William Woolf s Mrs. Dalloway - 1730 Words

Literary traditions often focus on tragedy, whether it be personal, national, or universal. In this way, it gives the characters, author, and reader the reference point of a shared experience upon which to build a literary work. In the case of Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway, this uniting experience was the Great War. The remnants of this conflict can be seen throughout the novel in the lives and experiences of its characters. The integral nature of tragedy in Mrs. Dalloway means that future reimaginings and reframings must also include a uniting tragic event as a means by which to create parallels and show commonalities between characters. Michael Cunningham’s The Hours includes several different timeframes that allow for historical†¦show more content†¦Rezia Warren Smith struggles with her husband’s depression, erratic behavior, and suicidal ideation, who feels adrift in his loss as if her husband no longer exists at all. It is this unmooring that she finds so disconcerting as Septimus is unable to recognize her unhappiness and her loss in the midst of his own. Mrs. Dalloway also feels the echoes of Septimus’s life and death and in doing so confronts the limitations of doctors to treat mental health issues and even thought of her own death or suicide. Throughout the novel there is the impression of things left broken in the wake of war, of a great dissociation for those who have survived as they recognize the absences left by war. Perhaps it is this consciousness of the fractured nature of their lives that is made most evident by Woolf’s constant remembrances of the war. Woolf’s utilization of the tragedy of the Great War as a focal point around which to build the novel necessitates that any reimagining or reframing of Mrs. Dalloway must also include a similarly traumatic event. Cunningham chooses to create a historical restructuring of Mrs. Dalloway by temporally locating it during the AIDS crisis of the 1990s. AIDS troubles characters in a unique way that allows for reflections of Mrs. Dalloway’s themes in a new light. The Hours exposes not only the phenomenon of missing young people, but also remembers â€Å"that those who are now old were once young† (13). This aging is made especiallyShow MoreRelatedThematic Analysis Of The Novel Mrs. Dalloway And The Cannibalist Manifesto `` By Oswald De Andrade1471 Words   |  6 Pagesauthors from various genres of literature with a self-conscious break with the conventional way of writing in prose, plays, and poetry. The major modernist works of Samuel Beckett’s, â€Å"Waiting for Godot,† poem by T. S. Eliot â€Å"The Waste Land,† the novel â€Å"Mrs. Dalloway† by Virginia Woolf and â€Å"The Cannibalist Manifesto† by Oswald de Andrade, could present various themes that characterize the modernist literature including the absurd, alienation, and dislocation in society as it was s een and felt byRead MoreMrs. Dalloway By Virginia Woolf1443 Words   |  6 PagesMrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf examines the lives of a group of socialites in post World War I England. Clarissa Dalloway spent her life suffering from anxiety but was devoted to hiding it from the world. Septimus struggled with shell shock, or post-traumatic stress disorder, that no one could help him with. These people were not only characters in Virginia Woolf’s story, but also a representation of what had been going on in Woolf’s life. She used her own struggle with mental illness as inspirationRead MoreChristianity In Mrs Dalloway1723 Words   |  7 Pages In her essay Modern Fiction, Virginia Woolf stated that all that the artists of the time could be certain of was that â€Å"certain gratitude’s and hostilities inspire us† (158). In order to understand what drove modernists to innovate and create their literature, scholars need to understand what these â€Å"hostilities† are. There where multiple upheavals at the beginning of the twenty first century that resulted in many people feeling disconnected and hopeless about the world they lived in. However, thisRead MoreThe s Reading Process Theory Through The Text Of Mrs Dalloway And. Fought The Queen2398 Words   |  10 PagesDecoding Wolfgang Iser‟s Reading Process Theory through the Text of Mrs Dalloway and Bravely Fought the Queen In the 1960s, the new criticism theory in the American Literary arena focused on the reading of a literary text as an independent form and not to be studied in relation to any context. This gave birth to another theory that began majorly in 1960s and 1970s known as reader response criticism, which also tried to do away with the author‟s role and focused on the reader‟s perception that definedRead MoreAnalysis Of The Novel Mrs. Dalloway Essay1461 Words   |  6 PagesBritish Literature October 2, 2016 Signature Assignment: Mrs. Dalloway In Virginia Woolf’s book Mrs. Dalloway, she describes the different social class rankings in the 1920s and her characters are compared and contrast during this time. In this time period, class was based on your social upbringing and how you made a living. Clarissa is described as an upper class woman, who is high in society and is married to a wealthy man, Richard Dalloway. She is seen in society, as a woman who has a sense of expensiveRead MoreCultural Disenchantment in a Postwar Climate Illustrated in Virginia Woolf’s Novel Mrs. Dalloway2198 Words   |  9 PagesOne of the principal themes in Virginia Woolf’s novel Mrs. Dalloway is the English people’s collective loss of confidence in the state of the British Empire after the First World War. Set in London in the June of 1923, the novel opens at the close of a global war that lasted only four years but cost the United Kingdom more than 100,000 lives and permanently shifted the political boundaries and social world order of its people. Each of the novel’s many characters represent a different aspect ofRead MoreAnalysis the Use of Stream of Consciousness in Mrs Dalloway8784 Words   |  36 PagesAnalysis the use of stream of consciousness in Mrs Dalloway BY Qian Jiajia Prof. Zhang Li, Tutor A Thesis Submitted to Department of English Language and Literature in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the degree of B.A in English At Hebei Normal University May 8th , 2009 Abstract As one of the representative writers of novels of stream of consciousness, Virginia Woolf has made important contributions to the development of the technique of stream of consciousnessRead MoreThe Hours - Film Analysis12007 Words   |  49 PagesVirginia Woolfs works as well as to her biography. In this essay, I shall partly yield to the academic itch to tease out the manifold and sophisticated allusions to the numerous intertexts. My aim, however, is not to point out every single reference to Woolf and her works--such an endeavour of source-hunting would fail alone because of the sheer abundance of intertextual references--and to strip The Hours down until its threads lie bare in front of me, but to take the theories of influence (as voiced,Read MoreDepression Is Not Only A State Of Feeling Sad1150 Words   |  5 Pagesbegins in the teens, 20s or 30s, but it can happen at any age. There are a few ways depression can be diagnosed. The first option are lab tests. For example, a doctor may do a blood test called a complete blood count or test your thyroid to make sure it s functioning properly. Second, is a psychological evaluation. This is when a mental health provider asks about your thoughts, symptoms, and the duration of how long someone has been feeling this way. Lastly, a mental health professional may use the criteriaRead MoreEssay on Expectations in the Movie The Hours3010 Words   |  13 Pagesmovie The Hours Virginia Woolf, the 20th Century British author; Laura Brown, a doted-upon 1951 Los Angeles housewife; and Clarissa Vaughan, a 2001 New York editor; struggle with their gifts and the expectations they, and others, have for themselves. All three women are obsessed with finding the right balance between living, freedom, happiness and love. The Hours attempts to use one day to reflect Woolf s life and the impact her work has had on others. In the movie, Woolf is writing Mrs.Dalloway