Exploring the Themes of Identity and Society in Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway, Dispense di Inglese

Scarica Exploring the Themes of Identity and Society in Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway e più Dispense in PDF di Inglese solo su Docsity! VIRGINIA WOOLF She was born in London in 1882 and she was the daughter of Leslie Stephen. Her father was a historian and author, whereas Woolf's mother, Julia Prinsep Stephen, was a famous model. Both of her parents had been married and widowed before marrying each other. Woolf had three full siblings: Thoby, Vanessa and Adrian — and four half-siblings: Laura Makepeace, Stephen and George, Gerald and Stella Duckworth. Woolf’s parents were extremely well connected in the society, both socially and artistically. From the time of her birth until 1895, Woolf spent her summers in St. Ives, a beach town at the very southwestern tip of England. As a young girl, Virginia was curious, light-hearted and playful. She started a family newspaper, the Hyde Park Gate News, to document her family’s humorous anecdotes. In 1895, at the age of 13, she had to cope with the sudden death of her mother from rheumatic fever, which led to her first mental breakdown. The figure of her mother was so important and full of meanings that provoked a huge sadness in her. Early traumas darkened her childhood, including being sexually abused by her half-brothers George and Gerald Duckworth, which she wrote about in her essays A Sketch of the Past and 22 Hyde Park Gate. While dealing with her personal losses, Woolf continued her studies in German, Greek and Latin at the Ladies’ Department of King’s College London. Her four years of study introduced her to a group of radical feminists at the helm of educational reforms. In 1905, she began writing professionally as a contributor for The Times Literary Supplement. When her father died, in 1904, she moved to Bloomsbury (London) with her sister Vanessa Bell: they became members of the Bloomsbury Group, which included the avant-garde of the 20th century. During this period, Virginia met several members of the Bloomsbury Group, a circle of intellectuals and artists including the art critic Clive Bell, who married Virginia's sister Vanessa, and essayist Leonard Woolf, among others. The group became famous in 1910 for the Dreadnought Hoax, a practical joke in which members of the group dressed up as a delegation of Ethiopian royals, including Virginia disguised as a bearded man, and successfully persuaded the English Royal Navy to show them their warship, the HMS Dreadnought. The characteristics of the Bloomsbury Group are: ➔ Contempt for traditional morality and Victorian respectability ➔ Rejection of the artistic convention ➔ Hate for bourgeois sexual codes The members of the Bloomsbury Group were considered to be radical thinkers because of the use of the stream-of-consciousness. They also defined the social, political and artistic themes of the century, which are: ➔ Unconventional sexual practices ➔ Anti-war sentiment and socialism ➔ Fragmented perspective of Modernism and Post-Modernism After the outrageous act, Leonard Woolf and Virginia became closer, and eventually they were married in 1912, and the two shared a passionate love for one another for the rest of their lives. The Woolf’s bought a used printing press and established the Hogarth Press, their own publishing house operated out of their home, Hogarth House. Virginia and Leonard published both radical novels and political essays when no-one else would. They published some of their writing, as well as the work of Sigmund Freud, Katharine Mansfield and T.S. Eliot. One of the work that had the greatest impact on the feminist movement of the 1960s and the 1970s is A Room of One’s Own, in which she explored issues connected with women and writing. In 1941 she drowned herself. Virginia Woolf saw the human personality as a continuous shift of impressions and emotions: what matters is not the event itself, but rather the impact it had and the emotions left. The point of view is very personal and through the inside thanks to flashbacks, association of ideas and a continuous flux. Between WW1 and WW2 she published her most important works as Mrs Dalloway in 1925, To the lighthouse in 1927, Orlando in 1928 and a Room of one’s own in 1929. Virginia had a few lesbian affairs in her life and she wrote about it in a magnificent work, Orlando, which is a portrait of her lover Vita, described as a nobel man who becomes a woman. In 1922 Virginia and Vita Sackville-West (poet and landscape gardener) began a friendship that developed into a romantic affair. Although their affair eventually ended, they remained friends until Virginia Woolf's death. Throughout her career, Woolf spoke regularly at colleges and universities. By her mid- forties, she had established herself as an intellectual, an innovative and influential writer and pioneering feminist. Despite her outward success, she continued to regularly suffer from debilitating bouts of depression and dramatic mood swings. Woolf's husband, Leonard, always by her side, was quite aware of her deep depression. At the time, World War II was raging on and the couple decided if England was invaded by Germany, they would commit suicide together, fearing that Leonard, who was Jewish, would be in particular danger. In 1940, the couple’s London home was destroyed during the Blitz, the Germans bombing of the city. Unable to cope with her despair, Woolf pulled on her overcoat, filled its pockets with stones and walked into the River Ouse on March 28, 1941. As she waded into the water, the stream took her with it. The authorities found her body three weeks later. Although her popularity decreased after World War II, Woolf's work resonated again with a new generation of readers during the feminist movement of the 1970s. Virginia Woolf did not consider women superior to men. In fact, she thought that both sexes only belonged to different natures but we should appreciate them in an equal manner. She promoted the mixing of these two different natures, promoting equality in gender. The vision of Virginia Woolf was strongly based on the emancipation and independence of women as men. The environments in which they lived were common spaces and they had to only take care of their husbands, their children, and finally the house. These social conventions of formality and rigidity, had distinguished Victorian society until began to appear a glimmer of independence. The woman had to be emancipated, she had to fight for her rights and had to be skilled at still being able to maintain the desired attitude from men and society. And it is this that seeks to make the real Virginia Woolf in her book “A Room of one’s own”. This book represents the women’s fairest novel ever written. In this famous essay, she asserts that a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write. According to Woolf, centuries of prejudice and financial and educational disadvantages have inhibited women's creativity. ease in his own skin, which makes his relationship with the exterior world more difficult. ➔ Lucrezia Warren Smith: Also called Rezia, is Septimus’ wife. Originally from Italy, she makes hats. She is divided between the love she still feels for Septimus, and the burden he has become. Always worried about him, she feels very lonely. ➔ Sally Seaton: A childhood friend of Clarissa, Sally Seton used to be a rebellious and provocative young girl. When she was an adolescent, Clarissa felt very attracted to her and together they wanted to rebuild the world and the two shared a kiss during adolescence. ➔ Miss Doris Kilman: Elizabeth's history teacher. She is poor and hates Clarissa Dalloway, especially the type of woman she represents (she seems superficial), whereas she appreciates Elizabeth enormously and is attracted to her. The novel deals with the way people react to new situations and provides an insight into some of the most significant changes in the social life of the time. Woolf uses flashbacks, close-ups and tracking shots. Virginia Woolf also uses some motifs, such as the striking of Big Ben and of clocks in general, which acts both as a structural connection and as a symbol of the awareness of death, as well as the temporal grid which organizes the narrative. STYLE: For what concerns her style, she uses the stream-of-consciousness: Virginia Woolf never lets her characters’ thoughts flow without control, and she maintains logical and grammatical organization. Her technique is based on the fusion of streams of thoughts into a third-person. As for James Joyce, also for Virginia Woolf subjective reality came to be identified with the stream-of-consciousness technique, which is characterized by a series of thoughts that flow in the character's mind and move freely. However, differently from Joyce’s characters, who show their thoughts directly through interior monologue sometimes in an incoherent and syntactically unorthodox way, Virginia never lets her character's thoughts flow without control, and she maintains logical and grammatical organization. Fluidity is the quality of the language which flows following the most intricate thoughts and stretches to express the most intimate feelings. The novel’s narration is third-person omniscient, but it changes its focus throughout. Mrs. Dalloway is essentially plotless, what action there is takes place mainly in the characters consciousness. The novel addresses the nature of time in personal experience through multiple interwoven stories, particularly that of Clarissa as she prepares for and hosts a party and that of the mentally damaged war veteran Septimus Warren Smith. The punctuation and syntax are often unusual. Thoughts are sometimes expressed in brackets. In addition to that, it is also important to say that Woolf’s use of words is almost poetic, allusive and emotional. Her style was a reaction to the narrative style of much popular Victorian literature, which was linear and deterministic. Woolf, like many other Modernist authors writing after World War I, felt that such a style did not truly depict life as the mess that it was. Therefore, she set out to look for a new form of writing which could show the reality of post-war England. She wanted to talk about people, their feelings, their choices, their characters, and not only of their position in society and the way they led their life according to social impositions. According to critics, it was with Mrs Dalloway that Virginia Woolf found this new voice. The most important characteristics are: ➔ Experimentation: Modernist literature employed a number of different experimental writing techniques that broke the conventional rules of storytelling. Some of those techniques include blended imagery and themes, absurdism, nonlinear narratives, and stream of consciousness, which is a free flowing of thoughts. ➔ Individualism: Modernist literature typically focuses on the individual, rather than society as a whole. Stories follow characters as they adapt to a changing world, often dealing with difficult circumstances and challenges. ➔ Multiple perspectives: Many modernist writers wrote in the first person perspective with multiple characters to emphasize the subjectivity of each character, and add depth to the story by presenting a variety of viewpoints. ➔ Free verse: modernist poets rejected the traditional structure of poetry and opted for free verse, which lacks a consistent rhyme scheme, metrical pattern, or musical form. ➔ Literary devices: modernist writers rely on literary devices like symbolism and imagery to help the reader understand the writing, and to create a stronger connection between the text and the reader. In Mrs Dalloway, Virginia Woolf depicts the British society in full evolution after the First World War. In the 19th century, the British Empire was the biggest empire in the world and possessed numerous colonies in India and South Africa. After the war, it entered a period of decline. The feeling of failure of the empire is very present in the novel and mirrors the personal failures of each and every character. During this transition period, many people started to doubt the values of British society and with the institutions for which they had fought. This is particularly the case of Septimus Warren Smith, who committed suicide because of the experiences that he lived during the war, which destroyed him and made him hate human nature forever. On the other hand, many British citizens still believe in the idea of a powerful Great Britain as the aristocrats such as Sir Bradshaw, Hugh Whitbread, Lady Bruton, but also Peter Walsh. The conservative party, then in power, was also declining since the ideas of the Labor party were winning more and more people over. Finally, the women, who had had to replace the men gone to the front, demanded equal rights. In Mrs Dalloway, Clarissa is, in the eyes of the other people, a frivolous and bourgeois housewife. However, she fights to be respected and to find her place as an individual in society. Moreover, her daughter Elizabeth who also illustrates the changes in the social position of women, because the young woman thinks of herfuture and the job she will choose. TITLE: Clarissa Represents how society viewed women during the post WWI era, and denotes the changes in gender roles through Clarissa’s identity and her party. The title associated with Clarissa's married surname is a choice to emphasize Clarissa’s choice to marry Richard to keep her social status within society, even though she wants independence, which in reality is taken away. THEMES: ➔ Death: The topic of death is the most important topic of Mrs Dalloway. It is mentioned several times by Clarissa, Peter and Septimus. From the beginning of the novel, Clarissa thinks about death and according to her, death is something natural. Whereas Peter fears death very much, because he lacks confidence, he does not really trust himself, and has the feeling that he has accomplished nothing, that his life is a failure. Septimus instead, decides to face death, committing suicide. Since his return from war, Septimus feels empty and he does not know how to behave with his fellow people. His body is still among the mortal men, but his spirit is somewhere else already. Before committing suicide, Septimus confesses that he loves life, but, because he cannot bear the presence of humans and their nature, he has to commit suicide. ➔ Age and Memory: The past affected the present very strongly, and memory helps the character to deeply understand their modern choices. The prose style and the rapid change of settings show the reader how memory can be unreliable (Septimus’s memories are affected from his Shell Shock). Clarissa often thinks about death, though she has a deep desire for life, age brings perspective intact at the end of the novel age is not a fear anymore but is now celebrated. ➔ Passage of time: is told by the hours dictated by Big Ben, the characters movements are proportional to it and this pushes them to accomplish as much as possible. The modernist’s novel shows how thinking has the ability to stop narrative and this lets Virginia Woolf change the perspective to something more private. ➔ Aftershocks of War: manifested in shell shock or post traumatic stress disorder, is presented in Septimus and his wife Ratia. England is permanently changed and this brings out both patriotism and cynicism in the novel’s characters. Politically Lady Burton and Hugh Whitbread wondered how England could repay veterans, Peter admires and worries about young military men. ➔ Stress and mental illness: Septimus and Clarissa both suffered of stress and depression but can still see incredible beauty in life, the novel also describes the effect mental illness has on loved ones (such as Ratia after the death of her husband) ➔ Homosexuality: While Clarissa Dalloway was trapped in a dull marriage with Richard Dalloway and cherished her youthful homosexual experience with Sally as a unique moment of happiness. She tries to imagine what her life could have been like if she had remained with Richard, cherishing the past, which seems so much more exciting than her present life. She couldn't imagine a life with a woman because homosexuality was still heavily condemned in Virginia wolf London. ➔ Marriage: Through the wives in Mrs. Dalloway, Virginia Woolf communicates that marriage is an institution where women are forced to suppress their individual desires and passions in order to serve their husband and further his own ambitions as first priority. From the beginning of the book, Woolf establishes that Clarissa’s bright and hopeful spirit has become dulled and burdened when subjected to the oppressive nature of marriage. ➔ Gender: Sally represents a freedom evolving in the new post-war era. She rejected the traditional gender role, argue enthusiastically about intellectual topics and and she does not act according to what others think of her (Clarissa instead is constantly concerned with what others think) SYMBOLS: