An Abstract View of Death in Mrs.Dalloway and The Hours
Works Cited Missing
In Mrs. Dalloway and The Hours contradictory and almost altered views
of death are presented. Virginia Woolf and Michael Cunningham portray
death as escape for some, but an entrapment for others. It is no
longer treated as a subject to worry about or fear, which society now
views it as. A line from Shakespeare's Cymbeline, "Fear no more the
heat o' the sun / Nor the furious winter rages," sums up what the
authors of Mrs. Dalloway and The Hours are trying to convey. Meaning
that death is not something to fear, and life should be lived to the
fullest.
The thought of death streamlines through several character's
narratives in both novels. In Mrs. Dalloway, Clarissa Dalloway and
Septimus Warren Smith are haunted with thoughts of death, while in The
Hours, Richard Brown and Laura Brown also share similar thoughts.
Their feelings on the subject are, however, different. It can also be
said that their motives for dying or wanting to die are also quite
different.
The characters' thoughts, feelings, and reasons of death bring about
parallel relationships between the two novels. Septimus Warren Smith,
in my opinion, parallels Richard Brown. The most common fact between
them is that they are both the only people that actually die in their
respective story. They share a similar feeling toward death, in that
they both want to use it as an escape. They have very different
reasons why they choose suicide, yet they commit it in similar
fashions. Septimus is suffering from post traumatic stress syndrome,
due to his stint in World War I, which has caused him to loose al...
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...s and love in both women's lives.
Death becomes multifaceted through the analysis of these novels. The
authors of Mrs. Dalloway and The Hours have created new definitions of
what it means to die. Septimus uses death for relief, escape, and
conservation. Richard also uses death as conservation, but also
revenge on his estranged mother Laura. Clarissa sees Septimus' death
as an awakening and a chance to start over. Laura however uses death
as an alternative to running away from it all. Death is no longer just
the ending to a life. It's a mean of preservation, escape, and
awakening. "Death was defiance. Death was an attempt to communicate;
people feeling the impossibility of reaching the centre which,
mystically, evaded them; closeness drew apart; rapture faded, one was
alone. There was an embrace in death" (Woolf 184).
... seeing and feeling it’s renewed sense of spring due to all the work she has done, she was not renewed, there she lies died and reader’s find the child basking in her last act of domestication. “Look, Mommy is sleeping, said the boy. She’s tired from doing all out things again. He dawdled in a stream of the last sun for that day and watched his father roll tenderly back her eyelids, lay his ear softly to her breast, test the delicate bones of her wrist. The father put down his face into her fresh-washed hair” (Meyer 43). They both choose death for the life style that they could no longer endure. They both could not look forward to another day leading the life they did not desire and felt that they could not change. The duration of their lifestyles was so pain-staking long and routine they could only seek the option death for their ultimate change of lifestyle.
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Dalloway’s character development. When Mrs. Dalloway finds out that Septimus, her foil in the book, committed suicide, she came to the realization that “She felt somehow very like him—the young man who had killed himself. She felt glad that he had done it; thrown it away. The clock was striking. The leaden circles dissolved in the air. He made her feel the beauty; made her feel the fun” (186). Because Mrs. Dalloway is not separated into chapters or sections, the book is mainly divided by the striking of the clock. Every time the clock strikes, it interrupts the thoughts of the characters and lends to a moment of epiphany or a shift in the book. Because the clock is a symbol for the everlasting progression of time, it waits for nobody. The clock continuously ticks, which Mrs. Dalloway was originally concerned about as the inevitable marching of time would eventually lead to her death. However, after learning about Septimus’s death, she realizes how beautiful life is. Although she has never met him, Mrs. Dalloway identifies with Septimus, and through his death, she learns to appreciate life and to accept death. The clock strikes to signify not only the progression of time, but also Mrs. Dalloway’s revelation. Woolf’s ability to relate the striking of the clock to the characters reveals her multi-faceted sophisticated
Life is journey that all are forced to take and it always ends in the same place; death. Emily Dickinson was one of America’s great poets and she “defined herself and her experience by exclusion, by what she was not” (“Dickinson, Emily” 457). Death is a well versed topic for Dickinson due to her many poems dissecting the subject. In her poem “I heard a Fly buzz – when I died –“the subject is experiencing their last few moments along with the reader. Dickinson’s life experiences, writing style and even the echoes of Hamlet resonate to provide a picture of the transition between life and death. The question that should be addressed first though is what kind of life leads Dickinson to the topic of death?