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Global Experience, Mrs. Dalloway By Virginia Woolf dalloway cover,…
Global Experience
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Institutional Power
Cultural and Society
Governess system of education for girl centered around producing wives as opposed to educated women that could threaten the ruling class and patriarchy
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Restriction of Women
Emma, who clearly is highly intellegent is restricted in her applications of her intellect to things relating to marriage and other trivialized pastimes.
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Mrs. Dalloway By Virginia Woolf 
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Subjectivity
Mrs. Dalloway centers on the thoughts and feelings of the characters. This is emphasized through Woolf's stylistic choices such as stream of consciousness passages
While everyones individual consciousness if subjective, shared memories and experiences of the past influence ideas and feelings in similar ways
In contrast with the hyper-subjectivity of the text, the objectivity of death looms over the characters
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Time
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The constant symbolizing of the passage of time highlights the relationship between the subjective and objective in the concept of time
Our subjective experiences can produce very different perception of the passing of time, yet time is eternally objective, as it passes regardless of our subjective perception of it
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Georgian Era
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Emma by Jane Austen
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Hard Times By Charles Dickens
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Industrialization
Industrialization had a more immediate and drastic impact on social life because it was a change in the base level econmic arrangement of society, as opposed to a political change in the superstructure
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The shift is the production process produces a shift in ideology and philosophy. We see this in Gradgrind's ideas of rational self-interestedness
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Female Experience
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Victorian Era standard placed on women of purity, compassion, and sensitivity constrict their potential
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The mechanization of human beings, specifically of workers, shows the abstraction and alienation of their human character. This creates a separation between the reality and materiality of the conditions and the ways that the ruling class sees the workers.
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Industrialization led to class position being determined more by material conditions and relations to the means of production and less about your bloodline, as was the case in the feudal economic mode
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Tess of the D'Ubervilles By Thomas Hardy
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The Drowned World By J. G. Ballard
Failing to Adapt
Ballard uses the fictional climate crisis to represent the crumbling of the British Empire in Post-WWII Britain
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The characters who failed to adapt to the changing environment were only faced with a prolonged hardship. Forcing the traditional way of live that humans are used to could not lead to any further prosperity or anything productive
As the old institutions of power wane, there is space for new ideas to fill these gaps. Adaption to social/political/economic changes open humanity to progress and growth
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Man vs. Nature
Kerans' approach of acceptance and accepting an adaption to the new environment showed offered an alternative of living with nature as opposed to against it
The forces of nature are positioned as an objective force that supersedes the subjective will of humanity
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The Buddha of Suburbia By Hanif Kureishi
Race
Suburban life in 1970s Britain was riddled with new racial tensions that came with the fall of the British Empire and British colonialism
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Immigration reforms (1948, 1972, etc.) encouraged immigration to help with post-war stagnation in England
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Class
As Karim grows up and branches out beyond his life in the suburbs he begins to see the complexities in class dynamics, especially as they intersect with race
Karim's memory of his uncle Ted taking him to a Spurs game and encouraging him to throw trash out of the train into the lower-class racial minority neighborhood highlights the intersection of performing identity, race, and class
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With much of the encouragement of immigration being economically motivated, there is also contradiction in the fact that the immigrants came to support the British economy and yet were relegated to ghettos and lower class jobs primarily
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Yet, if a class difference is too big between a couple, this breaks social norms and is seen as inappropriate
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Emma's matchmaking plan to set up Harriet and Mr. Elton was seen as absurd by other high-class characters because of Harriet's unknown background
Dickens emphasizes the way that institutions of power define what is considered fact in any given era
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Bounderby sees the working class as lazy and inhuman, while the workers themselves see the ruling class as exploiting their labor, which they consider to be essential
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Tess' education gives her a heightened awareness of this harsh reality, which only produces more depression and fatalism
She is unable to remain blissfully ignorant about this, but also about her conditions in general which force her to take responsibility for the entire family's well-being
Regardless of reality, the knowledge of their lineage causes Tess' father to act as if he is of the upper-class, which only furthers their economic hardships
The Durbeyfields discover their high-class lineage, and yet their material conditions are what ultimate determine the reality of their low-class position
Tess stresses the importance of class position while also points out that class has become increasingly difficult to define
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Tess' fatalism is a form a realism, as her worldview remains informed by her reality
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NW By Zadie Smith :
Searching for Meaning
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Felix's development is the most grounded in materialism. He is trying to leave his past life of drug-abuse behind in favor of a new more fulfilling life with Grace
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Geography
With all of the main characters growing up in the Caldwell council housing project, much of their growth is defined by their geographic relation to this building
Leah, who has moved out of the Cadwell estates is still close by geographically and thus is forced to see a material representation of her past and her inability to escape it completely
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Natalie is the furthest from Caldwell geographically, even though she was once even further away. While this distance can represent some material success, the shell of "Natalie" only leaves her feeling empty. The closest she gets to fulfilment comes in the end of the book with her reconnection with her past through talking with Nathan
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Nathan never quite escaped the impact Caldwell had on him. As a black man, he was forgotten by society; left in behind. However, he total self-awareness allows him to be fully authentic, which cuts through Natalie's faux-exterior identity
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This dynamic is a significant through-line in Hard Times and symbolizes the tension between a rigid and analytical worldview and one centered around humanism
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The expectations placed on women of Tess' time seem to doom all women to a similar fate: to serve men
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The drastically shifted environmental conditions produced new psychological conditions within the characters that mimicked the primal state of consciousness that humans would have experienced in the Triassic Period
“Not in our minds.. These are the oldest memories on Earth, the time-codes carried in every chromosome and gene… we are plunged back into the archeo-psychic past, uncovering the ancient taboos and drives that have been dormant for epochs.” (56)
This new (but also old) consciousness is what led Kerans to behavior in new ways, heading south and accepting the supremacy of nature for example.
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This can come int he form of direct sexual abuse (from Alec) or in a more subtle form of emotional manipulation and dominance in a relationship (from Angel)
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Key
Grey - Key Concepts
Pink - Sub-Concepts
Yellow - Emma
Orange - Hard Times
Red - Tess of the D'Ubervilles
Purple - Mrs. Dalloway
Blue - The Drowned World
Teal - The Buddha of Suburbia
Green - NW