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Mrs. Dalloway's Release
Hard to believe it had been a whole year; the party seemed just yesterday and yet, so long ago; she was new person since then; well, not so very different; only in some ways, of course; she was less dependant than she had been, more easy with only herself to consult; when she woke in the morning the day didn't loom quite so dangerously. She did miss him, despite all the space he had given her, much more than she imagined possible; oh, she had cried at first, of course, the initial shock was so jarring and it was all so unexpected.
He was fine the night before at the party, but the next day he declared himself indisposed; how was she to know it was something serious? Sensible Richard, always so careful of his health, always so moderate in all his habits; so dull and pleasant; who would dream it could happen? Every year there were heart attacks, of course, like Mrs. Chandler down the block when Clarissa was a child -- left with two children to raise alone, and her husband only 38. All the women in the neighborhood had nagged for more life insurance, she remembered that.
At first, she wanted not to think about what had happened; the whole thing told over and over again hadn't helped at all; how she had gone for a long walk downtown just to mull over the events of the day before, the party and Peter; oh,...
The tea room's owner told her about her daughter who was awarded a scholarship for college; then, Clarissa had hurried home because the air had turned suddenly heavy and close, the sky purple with low lying clouds, and she without her umbrella. The house had a strange air about it; something about the look as she approached that made her think -- well, that somehow, something was up. The maid opened the door silently. When she came indoors and gave her yellow feathered hat to Lucy, she shook her hair of the light mist that had already begun to fall and lay her purse and gloves on the hall table; a feeling of disquiet in the air; the cook was not whistling in the kitchen; the servants unusually silent and tense; the sound of Big Ben striking the half hour. The butler had rung up for a physician who came even as he told her what he had done; how he had found Mr. Dalloway in the library after his tea. Did it happen, she wondered, when she was hearing about the daughter and the scholarship; as she was dunking oatmeal shortbread in her tea, smiling and rejoicing with the tearoom's owner?
Afterwards, Elizabeth came (alone, thank God) and stayed through the whole ghastly three days standing in front of the…
Ultimately, Mrs. Dalloway's opinion of herself is highest when she is giving parties. Woolf writes, "Every time she gave a party she had this feeling of being something not herself, and that every one was unreal in one way; much more real in another" (Woolf 171). She knows she has a gift for bringing people together, and it is this gift that makes her life worthwhile. It is odd, because
He talks to his dead war buddy Evans, and fears he cannot feel anything at all (Woolf 86). In comparison, Clarissa is extremely interested in what people feel, and she is not afraid to show her own feelings toward her friends and guests, even if they are "effusive" and overly enthusiastic (Woolf 167). Septimus enters Clarissa's life in many ways, even though she never meets him. He is in the
Mrs. Dalloway When discussing Virginia Woolf's fictitious character's in the novel Mrs. Dalloway, one can ultimately decide that these characters are filled with diversity and dimensional character. As the reader, I wholeheartedly disagree that the characters "are not perfect illustrations either of virtue or of vice." They are quite the contrary! These characters are perfect illustrations of virtue and high merit. Their lives are filled with commonalities that all humans can
Septimus and Blanche: Victims of Patriarchal Culture Septimus in Mrs. Dalloway and Blanche in A Streetcar Named Desire are interesting fictional characters who suffer from mental illness in the 1920s. Septimus' illness stems from his wartime experiences while Blanche's illness stems from her position as an oppressed woman under patriarchy. In a sense, patriarchal society has produced both illnesses because exploitation of others, war, and oppression of women are characteristic of
Authentic Representations of Self universal theme of transitional literature is the sacrifice of self. Many characters, within some of the greatest works of literature express longing as a main theme, as if they are living a life that is not quite what they had in mind. DH Lawrence, Virginia Woolf, Beryl Bainbridge and Doris Lessing, all develop characters within their works that establish the idea of a denial of
These young men were not immersed in the high modernist traditions of Virginia Woolf and T.S. Eliot: rather, they were immersed in the experience of war and their own visceral response to the horrors they witnessed. Thus a multifaceted, rather than strictly comparative approach might be the most illuminating way to study this period of history and literature. Cross-cultural, comparative literary analysis is always imperfect, particularly given the linguistic challenges