Larking and Plunging HUM 3285 British and American
Larking and Plunging HUM 3285: British and American Literature Spring 2013 Dr. Perdigao January 14 -21, 2013
Robert Harms’ Mrs. Dalloway (1995) http: //www. durhampress. com/harms/index. html
Mapping Dalloway’s Day • http: //hubcap. clemson. edu/~sparks/TVSeminar/dallwalkmap. html
Virginia Woolf (1882 -1941) • Born Adeline Virginia Stephens on January 25, 1882 in London • Father Leslie Stephen “Victorian critic, philosopher, biographer, and scholar” (Greenblatt 2080), member of “intellectual aristocracy” of Victorian England; mother Julia Jackson Duckworth, of Duckworth publishing family • Mother died in 1895, Virginia suffered mental breakdown; half sister Stella ran household until her death in 1897 • Father died in 1904, Virginia suffered second mental breakdown; brother dies of typhoid in 1906 • Vanessa ran household, moves family to Bloomsbury; “The Bloomsbury Group” • Leonard Woolf had joined Civil Service, returned in 1911; married Virginia
Virginia Woolf (1882 -1941) • Virginia starts writing The Voyage Out in 1908, finishes in 1913, published in 1915 • Second realistic novel Night and Day (1919) • 1917—Woolfs start own press, Hogarth; Virginia publishes through it after 1921; press published T. S. Eliot’s Poems (1919) • Moved back to London from Surrey, publishes Mrs. Dalloway (1925) • Orlando (1928), masculinity, femininity • • • Jacob’s Room (1922) Mrs. Dalloway (1925) To the Lighthouse (1927) The Waves (1931) Three Guineas (1938) Between the Acts (1941) [posthumous]
A shopping list • Technology—planes, trains, and automobiles? • Sky-writing; ideas of language • Race, class, gender, sexual orientation • Repression and burial; return of consciousness • The double—Dr. Jekyll, Dostoevsky’s “The Double” • Presence of war, for Dalloway and for Smith • As “war novel” • Unfulfilled characters, concealed relationships • Peter, Evans, Sally • Changing perspectives: “eye” versus “I”
Constructing England • Peter’s idea of war (50 -52) • Idea of “civilization” post World War I • British citizens abroad, reimagining nation • Expatriates in London • Old England re-membered • Septimus’ story, entry into war, idea of the war (84 -87; 86) • Poet • Disillusionment • Rupert Brooke, Wilfred Owens even? • Psychoanalysis
Repression and Release • Eros and Thanatos • Erotic longing, sexuality; desire for the end, violence, aggression • Creation and destruction • Latent death wish vs. Septimus’ statement that he will kill himself • Flames as symbol for both Clarissa and Septimus • Drowning as release, suffocation • Clarissa’s dress • Repression—memories, trauma, fears • Return of the buried self, consciousness
Reflections and refractions • Five years after the war, 1923 • Day in June—Like James Joyce’s Ulysses; Woolf’s reception of Joyce’s text • Constructing character of Clarissa, shifting perspectives, “not this” and “not that” • Third person omniscient narrator; free indirect discourse with limited omniscience (learned from Joyce) • Dichotomies within the text • Movement between attraction to solitude and connection to others • Angst and delight • Death as solitude or embrace? • Uses of memory—for Clarissa, for Septimus
Playing parts • No body, in memory with Peter—her dress, “something floating”: Nobody? • Must be completed by others because she is not real, a symbol • Idea of voyeurism—Clarissa in London; characters viewing Clarissa; Ellie at party • Insights come from watching others • Clarissa enacts his death • Actress all along
Writing as revision • “The Hours” as working title • Differences in manuscript, with ending: Clarissa’s suicide as double plot; madness/sanity split • Party to end with her death: • “Eight said Big Ben, nine, ten, eleven; and then with a sort of finality, though presumably the strokes were accurately spaced the last no more empathic than the first twelve. . . But Clarissa was gone” • Changes to “For there she was” as symbolic death • http: //litimag. oxfordjournals. org/content/early/2010/06/25/litimag. imq 018. full
Deconstruction • Versions of Clarissa at end; disembodied in last 8 pages, only alive in dialogue, part of conversations but absent (mentioned 32 times after her body disappears) • “Where’s Clarissa? ”: “There she was” • Does she return? • Has the experience changed her view? • Postmodernist absent presence
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