the influenza pandemic in Woolf's post-war society led to a decrease in the general public's physical and mental wellbeing. Due to continual trauma and death, people's capacity to feel sympathy diminished: "The culture had to turn away, Woolf hints, had to set aside pandemic illness in order to continue" ("On Seeing Illness: Woolf's *Mrs. Dalloway," 111).
      - Virginia Woolf herself allegedly suffered from bipolar disorder. On March 28th, 1941, Virginia Woolf committed suicide.
        
        The death of Septimus and Virginia Woolf are very similar, both carefully calculated and self-inflicted. Both people's inner turmoil originated from their mental health issues and relationships.
  - - - Clothing is a symbol of identity in society. In Orlando, Woolf argues that gender is a social construct, partly through Orlando's representation of her identity in the clothes she wears. Once Orlando transitions from male to female, she notices how women's clothes are connected to a predetermined type of behavior from men. For example, a sailor loses footing and almost falls upon seeing Orlando in a dress. Only when she is put in a woman's clothes does she finally understand the "penalities and privileges of her position" (Orlando, 52). She cannot escape the male gaze, her movement is restricted, and she feels exposed.
        
        "Vain trifles as they seem, clothes have, they say, more important offices than merely to keep us warm. They change our view of the world and the world's view of us" (Orlando, 65).
- - - - Many of Woolf's characters battle existential struggles, the most well-known being Clarissa Dalloway. Her complex thoughts about the meaning of life and fear of death directly contradict her shallow lifestyle. She feels the death of Septimus deeply, saying: "She felt somehow very like him-- the young man who had killed himself...The clock was striking...He made her feel the beauty; made her feel the fun" (Mrs. Dalloway, 133). Septimus' death reminds her of the constant ticking of the clock leading towards her eventual death. Only through this realization does she realize she must see the beauty in life and truly live.
    - - Plato's Allegory of the Cave: A group of prisoners has been chained together in a cave since birth. Unable to turn their heads to see the fire or other people existing in the background, they perceive the shadows in front of them to be alive. Suddenly, one prisoner is freed, but the sunlight blinds him and he finds the outside world disorienting. Gradually, his eyes adjust to his surroundings and he can look at objects directly. When the prisoner shares his findings with the others in the cave, the others believe he has been blinded and refuse to be freed. Plato uses this analogy to describe the experience of being a philosopher attempting to educate the public. Not only are people are comfortable in ignorance, but they are also fearful/angry towards anyone who points it out.
      - "The philosopher in such a system is a man above other men" (Virginia Woolf and the Flesh of the World," 862).
    - - The Lighthouse is a symbol of a presence that extends beyond the human world of the Ramsays and time.
- - - - "Every one has friends who were killed in the War. Every one gives up something when they marry" (Woolf, 47).
  - - - Clarissa aggressively competes with Miss Kilman for Elizabeth's attention, often causing her to reject traditional feminine values and the typical notion of "women supporting women." Miss Kilman becomes the symbol of Clarissa's lost youth and the things she could not give to her own daughter.
  - - - "She had the oddest sense of being herself invisible; unseen; unknown; there being no more marrying, no more having children now, but only this astonishing and rather solemn progress with the rest of them, up Bond Street, this being Mrs. Dalloway; not even Clarissa anymore; this being Mrs. Richard Dalloway" (Mrs. Dalloway, 8).