Virginia Woolf: Overcoming Obstacles in Literary Career and A Room of One's Own, Dispense di Inglese

Scarica Virginia Woolf: Overcoming Obstacles in Literary Career and A Room of One's Own e più Dispense in PDF di Inglese solo su Docsity! VIRGINIA WOOLF ➞Virginia Woolf is one of the most important female writers, she grew up in a literary environment since his father was a man of letter, her childhood was pretty difficult because of the death of her mother that made her suffer a lot, and she was also victim of sexual abuse by her stepbrother. When she grew up she moved to Bloomsbury with her sister and she took part of the Bloomsbury Group which was an avant garde group that takes about art, music and literatures, concerning new, modern and unconventional techniques, for example the stream of consciousness or avant-garde art; this group was strongly against the traditional morality and Victorian retractability. In 1912 she marred Leonard Woolf and started a literary career, she wrote novels and essays, and also became a literary critic. During the Second Word war she was strongly affected by all its negative consequences, she struggled and finally committed suicide, drowning herself. ➞Virginia Woolf had an incredible literary career, she wrote mostly novels and essays: her most important works are doubles the essay A Room of One’s Own and the novel Mrs Dalloway. A Room of One’s Own consisted in an incredible and impactful essay recognized as the the Manifesto of the feminist movement of the 1960s, in particular in this work she analysis all the obstacles and prejudices that a woman writer has to face in order to be noticed in society; related to this topic she also talks about women independence and emancipation, and treats the theme of social inequality between men and women. Virginia Woolf was also known for being an incredible novelist: Mrs Dalloway perfect describes the lives of Clarissa Dalloway and Sally Seton and their struggles and adventures as young women; this novel is particularly important since she first experiments with the new techniques of the modern novel. ➞Virginia Woolf is considered as a modern novelist thanks to the new techniques that she applies on her production: firstly her novels don’t want to represent reality as the late Victorian novels, on the contrary she has a specific aim, she wants to give voice to the complex interiority of feeling an memory of all her characters, representing human personality as a continuous shift of impressions and emotions, and show how very single person and mind is so subjective, refusing the objective point of view of the world; with the aim to represent human personalty, she doesn’t use a conventional type of narrator, on the contrary the narrator seems to disappear and the point of view shifted inside the characters mind through flashbacks, associations of ideas, impressions, memories and ideas presented in a continuous flux. In fact one of the most used techniques is the stream of consciousness technique, already used by James Joyce; not only ideas and impressions of characters are presented into a continuous flux, but this technique also has particular characteristics that change the novel: firstly the plot in the novel is revealed thought the mental process of the characters, and they change and develop through the story thanks to the revelation of extremely personal thoughts; in addition the plot doesn’t follow a liner succession of episodes and actions, on the contrary actions moves bench and forth through present time and memories of the past events, or dreams of the futures; finally the dialogues are know replaced with interior monologues. MRS. DALLOWAY ➞The main character is Clarissa Dalloway, a wealthy hostess who lives in London and who is married to a politician: one day she is busy organising her evening party, in particular she is in a flower shop and a strong noise calls her attention to the street where she sees a couple who is walking, it was Septimus and his wife Lucrezia: Septimus was a veteran of World War I and he was affected by shell-shock that’s why he is followed by many neurologic doctors and specialists, the most important is Dr Bradshaw; during this part of the novel Clarissa deeply thinks about her life before World War I. Then Clarissa walks back home and she receives an unexepective visit from Peter Walsh, the man used to love when she was younger: in this part of the story Clarissa deeply thinks about her life before her marriage with Richard Dalloway and before her relationship with the young man Peter Walsh. At the end of the novel Clarissa’s party takes place and she seems to have gathered all people that were important in her life, and it is during the party that Dr Bradshaw declares that Septimus suicided during that afternoon. ➞The setting of the story is particular: the story takes place in a very small and simple area of London and during a single and ordinary day of June; in the setting Woolf sues the tunnelling technique where all places that are presented in the novel are strictly relayed to background and personal history of each character. ➞The most important and particular characters of the entire novel are undoubtedly Clarissa and Septimus: Clarissa is 51 and she is married to Richard Dalloway who is part of the Conservative party, that’s why she follows conventional views of politics and women’s rights; her personality is deeply influenced by many events f her past that marked her life, for example her possessive father of the frustration of a genuine love, this emotion will emerge during her meeting with Peter Walsh her love during youth; all these characteristics define a weak, simple and emotional woman, in fact she is always characterised by opposite and contrast feelings, on one hand she always shows her need of freedoms and independence, but on the other hand she seems to be part of her conservative social status; in order to overcome her weakness and sense of failure, she is really hard with her-self and imposes sever restrictions on her spontaneous feelings and emotions. For what concerns Septimus, he is on the contrary a really sensitive man and he suffers from shell-shock after the WWI, in fact he is haunted by panic, fear and the tens of guilty for the death of his best friend Evans during the war; he also suffers from strong headaches and insomnia and he is also sexually impotent, in fact he has no children with Lucrezia. In the novels there is a strong duality between Clarissa and Septimus: they both suffers from a weals and sensitive personality and responds to experiences in physical terms, they both depends upon their partners for stability and protections and have no independent, and finally they both recognise their failure and weakness, with the only differences that they apply different solutions, one one hand Clarissa is hard and sever with her-self, on the other hand Septimus commits suicide. ➞The main theme of the novel is the interior world of human psychology and personality. In addition the novel shows for the first time the relevant and significant changes in social and everyday life of the time, for example it is important the big spread of newspaper, the increasing of the use of cars and airplanes and the success of cinema. The novel is also marked by a strong motif that is to say the striking of Big Ben and other clocks: this motif is a metaphor of the passing of like and its flowing into death. ➞For what concerns the style, even thought she uses the stream of consciousness technique which was already used by James Joyce, she distinguishes her-self from James Joyce: firstly she never lets her characters’ thoughts flow without control, on the contrary she maintains a logical and rational organisation; in addition she doesn’t introduce epiphanies and spiritual manifestations, on the contrary she uses moments of being, rare moments of insight during characters’ daily life where they can see reality behind appearances; her moment of being is very similar to the epiphany of James Joyce. Clarissa and Septimus ➞This extract describes how the novel opens, Clarissa Dalloway is seen walking through Green Park to the flower shop to buy flowers herself for the party she is going to give in the evening. She goes into Mulberry florist shop and she is greeted by Miss Pam: while Clarissa is in the shop she deeply enjoys the various perfumes and colours of the many flowers; while she is looking at the flowers and listening to Pym, she thinks about her 17 years old daughter Elizabeth and her boyfriend, her history teacher, that sh doesn’t like. ➞She suddenly hears a noise similar to a gun shot in the street; in front of the violent noise people reactions are completely different: Miss Pym complains about the loud noise of the motors of the car and she tries to justify it as it was her fault, in fact as she hears the noise she goes towards the window and starts to apologise to all people that heard that noise. Miss Dalloway is so scared that the violent noise made her jump and run towards the street to understand where the noise came form, she then realises it came form a mysterious person passing in a luxury car. All people that passed in that street in that moment stopped and stared to the motor car that caused that noise, as the veteran Septimus and his wife Lucrezia. ➞After the violent noise and explosion Clarissa is on the street and she sees the character of Septimus, a veteran of Word War I who suffers from shell shock, a mental illness caused by the horrors of war. The second part of the text concentrates on the strong emotions generated in Septimus by the explosions. The first reaction of Septimus in front of the violent noise is alienation: the time seems to stop and the moto engines sounded like an irregular pulse of an entire body, the sun gets hotter ad hotter and Septimus is concentrate to deeply observe the different colour of the parasol of women and all people who are staring at the moto engine which caused the violent noise. Then the alienation is substituted with panic, in fact Septimus now looks an the motor engine and he starts to get terrified by the engine that burst into flames. After the panic he know starts to feel guilty as he caused flames and he is responsible for the traffic congestion. In front of her husband reaction, Lucrezia feels embarrassed and tries to get away from the place of the accident: in front of her wife request to go away from there, Septimus got very angry with her. It is in this moment that Lucrezia is scared and worried about the thought of Septimus to kill himself. ➞Even thought Virgina Woolf is now using the technique of stream of consciousness, she follows a logical organisation where thoughts are put together through the associations; she uses indirect free speech and her point of view is extremely internal since the entire episode is filtered by the psychology of the protagonist Clarissa, in fact her aim is to represent human personality as a continuous shift of impressions and emotions and show how every single person is so subjective. We can analyse the logical organisation of the text analysing the disposition of actions: every physical action (get in the shop, breathe good smell, observes flowers) are spaced out with many thought of the protagonists of the scene in a logical structure; we can observe how in this text the reflexive and narrative parts are balanced. Clarissa and Peter thirty years afternoon ➞Clarissa has returned home after buying some flowers and she receives a visit from a man she has not seen for about thirty years, it’s Peter Walsh the ma she loved when she was younger. The perspective of time is the focus of the text, in fact the readers seems to enter the characters’ mind and shares the flow of their consciousness, where memories form he past and impressions of the present are contemporary and overlap. ➞In the text their dialogue is very short and simple since they are having s typical dialogue of two people that haven’t seen each other for a long time, they affirm how beautiful is to see each other, they ask about their lives, partners and children, their job and friends. What is particular of this text is all the thought, considerations and reflexions that surround this dialogue: the two characters at first are very embarrassed since in the past they used to be together, and they think about how much they have changed and become older and more mature. In particular Peter seems to be very attracted by Clarissa even thought they had a relationship a long time ago, he underlines how beautiful she is and affirms how elegant her dress is, but then when she starts to talk about her husband and finds out she is giving a party, he feels irritated and kind of jealous, he starts to think about the past and regret the fact that she didn’t marry him, but she rather marry Richard, conservative politician man. ➞In the second part of the text they remember how they met and the period where they where together, it was summer and they were in Bourton where Clarissa passed all her summers. She remembers the clapping of the