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nobody-cared-then-either · 1 month

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I'm not just trauma. I'm also academics.

Zach Reynolds

Dr. Nancy Chase

December 2, 2010

Engl 3040

Analyzing the Tragedy of Septimus Smith

Captured in Mrs. Dalloway there is a reflection of the socioeconomic structure of early 20th century England, as well as the patriarchal class and imperial ideologies that marked this era in British history. The burden a civilization informed by these ideologies puts on its constituents, both its lower and upper class members included, is of focal importance to the novel, because despite its celebrated achievements in psychology and temporal analysis, “it nevertheless incarnates a critique of Empire and the war, taking the state as the embodiment of patriarchal power, and the upholder of what even Richard Dalloway calls ‘our detestable social system’” (Tambling 58; Woolf 116). Central to this critique is the tragedy of the character Septimus Smith, a literary-minded veteran who survives the war only to succumb to the more subtle violence of imperial social ‘justice.’

The portrayal of Septimus’ ambitions, military service, and mental collapse provokes a sharp Marxist criticism of the classist and imperialistic tendencies of early 20th century England, and creates through its criticism an interpretation of this moment in history that is defined by the opposite discourses of Septimus and the aristocracy that drives him to suicide.

When Septimus is first introduced to the reader, he is described as “pale-faced, beak-nosed . . . with hazel eyes which had that look of apprehension in them which makes complete strangers apprehensive too” (Woolf 14). One cannot help but to label him a lunatic immediately following the passage detailing his hallucination of a sparrow chirping his name and singing in Greek, or his vision of “the dead . . . assembling,” with an unknown man, “Evans . . . behind the railings!” (24-25). In the passage that falls between pages 84 and 86, however, a brief biography is given of Septimus Smith, which informs the reader of his disposition before the war. Here, Septimus is made un-extraordinary as one of “millions of young men called Smith” (84), and characterized in his youth as a typical middle class idealist. He is “on the whole, a border case, neither one thing nor the other, might end with a house at Purley and a motor car, or continue renting apartments in back streets all his life . . .” (84). His experiences are summed up satirically in botanical terms, with Woolf imagining that were a gardener to voyeuristically look on Septimus at this early phase in his life, he would say that the young man, consumed with “such a fire as burns only once in a lifetime” with his love for “Miss Isabel Pole, lecturing . . . upon Shakespeare,” and his passion for “Antony and Cleopatra . . . Shakespeare, Darwin, The History of Civilization, and Bernard Shaw”(85) was flowering into a man ardently moved by his reverence for English society and the legacy of art of which his love Miss Pole was the beautiful embodiment.

So, when it came to war, it’s no surprise that “Septimus was one of the first to volunteer. He went to France to save an England which consisted almost entirely of Shakespeare’s plays and Miss Isabel Pole in a green dress walking in a square” (86). The war changes Septimus though. He faces the traumatizing experience of watching his friend die in front of him, yet he stoically does not mourn his friend, Evans, and is rewarded with a wife, a promising promotion in his career in England, and honors for his military service. Yet these things bring Septimus no contentment; the effects of the war on his personality begin to emerge, and he finds upon opening Shakespeare again that what mattered to him before the war, the “business of the intoxication of language – Antony and Cleopatra – had shriveled utterly” (88). Septimus exits the war with his idealism atrophied; but even worse, his connection to civilization is severed:

“He looked at people outside; happy they seemed, collecting in the middle of the street, shouting, laughing, squabbling over nothing. But he could not taste, he could not feel. In the tea-shop among the tables and the chattering waiters the appalling fear came over him – he could not feel” (87-88).

So disillusioned does Septimus become that he no longer can make the association of beautiful Miss Pole to the arts; rather he finds “the message hidden in the beauty of words . . . is loathing, hatred, despair” (88); and “human beings,” he observes, “have neither kindness, nor faith, nor charity . . . They hunt in packs . . . scour the desert and vanish screaming into the wilderness. They desert the fallen” (89). Compared to the idealistic youth who fell in love with Miss Pole, the post-war Septimus is a different person entirely, and suddenly there is an explanation for the lunatic introduced to the reader several pages earlier in the novel with his hallucinations of a man named “Evans.”

Following the detailed deterioration of Septimus’ mind comes his interaction with two different doctors, each a member of the English aristocracy; they are Dr. Holmes and Sir William Bradshaw. Septimus meets with these men at the request of his wife to receive diagnosis and treatment for his nervous breakdown. Coming from the proletariat places Septimus immediately in a position that is submissive to the bourgeoisie doctors Holmes and Bradshaw; it also puts his mental collapse into a context that allows for a Marxist interpretation of how his role in society has caused his neurosis to develop. In Dr. Holmes, Septimus first encounters the discourse of the English aristocracy, and finds to his disgust that it is a language informed by oppressive classist and patriarchal values that are ignorant of or deny the basic emotional needs that, not being met, are at the heart of Septimus’ mental breakdown.

In the passage written from Holmes’ point of view, the Smith’s are portrayed in condescending language that serves to communicate their lesser social rank and Dr. Holmes supposed superiority as a member of the bourgeois. He speaks down to his patient as one would to a child, and invokes the privilege of his rank as a doctor and aristocrat to force his way into the Smith’s home when his entry is refused by Septimus: “Did he indeed?” said Dr. Holmes, smiling agreeably. Really he had to give that charming little lady, Mrs. Smith, a friendly push before he could get past her into her husband’s bedroom” (91-92). In another example, Dr. Holmes belittles Septimus’ illness by telling him that “there [is] nothing whatever the matter” (90) with him, and suggests hobbies he could take up to distract himself, rather than offering any real medical advice. Patronizing Septimus’ illness as mere neuroticism is Dr. Holmes first step to establishing his superiority to Smith. In his second visit, a response to the patient’s talk of suicide, he invokes the patriarchal mores of male programming, and scolds Septimus for giving his wife “a very odd idea of English husbands” (91), implicating him as guilty of failing in both his duties to stoicism and patriotism as a male and a veteran.

In his failure to conform to typical male programming, Erika Baldt sees an applicability of Julia Kristeva’s definition of abjection to Septimus’ situation. Kristeva defines abjection as “the ambivalent, the border where exact limits between same and other, subject and object, and even beyond these, between inside and outside, [are] disappearing—hence an Object of fear and fascination" (qtd. in Baldt 14). Kristeva goes on to say that “at the limit, if someone personifies abjection without assurance of purification, it is a woman, ‘any woman’” (qtd. 14). Therefore, Septimus, for suffering from shell-shock, a form of hysteria, which was considered a feminine “extreme of emotion,” is seen as deviant because he does not comply with the “exact limits” of masculinity, and thus is deemed a “traitor to [his] sex” (Baldt 14). Just from his encounter with Dr. Holmes, then, Septimus is labeled as a deviant and potential threat to society. In addition, implied through the portrayal of traditionally feminine qualities in a male character, there is in the text a discourse of opposition to the biological essentialism that defined gender roles at the turn of the 19th century conflicting directly with a misogynistic and patriarchal discourse that is part of the discourse of the British Empire.

Further critique of the Empire comes out of Septimus’ encounter with Dr. Holmes in regard to the injustice of the war. It is, in fact, the callousness of his society that, internalized in Septimus, has caused his mental collapse – his interior monologue in reaction to Holmes’ insistence that nothing is wrong with him reveals this plainly: “So there was no excuse; nothing whatever the matter, except the sin for which human nature had condemned him to death; that he did not feel. He had not cared when Evans was killed; that was worst . . .” (91). It is this lack of remorse, which, because it is felt at the core of Septimus’ society and has been instilled in him through honors, through decoration as a war hero, that he has his nervous breakdown. This drives his guilt and drives him to condemn himself, and by extension, condemn the society that has instilled in him such callousness. As one critic aptly points out in his analysis, “This kind of satire on the author's part surely reveals the point of the outstanding irony in Smith's continuous self-condemnation of himself for his inability to feel. For it is precisely because he can feel that he is in such difficulty, and at such odds with society” (Samuelson 66). Having witnessed the devastation of war, in particular Evans’ death, places Septimus in the difficult and isolating position of knowing the truth of the war that is denied by the bellicose rationalization of leaders (embodied in Dr. Holmes, and later Bradshaw) who never saw the front line and dictated the terms of the war from the relative safety of their homes. Thus, “Septimus, appalled and revolted by the patriotic lies by which his fellow Londoners transform collective murder into "pleasurable . . . emotion" and himself into a war hero, is diagnosed as mad” (Froula 147).

At his encounter with Sir William Bradshaw, Septimus has worked up to his most vehement critique of his society. “Once you fall,” he says to himself, “human nature is on you. Holmes and Bradshaw are on you. They scour the desert . . . The rack and thumbscrew are applied. Human nature is remorseless” (Woolf 98). Indeed, the conflict between imperial discourse and humane discourse is at its most vehement in this encounter too. It is also worth nothing that the narrator sympathizes strongly with Septimus Smith when, for instance, she criticizes the real motivation behind Bradshaw’s socially celebrated benevolence:

“Sir William would travel sixty miles or more down into the country to visit the rich, the afflicted, who could afford the very large fee which Sir William very properly charged for his advice . . . Her ladyship waited [in the car] with the rugs about her knees . . . thinking . . . of the wall of gold mounting minute by minute while she waited . . .” (94).

The portrayal of Sir William that follows in the remainder of the passage is equally satirizing, invoking Septimus’ discourse of anti-classism and overall cynicism. This becomes apparent again especially when Sir William says that “he never spoke of ‘madness’; he called it not having a sense of proportion” (96). After which he invokes his power as a doctor and knight and makes Septimus’ case a matter of law, ‘prescribing’ him rest and isolation, as per the norm of the medicalized society of early 20th century Britain, when this is actually equivalent to a death sentence for Septimus. For Bradshaw, however, the rest cure – or isolation and quarantine to put it more plainly – is the only recourse for deviant cases such as the Smith case. Though it is disguised, this is actually a reaction of fear; “The discourse of the lunatics, who lack what Sir Bradshaw euphemistically refers to as a sense of proportion, threatens to undermine the strength of the British Empire, already in danger at the historical moment of the novel . . . the insane threaten to contaminate the "sane" who uphold and submit to the order of the Empire” (Smith 18). In other words, the discourse of the “insane” Septimus, who recognizes the impersonal treatment of Evans as a crime, must be suppressed.

Thus, Bradshaw, “worshipping proportion . . . not only prospered himself but made England prosper, secluded her lunatics, forbade childbirth, penalised despair, made it impossible for the unfit to propagate their views until they, too, shared his sense of proportion” (Woolf 99). Just as Septimus views the rest cure as a sentence rather than a treatment, so apparently does the narrator. It is a means used to silence the unruly “lunatic” who questions the established social order and the callousness of his society. This more violent side of proportion the narrator embodies as its sister: “Conversion is her name and she feasts on the wills of the weakly, loving to impress, to impose, adoring her own features stamped on the face of the populace” (100). Calling to mind images of colonialism in Africa, in India, and around the world, the word “conversion” finally sums up Septimus’ and the narrator’s view of imperial England. Through criticizing the figures in the novel who most symbolize the top of the power structure in England, the policies of the English state are criticized, both for their brutality within the country and without.

Ironically, Septimus is condemned by Bradshaw and Holmes not because he cannot feel, but because he feels too much. While the socially prescribed norm values stoicism and blind patriotism, he nevertheless can’t help but to feel repulsed by the lack of humanity in such values. Indeed, “Septimus is in many ways more sane than the "civilized" society to which he returns” (Henry 233). Septimus is not the only character in the novel to recognize his society is insane, however. Speaking of Mrs. Dalloway, Woolf herself states in the introduction to one of the early editions of her novel that “Septimus, who later is intended to be her double, had no existence; and that Mrs. Dalloway was originally to kill herself, or perhaps merely to die at the end of the party” (qtd. in Samuelson 60). Though the two characters never meet, it can be observed that Clarissa does share some of the same emotional qualities that Septimus has, if only to a lesser extent. She knows nothing of the war, and the trauma that it has inflicted on Septimus’ mind, for example, but she shares in his oppression by the patriarchal ideology of imperial England. She expresses her awareness of being so oppressed most keenly with her intense dislike of Sir Bradshaw, judging him “a great doctor yet to her obscurely evil, without sex or lust . . . but capable of some indescribably outrage – forcing your soul, that was it –“ (Woolf 184-85).

Most importantly, Clarissa Dalloway becomes the receiving vessel of Septimus’ message in her empathetic vision of his suicide and death. Faced with confinement, Septimus finally throws himself out of a window before the approaching Holmes can deliver him to Bradshaw for conversion into a yielding imperial pawn through the abuses of the rest treatment. “Lone witness of a reality that everyone around him denies, Septimus . . . suffers, owns, and tries to bear witness to his civilization's "appalling crime" but is finally forced to reenact it through a death that he expects to be read--a death that he offers as a gift, and that the narrative insulates from dismissal as madness” (Froula 149-50). Though he is “pushed” to suicide, Septimus also “jumps” (150). His final act is an act of defiance that through her empathetic vision Clarissa is capable of reading into, and even fantasizing about, before withdrawing back into the insulating world of her upper class marriage and submissive status as Richard Dalloway’s wife. Ultimately, Clarissa can’t die because as a part of the bourgeois, her life is valued more and thus insulated, doubly so because she is a female and deemed feeble by her patriarchal society.

Septimus, on the other hand, is born into the proletariat and is expendable. Even so, the meaning of Septimus’ life is not lost on Clarissa, and more importantly, can not be overlooked by the reader:

“If Clarissa's elegy for Septimus is inadequate to arraign the world before the truths it brands madness, Mrs. Dalloway captures his message within its fictional bounds for the world beyond them. Not Clarissa but we readers receive (or not) the message of Septimus's death, the costs of the war he names a "crime," the measure of what his life means to him, the infinite possibilities of his unfurling days” (151).

Thus, though Septimus exists in an isolated world apart from the superficial reality that every other character in the novel except for him resides in, his tragedy affects them all. Clarissa recognizes how in death, Septimus has preserved through his suicide “a thing . . . that mattered; a thing, wreathed about with chatter, defaced, obscured in her own life, let drop every day in corruption, lies, chatter” (Woolf 184). This thing may be his individuality, which he is unwilling to compromise to the tune of Bradshaw’s idols “Proportion” and “Conversion,” or it may be his message to a future generation to “resist,” to “defy.” Either way, Septimus’ conflict with the society that expels him represents the turmoil of his society as it quietly grieves the catastrophe of the war while stoically denying that it has taken any injury. The discourse of Septimus’ “madness” pitted against that of Dr. Holmes and Sir William Bradshaw in Mrs. Dalloway captures the tension between the patriarchal force of the dying imperial empire and the rising class discontent and interest in socialism in the early 20th century. His tragedy, in addition to questioning the established classifications of sanity and insanity, helps new historians to understand how some of the traditional and subversive discourses of this age in England interacted.

Works Cited

Baldt, Erika. "Abjection as Deviance in Mrs. Dalloway." Virginia Woolf Miscellany 70.(2006): 13-15. MLA International Bibliography. EBSCO. Web. 14 Nov. 2010.

Froula, Christine. “Mrs. Dalloway’s Postwar Elegy: Women, War, and the Art of Mourning.” Modernism/Modernity 9.1 (2002): 125-163. Project Muse. 14 November 2010. Web.

Henry, Holly. "Woolf & The War." English Literature in Transition, 1880-1920 44.2 (2001): 231-235. Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Web. 2 Dec. 2010.

Samuelson, Ralph. “The Theme of Mrs. Dalloway.” Chicago Review 11.4 (Winter, 1958): 57-76. JSTOR. Web. 02 Dec. 2010

Smith, Amy. "Bad Religion: The Irrational in Mrs. Dalloway." Virginia Woolf Miscellany 70.(2006): 17-18. MLA International Bibliography. EBSCO. Web. 15 Nov. 2010

Tambling, Jeremy. “Repression in Mrs Dalloway’s London.” Essays in Criticism 39 (April 1989): 137-155. Print Copy

Woolf, Virginia. Mrs. Dalloway. London: Harcourt, Inc., 1925. Print.

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bookalooza · 3 months

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Female Voices in Literature: Celebrating Empowering Women Authors Every Student Should Read

In the rich tapestry of literature, female voices have contributed significantly, offering unique perspectives, compelling narratives, and profound insights. Students need to explore the works of empowering women authors whose words resonate with strength, resilience, and a celebration of womanhood. This article delves into the literary realm, highlighting women authors whose contributions have left an indelible mark on the literary landscape.

Introduction

A. The Importance of Female Voices

The literary world is enriched by its diverse voices, and female authors bring a distinct perspective that deserves recognition. Celebrating these voices is an acknowledgement of their talent and an exploration of the various narratives that shape our understanding of the world.

B. Empowerment Through Literature

The power of literature lies in its ability to empower and inspire. Through their works, female authors empower readers by addressing societal norms, challenging stereotypes, and offering narratives that resonate with women's experiences.

Empowering Women Authors, Every Student Should Read

A. Maya Angelou

Autobiography of a Diverse Life

Maya Angelou's autobiographical works, including "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings," provide a poignant exploration of race, identity, and resilience. Her prose and poetry illuminate the complexities of being a woman of color in America.

B. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Feminism and African Identity

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, with novels like "Half of a Yellow Sun" and "Purple Hibiscus," explores the intersection of feminism and African identity. Her narratives challenge stereotypes while offering a nuanced portrayal of the female experience.

C. Toni Morrison

Unraveling the African American Experience

Toni Morrison's masterpieces, such as "Beloved" and "Song of Solomon," delve into the African American experience, weaving tales of strength, resilience, and the impact of historical injustices on women. Her prose is both lyrical and powerful.

D. Virginia Woolf

Stream of Consciousness and Feminist Perspectives

Virginia Woolf's innovative use of stream-of-consciousness writing in works like "Mrs. Dalloway" and "To the Lighthouse" explores the inner lives of women. Her feminist perspectives and literary experimentation make her a key figure in modernist literature.

E. Jane Austen

Social Commentary and Feminine Agency

Jane Austen's novels, including "Pride and Prejudice" and "Emma," provide insightful social commentary and depict women exercising agency in a society that often limited their choices. Her wit and satire continue to resonate with readers.

F. J.K. Rowling

Empowering Through Fantasy

J.K. Rowling, with the "Harry Potter" series, not only captivates with magical storytelling but also empowers through themes of friendship, courage, and the strength of the female characters like Hermione Granger.

The Impact of Female Voices on Literary Canon

A. Shaping Cultural Narratives

The works of these empowering women authors have played a crucial role in shaping cultural narratives, challenging societal norms, and fostering a deeper understanding of the diverse experiences of women.

B. Expanding Perspectives

Students gain a broader perspective on the human experience by including female voices in the literary canon. Exposure to varied narratives contributes to empathy, tolerance, and a more inclusive worldview.

Integrating Female Authors into Educational Curricula

A. Diverse Reading Lists

Educational curricula should embrace diversity by incorporating works by female authors from different backgrounds and periods. Diverse reading lists contribute to a more comprehensive understanding of literature.

B. Encouraging Critical Analysis

Students should be encouraged to critically analyse the themes, characters, and societal commentary present in the works of female authors. This fosters a deeper appreciation for the impact of diverse voices on literature.

Conclusion

A. The Continued Relevance of Female Voices

In conclusion, celebrating empowering women authors in literature is a nod to their historical significance and an acknowledgement of their continued relevance. These voices continue to inspire, challenge, and shape the literary landscape for future generations.

B. Empowering Readers Through Words

Empowering women authors contributes not only to literature but also to readers' empowerment. Their words have the potential to instil a sense of strength, resilience, and understanding, making them essential reads for every student.

Publish your book now at www.bookalooza.com/newbook

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vagueandominousvibes · 2 years

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A couple of days ago, in a seminar on Franz Kafka, our lecturer said something that stuck with me: "We didn't have a choice in being born, so we have to learn to deal with the world"

Seeing the world in its current state, our lecturer's words don't seem all that optimistic. And yet I found them oddly comforting

I've thought about it, and I think this is why I found them so comforting:

My parents chose to have a child, and that child turned out to be me

They decided to shelter me, to make sure I didn't have to deal with the world — with politics, with activist movements, with everything that requires critical thinking — they were always supposed to be my wall of defence, and chew and digest the world for me

As a young adult, I've struggled to deal with the world. I hide. I'm scared and anxious and terrified of making mistakes and disappointing the people around me

I don't know how to "deal with the world"

But if this is something that can be learned — a skill, like knitting or drawing or skiing — then there's still hope

There's still a chance for me to learn — to write that book, to open that online bookshop, to get that apartment with that little kitchen and those green plants, to get that Norwegian Forest Cat and that Bernese Mountain Dog, to learn to bake red velvet cake, to make my own holiday traditions closer aligned with my own beliefs and values, to host exchange students, to create a home where nobody has to hide parts of themselves for fear of losing love and respect

There's still a chance for me to build a life I love

Kafka's The Trial is a pre-existential text. There's many ways to read it, but I'd like to emphasise this: the topic of change and resultant confusion

Most readings assume that Josef K, the protagonist, is in the right, and that the society around him is in the wrong — that Josef K is an anchor point of normalcy in a text of absurdity

But an existential reading does away with this assumption. An existential reading focuses on the difference — on Josef K's confusion, on his refusing to understand the people around him, on his refusing to accept the social laws

My partner suggested this could be read as neurodivergence, and I did also consider it. However, while it would be immensely meaningful to neurodivergent people to have that kind of representation, I'm hesitant to apply such a reading for two reasons:

I don't know enough about Kafka as a person, or his other works, to write that analysis;

and it would limit the understanding we gain of general life in Kafka's time period, if we assume that Josef K's confusion only represents neurodivergent confusion (I'm saying this as someone who's probably also somewhere on the scale of neurodivergence)

What we do know, is that Kafka was writing into the modernist tradition, in the early 20th century, between WWI and WWII. Modernist literature is confusing. It's absurd. Just look at James Joyce's Ulysses, Virginia Woolf's Mrs Dalloway, or Samuel Beckett's plays. Kafka might not be writing stream-of-consciousness, but he's still firmly grounded in Josef K's experience of reality, and that reality is as confusing and absurd as Joyce and Woolf's texts sometimes are

It's generally accepted that this is a reflection of the political and economical changes in the early 20th century. The world was changing quickly and radically from what it had been in the late 19th century. Social structures and social laws had to change to accommodate the new normalcy that was emerging, and to those who were used to what was before, this may very well have been a challenge. They may very well have been confused and refused to accept or understand that the world worked differently to how they had been told it would

I've seen people jokingly (and not so jokingly) compare 2016 and onwards to the early 20th century, but I don't think it's too far off

If we understand Kafka's time period to be one of quick and radical change, and of confusion, then I think we see some of that in our own time — at least for those of us in our mid-twenties or older. We were born into a world that promised us something different, and now we have to learn to deal with what we actually got

It's not necessarily pleasant. It's not necessarily straight-forward. Like Josef K struggles to accept the world around him, we might struggle to accept the world around us. Maybe "accept" isn't the right word in this context, because there are things we shouldn't have to accept. But acceptance of the situation as it is is the first step towards healing. When we know what we're dealing with, we can make the changes we want and need

And maybe that's the key to The Trial, to a world in upheaval: to learn to deal with the world, to get where we want, we have to first accept that this is how it is right now

#personal #kalh is on the loose #franz kafka #the trial #literary analysis

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mittai · 2 years

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thoughts on modernism vs postcolonialism?

tysm for the ask!! so this analysis is primarily derived from the two novels i was talking about, Chronicle of a Death Foretold and Mrs Dalloway, but from what i've read, it seems to be a larger pattern. modernism & post-colonialism are both concerned with both the human condition and the society it's operating in. both genres are very much responding to their historical context. however, modernism's approach is far more aloof – it seeks to eschew typical victorian ideas of characters and plot. it almost seems to be trying to photograph, in its own way, the human condition, or at least a case of it, and developing new experimental styles and forms to do so in the industrial age (not to be confused with traditional realism, however).

conversely, post-colonialism seems to operate with far more urgency. postcolonial literature rarely allows for detachment on behalf of the reader – not to say they necessary bludgeon characters with a hardline moral or message, but rather weave more intrinsic questions / problems / paradoxes into their text which are in a sense placed in the lap of the reader as if to say – you grapple with this social issue.

modernism conversely is primarily concerned with realistically representing society, often through surreal forms (connected to their opinion that the rapidly industrializing world they lived in was itself surreal in many ways – note postcolonial authors have similar concerns of representing a world that is truly surreal in a sense, citation: Gabriel García Márquez's nobel prize speech). however, while modernist literature is more explicitly self-aware and self-conscious (including its characters, who are deeply introspective, and whose thoughts are made explicit alongside imagery and description), post-colonialism is deeply concerned with change and specifically interaction with the reader, rather than the static representation of photography.

this is also why i feel clarice lispector has almost modernist tendencies. as one of the better literary critics on lispector, earl e. fitz, points out, lispector's characters often grapple with language as a means to self-actualize, and often fail, falling into some sort of silence. her novels often follow similar structures – grappling with the form of language in an attempt to represent reality (which also leads to her prose being quite experimental). the novel's failure to do so, to reach that actualization of a reality, is in fact the point of them. fitz points out that lispector's works often (paraphrasing here) focus on positing the world and reflecting on reality as it is.

in comparison, post-colonialism is rarely content to be static. for example, in CoDF, there is a constant paradox the narrator, the town, and the reader are simultaneously grappling with. the paradox isn't resolved, but is enough of a focal point, and has enough direction and a concrete enough form that is explored in the novel, to not simply conclude with a generalized "failure" to resolve the problem.

#02 #lit #mira.mp3 #disclaimer my thoughts not fact etc #im sorry this is so long-winded i'd edit it down but i'm too lazy so you get 500 words containing 50 words' worth of info <3 #i added paragraph breaks thats it #annotations

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mamondae-blog · 6 years

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Shannon Gitte Diaz

Bibliography Entry:

Publication date: 1999

Publisher: ST MARTINS PRESS

Author: Michael Cunningham

Genre: Literary Fiction

Retrieved from http://www.powells.com/book/the-hours-9780312243029/18-0

Introduction:

Michael Cunningham was raised in Los Angeles and lives in New York City. He is the author of the novels A Home at the End of the World (Picador) and Flesh and Blood. His work has appeared in The New Yorker and Best American Short Stories, and he is the recipient of a Whiting Writer's Award. The Hours was a New York Times Bestseller, and was chosen as a Best Book of 1998 by The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and Publishers Weekly. It won the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, the 1999 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, and was later made into an Oscar-winning 2002 movie of the same name starring Nicole Kidman, Meryl Streep and Julianne Moore.

Summary:

After opening on a melancholy note with Virginia Woolf's willful death by drowning, The Hours branches out into three interconnected plotlines.

In one plotline, Clarissa Vaughan—a middle-aged book editor living in 1990s New York—gets ready to throw a party. A beloved friend of hers is about to be awarded a distinguished literary prize, and Clarissa is arranging a private celebration where he'll be congratulated by supporters and close personal friends. Clarissa's friend Richard Brown is dying from HIV/AIDS-related illnesses, and when Clarissa checks in on him in the late morning, she can tell that he's having one of his bad days. When she comes back later to help him get dressed for the party, things take a tragic turn: Richard slides himself out of a fifth-story window and is killed. Rather than throwing a party for Richard, Clarissa now finds herself making arrangements for his funeral. In the last hours of the evening, she collects Richard's elderly mother, Laura Brown, and offers her a late-night meal.

In another plotline, that same Laura Brown is still a young woman living in a sunny, pristine suburb of Los Angeles. She wakes on the morning of her husband's birthday and eventually musters up the energy to get out of bed and face the day. Throughout the morning, Laura and her three-year-old son, Richie, make a birthday cake together. It doesn't turn out as Laura hoped, and after receiving an unexpected visit from a neighbor, Laura dumps the cake in the garbage and starts again. In the afternoon, Laura leaves Richie with a neighbor for a few hours so that she can "run some errands," by which we mean she steals away for a few hours so that she can enjoy some rare time alone. Laura checks herself into a hotel, then curls up to read Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway. Back at home that evening; Laura presides over her husband's birthday dinner. Later, once Richie is asleep, she and her husband get ready to head to bed. As Laura fiddles around in the bathroom, she thinks about how easy it would be to swallow a fatal number of sleeping pills and slip away from her life.

In the novel's third plotline, Virginia Woolf wakes up with an idea for the first line of a novel. After getting some coffee and checking in with her husband, she spends the morning drafting the first pages of the book that will eventually become Mrs. Dalloway. In the afternoon, Virginia takes a walk and ponders her heroine's fate. Back at home, she lends a hand in the printing room, where her husband, Leonard, is preparing another book for publication. Virginia is expecting a visit from her sister, niece, and nephews, and soon the clan arrives. The children have found an injured bird in the yard, and before they all come inside, Virginia helps them to make a little deathbed for the creature. In the early evening, after her extended family members are gone, Virginia slips outside for another walk. She heads toward the train station with a half-baked plan to run off to London for a few hours. She buys a ticket, and then decides to walk around the block while she waits for the next train to arrive. As she does, she sees Leonard coming toward her. Playing it cool, she keeps her plans to herself and walks home. Back at home, as bedtime approaches, Virginia makes a final decision about her novel. Instead of killing off her heroine, Mrs. Dalloway, she decides that "a deranged poet, a visionary" will die instead.

Critical Analysis:

It was indeed that this novel was a great novel of all time as it was a recipient of a lot of award. After reading the summary of the said novel, the curiosity of mine upon how this novel was considered as the novel of all time and how this novel was a recipient of a lot of award in America has been answered as the technicality of the author, how great the interconnection was presented in every plotline. One story with three interconnected plotlines is quite a tricky thing to use considering the great outcome and sacrificing your name in one novel is an enormous thing to be noted. The story gives a lot of moral lessons as it tackles a lot of social issue such as the LGBT and also the HIV/AIDS victim. The story had this moral lesson to those writers who didn’t have this chance to be a productive in their field of expertise because of lack of confidence. The novel is very technical in a way that the author used a plot twist and a surprise thingy to his reader. This story will tell how great Michael Cunningman is and how talented he is in the field of literary writing.

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rottenappleusach · 7 years

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Psychoanalytic Dualism of Mrs. Dalloway´s characters

José Garrido Geraldine Lara Virginia Woolf’s ‘‘Mrs. Dalloway’’ portrays an interesting post World War I society in which characters are being constantly influenced by the consequences of this historical event. Not only are the changes imposed by governments shaping our characters’ minds and personalities, but also the development of their own internal world. How they metabolize the direct or indirect exposition to death of that period is going to be an important process to the self of the beings. As we have to deal with these factors of the conscious and unconscious of the mind, it results wise to psychoanalyze the characters’ behaviour in order to comprehend and illustrate more profoundly certain interpretations. Through Freud’s ‘‘Beyond the Pleasure Principle’’ we are going to understand the instinctive drives manifested in Clarissa Dalloway and Septimus Warren, which represent a relationship of dualism that clarifies the Freudian notions of Thanatos and Eros....

Through years, different types of criticism has been created in order to analyse literature in an effective way, this is to say, avoiding fallacies. One important school is Psychoanalysis that maintains the main characteristics that Freud has studied. Psychoanalytic literary criticism is understood as a tool that helps us discover and understand the reflection of the author’s most hidden desires and anxieties that are repressed by the conscious mind, inside a particular text. Freud, at first, bonded all human behaviour to the sexual instinct (‘‘Eros’’), but he realised that there was also another human natural instinct as a counterpart of the previous: the death drive (‘‘Thanatos’’). This way, the dichotomy between self-preservation and self-destruction is proposed as a constant identity struggle that, in literature, commonly ends with one of the two sides triumphing.

Jacques Lacan also refers to this idea that postulated Freud, but he centres the idea of psychoanalysis in four different perspectives: The Drive, the Unconscious, Repetition Compulsion and Transference. For our essay, the different conceptions of drive are important, thus are necessary to clarify. The notion of drive differs from Freud’s, in that Lacan’s drive is not a mean to accomplish satisfaction but to circle round the object, creating a repetitive enjoyable movement. Furthermore, Lacan’s drive presents a dual bond between the symbolic and the imaginary and not in opposition, both belonging to the same type of drive. As to Lacan drive is excessive and repetitive, all drives are destructive, so part of the Thanatos.

The death drive (Thanatos) pursues the self returning to an inorganic state, and as Julia Kristeva implies in her work ‘‘Black Sun’’, ‘‘he [Freud] considers the death drive as an intrapsychic manifestation of a phylogenetic going back to inorganic matter. Nevertheless… it is possible to note… the strength of the disintegration of bonds within several psychic structures and manifestations. Furthermore, the presence of masochism, the presence of negative therapeutic reaction… prompt one to accept the idea of a death drive that, … would destroy movements and bonds’’ (Kristeva 16-17). Here we notice that this perception indicates that there are two different death drives, one in the psyche manifested to the outside as a violent instinct, and the other manifested to the inner self, self-destructive. This last one can result in an accumulation and cultivation of death drive, and Kristeva questions if this process could be erotized by the self, being implicitly part of the pleasure principle and leading to a constant change of the satisfaction object.

Freud’s concepts of Thanatos and Eros are present in the characters of ‘‘Mrs. Dalloway’’ since they behave according to inner forces that propel them to do so. In the case of Septimus Warren Smith, it is important to say that he is a veteran soldier that is shell-shocked by the impact of World War I because one friend of his, Evans, was killed there and Septimus saw it. Before the war, he was a normal person and he liked poetry. But after that he became a numb person. Moreover he is becoming mad and has different kinds of hallucinations. At the time of the story, Septimus and his wife Lucrezia are waiting for a doctor in an apartment, who is going to treat Septimus’ problems. They both pass through a very lovely moment but then Septimus throws himself out the window and dies.

First, Freud’s Thanatos is highly related to the death instinct and to the self-destruction of the person. This is explicitly clear at the end of the work with Septimus death. Second, this sudden personality change after war is related to the Unconscious mind, proposed by Lacan, in which the repressed feelings change the way in which a person behaves. Also this is shown in the form of automatic thoughts that are the ones that appear without any apparent cause, which are represented by the desire of death at the end of the story. Moreover, the Lacan’s Repetition Compulsion concept is also present since, as the name says, Septimus repeated in his mind several things that happened in the war that made him feel distressed to the point he turns mad and suffers hallucinations which are also an important behavioural characteristic of this kind of phenomenon. This character present an extreme case of cultivation of death drive, and Kristeva’s notion of erotization of it seems possible as Septimus is always looking for the pleasure and liberation of death, re-encountering with his dead friend.

In the case of Clarissa Dalloway, Freud’s Eros is dominant. She had a strong relation with the life instinct. It has to do with solidarity and true love. Also she tries to relate people with each other because it is a pleasure for her, and this can be seen in the fact that she is giving a party to a high number of people.

“Every time she gave a party she had this feeling of being something not herself, and that everyone was unreal in one way; much more real in another. It was, she thought, partly their clothes, partly being taken out of their ordinary ways, partly the background, it was possible to say things you couldn't say anyhow else, things that needed an effort; possible to go much deeper” (Virginia Woolf, 134).

However, Clarissa is also affected by the World War I since she saw her sister being killed, so two of the Four fundamental principles of Lacan are present: Transference and the Drive Theory. The first is related to the reproduction of emotions related to past events since she constantly sees the changes that the war brings to society, and more importantly, she every now and then thinks about her sister. The second one is related to a negative state of tension created when some psychological needs are not satisfied. This is shown in the work through the Clarissa’s pessimistic way of seeing things because she is mostly interested in her own social gratification.

To contrast the ideas of different literary analytic schools, we want to talk about the Marxist criticism. The relation between this with Psychoanalysis is that both look for information inside the text but the difference is that Marxism tries to see things that exist outside the text represented in it, whereas Psychoanalysis tries to look for inner things that happen inside individuals represented in the work. Then, “Mrs. Dalloway” can also be analysed from a Marxist point of view: Clarissa Dalloway is disinterested with the “Eros” conception, but she behave in that specific way because of the individuals’ roles inside the society in which she is immersed where she is somehow obligated to do certain things. On the other hand, Septimus is mentally different to the rest of the society and he cannot comply with the personal established roles inside it, so he cannot find a viable alternative for the curse of his life because he has been rejected by his peers.

These ideas can be exemplified in Eagleton’s chapter “Form and Content”. Special attention is put to the form, meaning, and style of the work where context is important since it determines the way in which the story is understood. It is important to notice the society in which this story takes place has an established ideology, defined as “forms of social consciousness” (Eagleton 3), about the social roles of people. As context determines form, which is understood as “a complex unity of at least three elements: . . . literary history of forms, . . . certain dominant ideological structures, and . . . relations between author and audience” (Eagleton 12); both characters can be analysed from this perspective. Clarissa is a woman that behaves according to the dominant ideology of the period of time in which she is living, that the reader will understand if he/she is aware of the context. Although she feels the oppression of society, she is still part of the world she constantly critiques. Besides, Septimus is obviously affected by the World War I and it triggered a behavioural change in him. When the reader knows that, he/she can understand why he behaves in the way he does, because it contradicts the dominant ideology of that time since he is labelled as a mad man.

To conclude, it is important to understand that Psychoanalysis covers different areas of the conscious and unconscious of the mind, taking always beings and their internal worlds as the main object of study. The human instinctive deciphers a major part of characters when we need to analyse them. When a narration does not present tangible characters, we have to notice that the interpretation will focus on the author, who, despite its unwillingness, would reflect its own drive and satisfaction. If the focus of the analysis is not centred in any being but rather epoch, community or social environment, Marxist perspective is always useful to comprehend the outside elements that influence a literary work. Despite we do not mention equilibrium between the Eros and Thanatos in this work, it is always possible. Indeed, a ‘‘normal’’ person would be someone that has reached the equilibrium between these two instinctive desires. In literature, flat (simple) characters are often found with one of both sides more dominant than the other, but it is important to understand that the real world does not work as if it was black or white, nor does round (complex) characters.

Works Cited

Eagleton, Terry. Marxism and Literary criticism. London: Routledge, 2006.

Freud, Sigmund. Beyond the Pleasure Principle. New York: W.W. Norton & Company,

1961.

Kristeva, Julia. Black Sun: Depression and Melancholia. New York: Columbia University

Press, 1989.

Lacan, Jacques. Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis. W.W. Norton, 1998

Woolf, Virginia. Mrs. Dalloway. South Australia: University of Adelaide, 2015

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