MRS DALLOWAY – Context
Post-war + dawn of Modernism, suffragette movement, “the sordid life of a great
metropolis” = bustling London environment
“Modern Fiction” by Virginia Woolf: “Life is not a series of gig lamps symmetrically
arranged, life is a luminous halo, a semi-transparent envelope surrounding us from then
beginning of consciousness to the end”
EXTRACT FROM VIRGINA WOOLF'S DIARY:
"more and more I come to loathe any dominion of one over another; any
leadership, any imposition of the will"
o Woolf commenting on the control doctors have over people + their mental
health
"I want to give life and death, sanity and insanity; I want to criticise the social
system, and to show it at work, at its most intense.."
"Am I writing The Hours from deep emotion? Of course the mad part tries me so
much, makes me my mind squint so badly that I can hardly face spending the
next weeks at it."
"I dig out beautiful caves behind my characters; I think that gives exactly what I
want; humanity, humour, depth."
"The idea is that the caves shall connect, and each comes to daylight at the
present moment"
WOOLF ESSAY - "Street Haunting: A London Adventure" (1927)
"Am I here, or am I there?
"Or is the true self neither this nor that, neither here nor there, but something so
varied and wandering that it is only when we give the rein to its wishes and let it
take its wat unimpeded that we are indeed ourselves"
"The good citizen when he opens his door in the evening must be banker, golfer,
father, husband" - commenting on societal expectations BUT this character also
represents Peter Walsh and Hugh Whitbread and Richard Dalloway
"When he opens his door, he must run his fingers through his hair and put his
umbrella in the stand like the rest" - commenting on how people are lacking
originality and pander to the behavioural traits expected of them
, A Room of One’s Own:
"a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction"
o Money = independence and agency
o Women must be isolated and untethered from society for her to fully
pursue her interests and make her own choices
"women have served all these centuries as looking-glasses possessing the
magic and delicious power of reflecting the figure of man at twice its natural size"
o Women as a looking-glass for men = giving credit to female intelligence
and observant nature = SEEN IN CLARISSA
Free indirect discourse allows the readers to follow Clarissa's
mind as she observes everything around her, while adding context
that she is not aware
Virginia Woolf - To The Lighthouse (1925):
- "the mind is full of monstrous, hybrid, unmanageable emotions" = Woolf's
mental struggle + Septimus
- "it is in this atmosphere of doubt and conflict that writers have now"
- "Every day includes much more non-being that being" = liminal process of life
- "that the whole world is a work of art; that we are parts of the work of art"
Virginia Woolf - Moment of Being
- "But, I ask myself, what is reality? And who are the judges of reality? A character
may be real to Mr Bennett and quite unreal to me" = appreciation for the diversity
of society
CUBISM - looking at all perspectives and angles
Herbert Merder – "Clarissa breaks up the narrative plane... as cubists broke up the
visual plane".
Henri Bergson:
The difference between historical time, which is external, linear and measured in terms
of the spatial distance travelled by a pendulum or the hands of a clock; and
psychological time, which is internal, subjective, and measured by the relative
emotional intensity of a moment
Post-war + dawn of Modernism, suffragette movement, “the sordid life of a great
metropolis” = bustling London environment
“Modern Fiction” by Virginia Woolf: “Life is not a series of gig lamps symmetrically
arranged, life is a luminous halo, a semi-transparent envelope surrounding us from then
beginning of consciousness to the end”
EXTRACT FROM VIRGINA WOOLF'S DIARY:
"more and more I come to loathe any dominion of one over another; any
leadership, any imposition of the will"
o Woolf commenting on the control doctors have over people + their mental
health
"I want to give life and death, sanity and insanity; I want to criticise the social
system, and to show it at work, at its most intense.."
"Am I writing The Hours from deep emotion? Of course the mad part tries me so
much, makes me my mind squint so badly that I can hardly face spending the
next weeks at it."
"I dig out beautiful caves behind my characters; I think that gives exactly what I
want; humanity, humour, depth."
"The idea is that the caves shall connect, and each comes to daylight at the
present moment"
WOOLF ESSAY - "Street Haunting: A London Adventure" (1927)
"Am I here, or am I there?
"Or is the true self neither this nor that, neither here nor there, but something so
varied and wandering that it is only when we give the rein to its wishes and let it
take its wat unimpeded that we are indeed ourselves"
"The good citizen when he opens his door in the evening must be banker, golfer,
father, husband" - commenting on societal expectations BUT this character also
represents Peter Walsh and Hugh Whitbread and Richard Dalloway
"When he opens his door, he must run his fingers through his hair and put his
umbrella in the stand like the rest" - commenting on how people are lacking
originality and pander to the behavioural traits expected of them
, A Room of One’s Own:
"a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction"
o Money = independence and agency
o Women must be isolated and untethered from society for her to fully
pursue her interests and make her own choices
"women have served all these centuries as looking-glasses possessing the
magic and delicious power of reflecting the figure of man at twice its natural size"
o Women as a looking-glass for men = giving credit to female intelligence
and observant nature = SEEN IN CLARISSA
Free indirect discourse allows the readers to follow Clarissa's
mind as she observes everything around her, while adding context
that she is not aware
Virginia Woolf - To The Lighthouse (1925):
- "the mind is full of monstrous, hybrid, unmanageable emotions" = Woolf's
mental struggle + Septimus
- "it is in this atmosphere of doubt and conflict that writers have now"
- "Every day includes much more non-being that being" = liminal process of life
- "that the whole world is a work of art; that we are parts of the work of art"
Virginia Woolf - Moment of Being
- "But, I ask myself, what is reality? And who are the judges of reality? A character
may be real to Mr Bennett and quite unreal to me" = appreciation for the diversity
of society
CUBISM - looking at all perspectives and angles
Herbert Merder – "Clarissa breaks up the narrative plane... as cubists broke up the
visual plane".
Henri Bergson:
The difference between historical time, which is external, linear and measured in terms
of the spatial distance travelled by a pendulum or the hands of a clock; and
psychological time, which is internal, subjective, and measured by the relative
emotional intensity of a moment
