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ENGL 179.1: Modernism, where paralysis and epiphany are connected through…

- - - - Past
        
        Autumn
        
        Smith's Autumn elaborates on the passing of time and reflection of the past and the current situation as the reader gets to experience Daniel and Elisabeth from both time periods and understand the value in time and the way that past time impacts the present.
      - To the Lighthouse
        
        “she looked at her canvas; it was blurred. With a sudden intensity, as if she saw it clear for a second, she drew a line there, in the centre. It was done; it was finished” (Woolf, To the Lighthouse, 209)
        
        Woolf was really interested in sleep as having a role in doing something, in changing people, in creating epiphanies.
        
        "should any sleeper...answer to his doubts" (Woolf, To the Lighthouse, 137)
        
        Mrs. Ramsey's desire for domestic order
    - - Mansfield, Prelude
        The only writing Woolf was ever jealous of was Mansfield
        
        “She shut her eyes a moment, but her lips smiled. Her breath rose and fell in her breast like two fanning wings. The window was wide open; it was warm, and somewhere out there in the garden a young man, dark and slender, with mocking eyes, tiptoed among the bushes, and gathered the flowers into a big bouquet, and slipped under her window and held it up to her. She saw herself bending forward. He thrust his head among the bright waxy flowers, sly and laughing. "No, no," said Beryl. She turned from the window and dropped her nightgown over her head”(Mansfield 9)
        
        “If she had been happy and leading her own life, her false life would cease to be. She saw the real Beryl-a shadow…a shadow. Faint and unsubstantial she shone” (Prelude, 35)
        
        "there was something at the back of Beryl's mind, something she did not even put into words for herself" (Mansfield, Prelude 15)
        Beryl does not feel like the world can or wants to experience all of her. She feels as though there exists the her that she projects to the real world, and the her that exists in her mind, demonstrating a mental sense of paralysis, as her body continues to move and exist, but the real self inside her mind is not able tp act and exist in a materialized manner.
    - - "So she slept and dreamed, and smiled in her sleep, and once threw out her arm to feel for something which was not there, dreaming still" (Mansfield, The Tiredness of Rosabel, 4).
        
        Rosabel fantasizes to herself in her apartment about an ideal world, an ideal encounter. When reality ceases to meet our ideals, dreaming helps us cope. Our bodies cease to move but our minds stay awake. Rosabel's arm outstretched demonstrates this attempt to materialize these fantasies and thoughts, when she actually cannot do anything about it and lives in somewaht of a mental paralysis.
  - - - Easter, 1916
        
        "That woman's days were spent/ In ignorant good-will / Her nights in argument / until her voice grew shrill" (Yeats, Easter, 1916, lines 17-20)
- - - - The Heat of the Day
  - - - "A sudden blow: the great wings beating still/ Above the staggering girl, her thighs caressed" (Yeats, Leda and the Swan, lines 1-2)
      - This poem encapsulates violence through Zeus, in the form of a swan, sexually assaulting and raping Leda
- - - - Woolf, On Being Ill
        
        "Considering how common illness is, how tremendous the spiritual change that it brings,, how astonishing, when the lights of health go down, the undiscovered countries that are then disclosed, what wastes and deserts of the soul a slight attack of influenza brings to light" (Woolf 32)
- - - - “April is the cruellest month, breeding / Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing / Memory and desire,
        stirring / Dull roots with spring rain. / Winter kept us warm, covering / Earth in forgetful snow, feeding / A little life with dried tubers.”
        (Eliot, The Wasteland, lines 1-7)
        These lines set the reader up for the whole play, where expectations will always be broken and the poem changes the initial notions and preconceptions one may have by changing the associations. The Wasteland also echoes multiple voices from different people and forces the reader to think about the self. This poem is also very difficult and confusing to get through.
  - - - "Laura's upbringing made her wonder for a moment whether it was quite respectful of a workman to talk to her of bangs slap in the eye" (Mansfield, The Garden Party 2)
        
        A concern for social standing and roles/responsibility
        
        Laura hears of the accident where the man has died and asks what to do, if they should cancel the party, to which her mother responds that the party must still continue and they only happened to hear of the accident. The mother believes it is not their problem and the party must continue, while Lily makes somewhat of an effort by delivering goods to the family, assuming they would be so grateful and thinking they would be lucky to receive them. This just demonstrates the class divide and the lack of understanding from the position of Laura's family, as they believe their social standing and the success of the party is of utmost importance.