Scarica WOOLF: life and style, mrs dalloway, clarissa and septimus, clarissa's party e più Appunti in PDF di Inglese solo su Docsity! WOOLF LIFE AND STYLE Virginia Woolf was born in 1882 in England: she was a member of the Bloomsbury Group, that was characterized by the rejection of artistic conventions: for example, Virginia was interested in giving voice to human beings' inner world of feelings and memories, but, differently from James Joyce, Woolf never lets her characters' thoughts flow without control. Moreover, she maintains her own language, which does not fit in none of the characters and, at the same time, it's the tool thanks to which she can investigate consciences. In fact her language, for example we can consider "Mrs Dalloway", is full of symbolical meanings, so it's almost more similar to poetry than prose: according to this style, her works are written following a free structure. Virginia Woolf thinks that impulses come from colors, lights and sounds of the environment and of everything that is around us, then free associations of images and sensations occur in characters' minds, so she's influenced by the recent studies made by Freud. The result is the accumulation of many levels of consciousness, called by Virginia Woolf herself ”Moment of being”. MRS DALLOWAY Mrs. Dalloway, novel by Virginia Woolf published in 1925. It examines one day in the life of Clarissa Dalloway, an upper-class Londoner married to a member of Parliament. 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 novel’s narration is third-person omniscient, but it changes its focus throughout. The narrative begins and ends with Clarissa as it details a day in her life. CLARISSA AND SEPTIMUS Clarissa and Septimus is an extract taken from Mrs. Dalloway. Clarissa enters Mulberry's, the flower shop, on Bond Street; Miss Pym greets her. Clarissa, overcome by the beauty of the flower shop, is happily selecting flowers when she hears what she thinks is a pistol in the street outside. Unexpected events occur—a car emits an explosive noise and a plane writes in the sky—and incite different reactions in different people. People are scared but are also interested. Septimus Warren Smith, a veteran of World War I who is about thirty years old, also hears the car backfire. He suffers from shell shock, a mental illness brought on by the horrors of war, and believes he is responsible for the traffic congestion the passing car causes. Lucrezia, his young Italian wife, is embarrassed by his odd manner. He is waiting with his wife to see a psychiatrist named Sir William Bradshaw. Septimus has been told that he is to be taken to a psychiatric hospital. Septimus would rather die than see himself inside such a place, so he throws himself out of a window. -dashes, semicolons, question marks, exclamations, very short sentences CLARISSA’S PARTY This passage is set at Clarissa’s party. The narration then switches to Clarissa's perspective again, this time during her party. Sir William Bradshaw arrives with his wife, who announces that Septimus has killed himself. Clarissa is soon ruminating on Septimus's situation. In a small room, by herself, she identifies with how overwhelmed Septimus must have felt. She respects him for choosing death over compromising the integrity of his soul by allowing it to be confined. She feels ashamed of the ways she has compromised her own soul in order to go on living. DIFFERENCES BETWEEN CLARISSA AND SEPTIMUS Clarissa: life, social success, sanity, tolerance of superficial life, final self- acceptance Septimus: death, alienation from society, rejection of existence, inability to conform The Interior monologue: William James coined the phrase “stream of consciousness” to define the continuous flow of thoughts that characterized the human mind. Interior monologue is often confused with the stream of consciousness but they are different: in fact, the “interior monologue” is the verbal expression of a physical phenomenon while in the stream of consciousness is the psychic phenomenon itself. The main features of interior monologue are: -Its immediacy -It’s being free from introductory expressions
