Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway: A Luminous Exploration of Life and Death, Appunti di Inglese

Scarica Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway: A Luminous Exploration of Life and Death e più Appunti in PDF di Inglese solo su Docsity! VIRGINIA WOOLF [unconven3onal, an3bourgeois, an3victorian] EARLY LIFE → Virginia Stephen was born in London in 1882, Virginia Woolf was the daughter of Leslie, an eminent Victorian man of le=ers. Thus, she grew up in a literary and intellectual atmosphere and, apart from a few courses at King's College, London, her educaDon consisted of private Greek lessons and, above all, access to her father's excepDonal library. She spent her summers at St Ives, Cornwall and the sea remained central to her art as a symbol → water became the symbol of death: she decided to drown herself]. The death of her mother in 1895, when Virginia was only 13, affected her deeply and brought about her first nervous breakdown. She then began to revolt against her father's aggressive and tyrannical character and his idealizaDon of the domesDcated woman (Her father followed the victorian strict moral code). Even though her up-bringing was Victorian, she rejected Victorian values and developed an anD- victorian and anD-bourgeois aYtude. THE BLOOMSBURY GROUP → it was only with her father's death, in 1904, that Virginia felt free to begin her own life and literary career. She decided to move to Bloomsbury, a neighborhood of central London, and, together with her sister, the arDst Vanessa Bell (she was commi=ed to visual arts). She became a member of the Bloomsbury Group, which included the avant-garde of early 20t century London. For these writers, arDsts and thinkers, the common denominators were a contempt for tradiDonal morality and Victorian respectability, a rejecDon of arDsDc convenDon and a disdain for bourgeois sexual codes. Bloomsbury defined the social, poliDcal and arDsDc themes of the coming mid-century: unconvenDonal sexual pracDces; anD-war senDment and socialism; and the fragmented perspecDve aestheDcs of both Modernism and Post- Modernism. LITERARY CAREER → she belonged to the Modernism and liked experimenDng with language. She was a feminist thinker, as a ma=er of fact she defended the right of women (“A room of one’s own” -> A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write ficDon). Virginia was also commi=ed to the literary criDcism and wrote some essays. In parDcular, she gave suggesDons about ficDon. She was aware of the social changes and believed that the old Victorian novel was inappropriate to express the modern reality, so the ficDon had to change and adapt itself to the complexity of the new style of liffe, for this reason it had to follow new forms and structures. In 1912 Virginia married Leonard Woolf. During this period she entered a nursing home and a=empted suicide by taking drugs. In 1925 the novel “Mrs Dalloway” appeared, in which Virginia successfully experimented with new narraDve techniques. It was followed by “To the Lighthouse”. Virginia was also a very talented literary criDc and a brilliant essayist, as her volume of literary essays, “The Common Reader “(1925), shows. In 1929 she delivered two lectures at Cambridge University, (some girls that a=ended her lessons, recorded them and created a book with all the notes taken) which later became “A Room of One's Own”, a work of great impact on the feminist movement of the 1960s and 1970s. In it she explored many issues connected with women and wriDng but above all insisted on the inseparable link between economic and arDsDc independence. [ROOM: it’s a space were she could write and express her thoughts, but it’s also a metaphor of social and financial independence->If a woman wanted to write ficDons, she needed mooney and a “room”. To publish her works she had to become financial independent]. In 1929 she began to work on her novel “The Waves”. World War II increased her anxiety. Finally in 1941 she drowned herself in the River Ouse. A MODERNIST NOVELIST → Virginia was interested in giving voice to the complex inner world of feeling and memory and saw the human personality as a con8nuous shi9 of impressions and emo8ons. So the events that tradi8onally made up a story were no longer important for her; what ma=ered was the impression they le9 on the characters who experienced them. In her novels the omniscient narrator disappeared, and the point of view shi9ed inside the different characters' minds through flashbacks, associa8ons of ideas as well as momentary impressions presented as a con8nuous flux. “Examine for a moment an ordinary mind on an ordinary day. The mind receives a myriad impressions - trivial, fantas8c, evanescent, or engraved with the sharpness of steel. From all sides they come, an incessant shower of innumerable atoms; and as they fall, as they shape themselves into the life of Monday or Tuesday, the accent falls differently from of old; the moment of importance came not here but there; so that, if a writer were a free man and not a slave, if he could write what he chose, not what he must. Life is not a series of gig-lamps symmetrically arranged; life is a luminous halo, a semi-transparent envelope surrounding us from the beginning of consciousness to the end. “( taken from “Modern Novels” -also known as “Modern Fic8on”- this is her defini8on of life) CULTURAL INFLUENCES • Freud -> psychological insight, subconscious, free associa8on of ideas -> psychological realism (she wanted to depict human mind- thoughts, ideas, dreams- but she didn’t represent what happened in the external reality, but her innermost sensa8ons) • Henry James -> con8nuity of 8me, coexistence past, present, future • William Bergson-> psychological 8me vs historical 8me • William James -> stream of consciousness -> direct interior Monologue • Modernist Avant-guard visual art (Impressionism)-> an8-mime8sm, abstract experimental subjec8ve crea8vity, waterly and light effects on boundaries • Cinema -> cinema8c technique STYLE AND TECHNIQUES → As for James Joyce, also for Virginia Woolf subjec8ve reality came to be iden8fied with the 'stream of- consciousness technique. However, differently from Joyce's characters, who show their thoughts directly through interior monologue, some8mes in an incoherent and syntac8cally unorthodox way, Virginia never lets her characters' thoughts flow without control, and she maintains logical and gramma8cal organisa8on. Her technique is based on the fusion of streams of thought into a third- person, past tense narra8ve. Thus she gives the impression of simultaneous connec8ons between the inner and the outer world, the past and the present, speech and silence. Similar to Joyce's 'epiphanies are Woolf's 'moments of being, rare occasions of insight during the characters' daily life when they can see reality behind appearances. While Joyce was more interested in language experimenta8on and worked through the accumula8on of details, Woolf's use of words was almost poe8c, allusive and emo8onal. Fluidity is the quality of the language which flows following the most intricate thoughts and stretches to express the most in8mate feelings. Her prose is poe8c, phono-symbolic and feminine. Historical 8me is represented by the Big Ben, that is masculine, straight, tyrannical and authoritarian. SIMULTANEITY → in modern urban se\ngs things happens simultaneously because of the new fast means of transport (helicopter, motorcar etc.). This effect is reproduced in literature by the coexistence of past and present, life and memory. -> Virginia’s narra8ve blends the character’s past life with his present one. Virginia use almost always the past simple, so the reader can’t dis8nguish what is happened in the past and what in the present. The narrator shi9s rapidly to one character to another, changing point of view. THE TUNNELING TECHNIQUE → She allows the reader to experience the character’s ’ recollec8on of their past, thus providing a sense of their background and personal history. The reader is put in the character’s mind. THE WATER → It is a very frequent symbol of Virginia’s novels, she was fond of this element because she spent her summer holidays at St Ives. Virginia was inspired by Impressionist pain8ngs in which drops of water seemed to dissolve all the boundaries. As a ma=er of fact, she tried to achieve this effect in her novels, therefore her narra8ve is fluent, water-like, feminine. Furthermore, she decided to find death in water (she drowned herself) because she believed that this element was able to dissolve the boundaries between life and death. MRS DALLOWAY PLOT → At 10 a.m. on a Wednesday (13th) early in June of 1923, Clarissa Dalloway, the protagonist of the novel, goes to Bond Street to buy some flowers for a party she is giving that evening at her house. While she is in the flower shop, a car drives noisily past and shi9s the a=en8on to the street, where Sep8mus and Lucrezia Warren Smith are walking: he is an estate agent's clerk and a shell-shocked veteran of World War I, she is an Italian girl. Sep8mus's mental disorder has necessitated the calling in of doctors, first Dr Holmes and now Sir William Bradshaw, a famous nerve specialist. Clarissa walks back home and there she receives an unexpected visit from Peter Walsh, the man she used to love in her youth. He then leaves Clarissa's house and goes to Regent's Park, where he catches a glimpse of the Warren Smiths, who are going to Sir William Bradshaw's for an interview. The interview lasts three-quarters of an hour and results in Sir Williams arranging for Sep8mus to go into one of his clinics. At 6 p.m. Sep8mus jumps out of the window of his room, and the ambulance carrying his body passes by Peter Walsh, who is going back to his hotel. All the characters who have been in some way important during the day are present at Clarissa's party. The Bradshaws arrive and Clarissa hears from them of Sep8mus's death, with which she feels a strong connec8on SETTING → Like Joyce's Ulysses, Mrs Dalloway takes place on a single ordinary day in June (the events occurs very fast). The novel follows the protagonist through a very small area of London, from the morning to the evening of the day. However, Woolf does not elevate her characters to the level of myth, but shows their deep humanity behind their social mask. Moreover, through the 'tunnelling technique, she allows the reader to experience the characters recollec8on of their past, thus providing a sense of their background and personal history. London is depicted as a wealth town marked by the signs of the war: it’s overcrowded, chao8c and the individuals are only an anonymous mass. The noises provoked by the industries cover the silence of the “life”, due to the people’s incommunicability. -> “death was an a=empt to communicate” (Sep8mus’ suicide). CHARACTERS The range of characters is small: they belong to the upper-middle. Clarissa is a London society lady of 51, the wife of a Conserva8ve MP, Richard Dalloway, who has extremely conven8onal views on poli8cs and women's rights. The influence of a possessive father, the frustra8on of a genuine love, the need to refuse Peter Walsh, a man who would force her to share everything - all this has weakened Clarissa's emo8onal self and split her in two. ->her social self (Mrs. Dalloway- a perfect hostess, the victorian angel of the house, wife of a poli8cian) VS her psychological self (Clarissa- sensi8ve, sympathe8c, complex), she is ordinary from the outside and extraordinary from the inside. She is characterised by opposing feelings: her need for freedom and independence and her class consciousness. Her life appears to be an a=empt to overcome her weakness and sense of failure. She needs to make her home perfect to become an ideal human being, but she imposes severe restric8ons on her spontaneous feelings. Sep8mus Warren Smith is a young poet and lover of Shakespeare. He is an extremely sensi8ve man who can suddenly fall prey to panic and fear or feelings of guilt. The cause of these feelings lies in the death of his best friend, Evans, during the war. So he is a character specifically connected with the war, he is a shell-shock case, one of the vic8ms of industrialised warfare, who sought medical treatment in the special centres set up by 1922. A9er the war, Sep8mus is haunted by the spectre of Evans, he suffers from headaches and insomnia, he cannot stand the idea of having a child, and he is sexually impotent. There is no connec8on between Clarissa and Sep8mus in the plot, apart from the fact that they cross the same street and the news of his death at her party. However, Sep8mus could be considered Clarissa’s alterego: there is a spiritual and emo8onal connec8on between them, eventhough they don’t even interact with each other. They are similar in many respects: their response to experience is always given in physical terms and they depend upon their partners for stability and protec8on. Yet there is a fundamental difference which has contradicted the theory that Sep8mus is Clarissa's double. He is not always able to dis8nguish between his personal response and external reality. His psychic paralysis leads him to suicide, whereas Clarissa never loses her awareness of the outside world as something external to herself. In the end she recognises her decep8ons, accepts the idea of ageing and of death, and is prepared to go on. CLARISSA VS SEPTIMUS: -Clarissa is sane, equilibrate, she can dis8nguish between the inner world and the external one, she doesn’t suffer of allucina8ons. -Sep8mus is a shell-shocked war veteran, insane because of the war, he can not stands the burden of the incomunicability of the society, he is sensi8ve, pale. They are sympathe8c to each other. They are both sensi8ve, deep, aware of the emp8ness of the reality and partner-dependents: Clarissa financially, while. Sep8mus, as an insane man, can’t take care of himself. OTHER CHARACTERS • Richard Dalloway: Clarissa’s husband, he is not so interes8ng as a person, he is a flat and detached man; • Elizabeth: her daughter, she is a teenager. The rela8onship between Mrs. Dalloway and her is not so closed because Clarissa is a li=le bit jealous of Mrs Pym; • Mrs Pym: Elizabeth’s history teacher; • Peter Walsh: Clarissa’s ex boyfriend, she le9 him because he was too possessive and would share everything with her, but she wanted to keep her independence. At the end of their love story he decided to go to India as a coloniser. Indeed he had a li=le knife that is the symbol of the possession, the colonizer’s power. When he visits Clarissa on her a\c, he breaks her personal boundaries , so she feels overrun, violated; • Sep8mus Warren Smith: war veteran, Clarissa’s alter-ego, her double; • Lucrezia: italian woman, Sep8mus’ wife, when she met him in Tuscany he was shell-shocked so she decided to take care of him; • Dr. Holmes and Sir William Bradshaw: guests of the party • Sally Seton: since Clarissa remembers some episode of her youth, she men8ons Sally, this is an important detail because Clarissa had an homosexual affair with her (when they were young they gave a kiss); • The old woman at the window: at the end, a9er the party and the new of Sep8mus’ death, Clarissa sits at the window (probably she shares Sep8mus’ feeling and, realised the emptuness of her life, she’s going to commit suicide) and she sees an old woman at the window that is going to bed (it’s a trivial event that suggests the moment of being). This scene is really symbolic: Despite death reigns over life, life must go on. Clarissa reaches a sort of spiritual compromise, that is the an8thesis of what Sep8mus has done and consists of the reconcilia8on of her social and psychological selves. The original contraddi8on is sorted out by this compromise. THEMES AND MOTIFS → The novel deals with the way people react to new situa8ons, and provides an insight into some of the most significant changes in the social life of the 8me, for instance the spread of newspapers, the increasing use of cars and planes. Woolf makes use of some cinema8c devices, such as flashbacks and the changing of perspec8ve. She also adopts a mo8f - the striking of Big Ben and of clocks in general - which acts both as a structural connec8on and as a symbol of the awareness of death. The insistent chiming of clocks reminds the reader of the passing of 8me in life. Clarissa does not simply walk up Bond Street and back again, she also perceives, thinks, remembers, and consequently her present experiences and future plans are suffused with the feelings and experiences of the past. So life expresses itself in moments of vision. FLOWERS: Clarissa has bought some flowers for the pa8o, that have made her remember of her youth. Flowers blend past and present together-> psychologica 8me SKY: it represents Henry James viewpoint of the con8nuity of the 8me CLARISSA’S ATTIC: It’s the symbol of the poet’s virginity, spiritual purity and individual integrity. It’s a sort of refuge where she goes when she wants to escape from the reality and work on her novel, when she wants to withdraw from the society in order to concentrate herself (think of “A room for one’s own). THE PARTY: it stands for the theme of the social mask, living people are hypocri8cal, dead inside, they are concerned with the appearance. BIG BEN: HISTORICAL TIME PETER’S KNIFE: symbol of possession, masculine, colonial power, jealousy, aggressive a\tude. SYMBOLISM IN PROSE All the innova8ons are symbols of war and progress: • The motocar: for veterans, that are shell-shocked, it reminds them the war, for someone else it symbolise the progress and for s8ll others it represents the poli8cal power, because the first to use it were the prime minister or the price; • The helicopter: it was used as weapons during the war, but also as adver8sement-> in the novel there is the detail of the helicopter used as an adver8sement of Tofee; • The ambulance: it was used by the red crosses to carry the dead men during the war. STYLE: (vedi s8le pagina 2)+ waterly motherlike mul8perspec8ve narrator shi9ing from a character to another. WHAT A PLUNGE? (quota8on taken from the novel) it refers to Clarissa’s jump into her memories, in her past. “his arm...was without feeling” ... “I will* kill myself” ... “went to the rusty spikes” ... “fear no more” (“Clarissa’s party”) Sep8mus was emo8onally death, bu actually what kills him was not himself but the society (-> represented by the rusty spikes). He was frightened and suffered of hallucina8ons (Evans), insomnia (sleep no more- Macbeth) and nightmares. He had wi=enessed his friend’s death and felt guilty because he was s8ll alive-> the guilt of the survivor. *He uses will because it’s a predic8on, a promise. //fear no more: Othello’s quota8on CLARISSA’S PARTY This is the last part of the novel, and it is set at Clarissa’s house during her party. This is the moment that all novel is made at, because she has organized that party for all day and now there are a lot of people, the most people that the narrator has followed and that has wri=en about trough out the novel are found by the reader at the Clarissa’s party that is well-organized as the perfect party for who she wants to appear as the perfect hostess(padrona di casa). So two guests in par8cular Sir Bradshaw (a doctor) and his wife are late, so when they joined at the party, they apologized explaining why they are late because one of Sir Bradshaw’s paBent has commi=ed ed a suicide, he is SEPTIMUS. This news shocked Clarissa but she also get angry with Sir Bradshaw because he interrupts the apparently calm and happy atmosphere of her party. So the man provided also the details of SEPTIMUS death that throw himself from a window, so he jumps from a window but unfortunately he went the rusty spikes. RIGO , bruising are literaBve negaBve expressions and phono symbolical, trough the repe88on of the strong consonant B, to emphasize the violence of his death. RIGO 5àrusty spikesàrefers to the iron weirs that have a shape of a spears, so their spikes are very aggressive and it is a way to convey the idea that SepBmus wants to die but actually what kills SepBmus is society, its proud for ownership, BriBsh aLtude to ownership kills him. For this reason, he is presented as an insane man and shell shock veteran who can’t stand the burden of his life. What kills him is society represented with the word “rusty spikes”. The narrator now follows Clarissa’s thoughtsàshe is upset for the news and she always thinks and wonders about the reasons that had led SEPTIMUS to kill him self, even if she never interact with him. But there is a mental connec8on between them, they are very closed (the narrator is the first who know this thing). Clarissa feels contradictory emo8ons: - She is upset, because “death” enters in her party - She feels sympathy and peated towards SEPTIMUS, for example she thinks that “death was a defiance”(rigo13) for him. Suddenly in a sort of moment of being she realized that for SEPTIMUS that is unable to communicate, suicide was an a=empt, an afford to communicate his awareness of the emp8ness around him. The same emp8ness that Clarissa has realized, so she is spiritually aware of what led SEPTIMUS to commit suicide. So there is a very significant quotaBon from “Othello” (rigo 16-17 “if it were now to die, twere now to be most happy”àdeath is an only way to be happy) aYer repeaBng the verb “plunged” that is used for her flashback and to introduce her memory but also a way to think off SepBmus jumping out the window. Her anger towards Sir Bradshaw is expressed by the word “outrage” (rigo 21), she cannot stand that he talks about death during a party. Immediately aYer this expression she change her prospec8ve because she said “life is made intolerable”àadopt SepBmus point of view, and this shows the strong connec8on between the two characters. This emo8onal connec8on is convey towards a moment of being, because she realized the feelings that led SEPTIMUS to commied suicide, so she now come back to her past (can we found a sort of Flashback), to her hollidays spent in London when she was very happy. She remembered her social dream to became the perfect hostess, the reason why she decided to marry Richard leaving her boyfriend Peter because Peter would make her an object, and Clarissa thanks to Richard would became the perfect hostess, because he grants her social