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Virginia Woolf - Coggle Diagram
Virginia Woolf
Knowing Oneself
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The Hours
From the first time Laura is introduced, she feels disassociated with herself and her life; the daily task of getting out of bed and performing her duties as a housewife are extremely cumbersome because they are roles chosen for her by society: her own emotions and desires are muddled by societal ideas of happiness. She easily takes on the character of people she reads about because her sense of self is shapeless. Heteronormativity and ideas around marriage, which muddles one's understanding of their own desires, contribute to this inability to know oneself.
On Seeing Illness
Part of the reason why characters like Clarissa and Septimus struggle to find expression is that illness is rarely discussed among people. Outka talks about how illness, despite having profound influences on a person, is rarely described in literature because diseases are "treated at the level of individual suffering, not as collective public tragedies." Because of this lack of discourse around illness, people lack the language to express their experiences with illness: "illness is difficult to describe or incorporate into plot"
Nature
Mrs. Dalloway
People's unwillingness to discuss illness and the consequent lack of words Septimus has to describe his experience leaves him estranged from human society—Woolf depicts this alienation through his desire to integrate with nature.
"But they beckoned; leaves were alive; trees were alive. And the leaves being connected by millions of fibres with his own body, there on the seat, fanned it up and down; when the branch stretched he, too, made that statement" (26). Nature and humans are dichotomous; Septimus entering into a dialogue with nature and seeing it as a person he can interact with (as seen through the personification) and a part of his own body represents his wish to departure from human society.
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Gender Roles
Language
Orlando
This novel explores gender roles though language. "'We had a word for them. Ah! I have it...' (But we must omit that word; it was disrespectful in the extreme and passing strange on a lady's lips.)" This censorship of language reveals stereotypes around correct, "lady-like" manners. It may also reflect how women were barred from certain types of language, such as academical language, because of limited opportunities to education. Hence, language is gendered: vile words and academical jargons are only appropriate when used by men, and women who use them are censored. This form of inequality has profound implications on one's capacity to express oneself and one's sense of self, since language and thought have a bi-directional relationship.
Room of One's Own
Woolf explores the relationship between language and gender by writing that "Fiction here is likely to contain more truth than fact." This ideas relates to her claim that biographers must color in or omit some facts to present a more "truthful" account of a person—mere listings of facts fails to capture the depth human experiences. Similarly, experiences with the patriarchy are complex. It effects people's lives in innumerable ways—emotionally, physically, and intellectually, both overtly and subtly—that purely descriptive language fails to capture. Hence, by framing her answer to the question of women and fiction as a fictional story, Woolf borrows from the imaginative powers of stories to provide a multidimensional account of female authors' experiences with writing.
Marriage
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Mrs. Dalloway
"But often now this body she wore… She had the oddest sense of being herself invisible; unseen; unknown … this being Mrs. Dalloway; not even Clarissa any more; this being Mrs. Richard Dalloway." The name "Mrs. Dalloway" speaks of her marital status; her estranged feelings towards her name indicate her discomfort with being perceived as a wife and mother by society (since others identify us with our names), as a result of which her numerous other qualities are overlooked (both by others and by herself). Her sense of self-alienation is demonstrated through her disconnect with her own body: "this body she wore" implies that it is a garment she wears to hide her true self. Yet, her marital status continues to play an important role in her life. The title "Mrs. Dalloway" implies the significance of that role.
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Social Hierarchy
Race
Kissing a Negress in the Dark Race
Hovey argues that Orlando's transformation from male to female symbolizes the fluid, ever-changing nature of "Englishness," which is performative in nature (i.e. national identities are expressions of certain cultures; they are not inherent). That fluidity is depicted in the novel through Orlando's interaction with the "gypsies" right after his gender-transformation. Hence, Woolf challenges the notion of distinct national identities, which has barred many people from participating in the English culture.
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Class
Mrs. Dalloway’s Social System
Zwerdling discusses how Mrs. Dalloway takes place during the rise of the labor party, and that the upper class, threatened by the disturbance of the status quo, attempts to preserve their hierarchy by reinstating social divisions. The party at the end of the novel is a "horizontal," not a "vertical" union in that it excludes non-upper class members in the novel, reinforcing the class divides.
Mrs. Dalloway
The refusal to include the lower class in the upper class's circle is seen in the portrayal of servants: the movement of Lady Bruton's servants is compared to a "ripple in the grey tide of service which washed round Lady Bruton day in, day out." The monotonic image of a "grey tide" highlights the insignificance of the servants, and words like "ripple" and "washed" depict them as immaterial beings that serve as a background for Lady Bruton's life. The refusal to give the servants individuality reveals the dehumanizing perceptions of the lower class.
These physical ways of depicting class boundaries emphasize the difficulty of creating an egalitarian union.
Orlando
Race and Class are often tied together. In Orlando, the comparison of the lower class to "brown earth" associates darkness with poverty. On the other hand, members of the aristocratic class, such as Orlando's former to-be-wife, Euphrosyne, are described as "fair." This coupling of color and class has roots in England's imperialistic history. Race serves as a visible marker for one's status, making it difficult to cross class boundaries (indeed, the only reason Orlando was able to fit in with the "gypsies" was due to his darkish skin tone)
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