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The Texts of Virginia Woolf - Coggle Diagram
The Texts of Virginia Woolf
Nature and Change
Orlando: Nature is protrayed as an almost divine force in the story. It is male force for humans to use as a means of change
"nature, who has so much to answer for besides the perhaps unwieldy length of this sentence, has further complicated her task and added to our confusion by providing not only a perfect rag-bag of odds and ends within us...but has contrived that the whole assortment shall be lightly stitched together by a single thread>"
Shares this theme in common with the eassy
“‘Kissing a Negress in the Dark’: takes an intresting approach to this topic. It discusses the interesctionality of race and seuxaliy, a
NATURE AS A FORCE TO DRIVE THE HUMAN SPIRT
Another intresting direction you can take this concept is by looking at Alex Zwerdling Eassy "Mrs. Dalloway and the Social System"
More losely tied, but can social systems be impacted by nature? And can humans use nature as a means of shaping social systems?
Expands our understanding of this concept
Nautre and how it changes the mind
"To The Lighthouse" and Mr. Ramsay
In To The Lighthouse, The Character of Mr. Ramsay has an intresting relationship with nature. He does not take much to it at first, but after the death of his wife he seems to be changed on in his opiinion on it, apricates it more
Nature is a force that helped Mr. Ramsay change and appreciate more of his life and the nature world
It could also be argued that nature is a refection of how he changed
Similar to in Orlando with how interacts with nature throughout the novel has they shift idenities
Isolation
Isolation and Fear
Mrs Dalloway: In Mrs. Dalloway, people seem to not make many meaningful connections with each other. People don't share strong sentiments with each other, and have a tendency to speak without saying anything at all.
Much of the Isolation comes as the result for the male need to domiante and see women as subserviant, and to impose gender roles, like in the case of Mr. Dalloway. While the other comes from the Great War which just occured.
Patriarchal standards= Fear based Isolation
To the Lighthouse: Mr. Ramsey often ignores his emotional relationships because he fears him and his work being forgotten. He feels like his life work will be meaningless, Therefore, he isolates himself.
Male need for accomplishment and
Patriarchal standards= Fear Based Isolation
Isolation, in being taken seriously as a female
A Room Of One's Own: When looking through the annals of history, The Narrator feels alone as there are not many female figures
This idea is further expanded on by the apperance of Judith Shakespeare, who is beaten and yelled at for wanting a career in literaurre
All of this leads back to patriarchy and misogyny and how it causes women to feel scared and isolated!!
The Hours as a film also take a intresting take on this subject, although it expands upon it, through discussing mental illness
Three women all commit sucide because life feels trvial and meaningless, partially because of the inherent female experince of being tied to a man
But many of the characters in the story, including Virginia Woolf seem to be suffering from mental illness so it does make the issue more complex: how much of this is societal strife vs just innate illness
Also all characters relate to Mrs. Dalloway (one even shares the same name as her, this is an obvious symbol),
THEMES DIRECTLY RELATE TO MRS. DALLOWAY
Mrs, Dalloway, takes a similar yet different approach, as throughout the novel she is made to feel isolated oftentimes not for anything specfic, but just because of the mere concept of being a woman in a male dominated society.
"She had the oddest sense of being herself invisible; unseen; unknown; there being no more marrying, no more having of 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 any more; this being Mrs. Richard Dalloway."
Mrs. Dalloway and A Room of Ones own shares the complex theme of not feeling seen and therefore isolated because of thier genderr
How Memory Effects Oneself
In Mrs. Dalloway, memory is mostly painful, this is primary shown in Septimius and Clarissa but in very different ways
Clarissa, has happy yet painful memories of her love for Sally, who she has latent homosexual feelings for
"The strange thing, on looking back, was the purity and integrity of her feeling for Sally. It was not like one’s feeling for a man."
Shows distant relationship with Mr. Dalloway, and also how they act as a way of controlling her
Septimius is obvious, he keeps having flashbacks to the war
In both cases, Memory controls them and inhibits them
This combined with persent tramuas leds him to kill himself
How does meory effect how we overall look at a genre as a whole? discussed in Louise Westling, "“Virginia Woolf and the Flesh of the World”
Memory in "To The Lighthouse"
Because of how this novel is written, time feels distorted and out of place
Lily, the painter, is the primary one who keeps track of time through her work and feelings
Time is portrayed as a way to distort and effects both the reader and chacters in this fashion
How does illness effect memory and scare a people? Touched on in "On Seeing Illness: Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway”
Has a similar effect to Septimius in Mrs. Dalloway, can be extremally painful and relates to this idea of control