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Literary impacts of world war 1
The role of nature in modern literature
Literary impacts of world war 1
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Flowers are a sign of celebration, a sign of sympathy, and a sign of beauty. Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway which was published in 1925 seven years after the first world war, and her last novel Between the Acts which was published in 1941 in the middle of the second world war, both are full of flowers. The imagery of nature and rustic scenes within the novels help you to better understand the feeling of reflecting on happier times from the past, and hoping for recreation. Although most would think that Woolf’s images would be about looking for a better, brighter, and happier future, they all do not quite relay that message. Many of the images are corrupted and distorted, echoing with remaining fears from the previous war and the approaching fear of war ahead. Nature is beautiful, it is frightening, it is confusing, and it is questionable. All of these feelings and more can be found in the nature imagery that Woolf uses so beautifully throughout her novels Between the Acts and Mrs. Dalloway.
Woolf uses natural imagery as means to bring the past and present together, to reflect on what used to be, and to hope that nature will bring stability in their future in Between the Acts. In a scene during the pageant we read as Miss La Trobe struggles with silence of the stage, having an uneasy and uncomfortable feeling but then we read about how the cows took that burden away, just in time ‘she lifted her great moon-eyed head and bellowed’ (pg 87). You get the feeling that the cows are calming and relaxing her, as they appear gentle and kind with eyes like the moon. The cow’s bellows seem to bring the past and present together. You get this idea from Woolf when she writes ‘Their ability to cross boundaries of time stretches beyond the cont...
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...und even more in Between the Acts gives a feeling of loss of hope. We read and watch as the natural world transforms into a world of warfare. In Mrs. Dalloway the world was attempting to recover from the First World War, while Between the Acts, named so appropriately, for occurring in between two major acts, the two World Wars. Flowers and birds slowly loose their optimistic appearance to Woolf, and soon become images of destruction and fear. Nature brings many different feelings to this world. Flowers bring us happiness, but soon will die, rain can make us sad, but at the same time brings life to world. Birds create beautiful songs, yet there a few that prey, and end lives. Nature is a complicated cycle, and Woolf brings the images of nature and causes the reader to feel and think many different ways, simply by relating moments throughout these novels to nature.
Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway and Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights share similarities in many aspects, perhaps most plainly seen in the plots: just as Clarissa marries Richard rather than Peter Walsh in order to secure a comfortable life for herself, Catherine chooses Edgar Linton over Heathcliff in an attempt to wrest both herself and Heathcliff from the squalid lifestyle of Wuthering Heights. However, these two novels also overlap in thematic elements in that both are concerned with the opposing forces of civilization or order and chaos or madness. The recurring image of the house is an important symbol used to illustrate both authors’ order versus chaos themes. Though Woolf and Bronte use the house as a symbol in very different ways, the existing similarities create striking resonances between the two novels at certain critical scenes.
Charlotte Bronte wrote the novel Jane Eyre in the mid-eighteen hundreds. In her novel she expresses her views on many important factors present during this time including social problems such as race, class, gender, and the role of religion. Each of these factors affects the way that the protagonist, Jane Eyre, grows as a person. Throughout the novel Charlotte Bronte uses images and symbols that either influence or represent Jane's growth. Bronte uses a common imagery throughout the novel reflecting images of "fire and ice." She also uses symbols in Jane's life such as the red-room, from her childhood, and the character Bertha Mason Rochester, during her time at Thornfield. Other characters who influence Jane as a person are Edward Rochester and St. John Rivers. Each of these images, symbols, and characters influences Jane a great deal and leads her down the path to true belonging and happiness.
Eugenia Collier’s “Marigolds” is a memoir of a colored girl living in the Great Depression. The story does not focus on the troubles society presents to the narrator (Elizabeth), but rather is focused on the conflict within her. Collier uses marigolds to show that the changes from childhood to adulthood cause fear in Elizabeth, which is the enemy of compassion and hope.
Woolf’s pathos to begin the story paints a picture in readers minds of what the
Although imagery and symbolism does little to help prepare an expected ending in “The Flowers” by Alice Walker, setting is the singular element that clearly reasons out an ending that correlates with the predominant theme of how innocence disappears as a result of facing a grim realism from the cruel world. Despite the joyous atmosphere of an apparently beautiful world of abundant corn and cotton, death and hatred lies on in the woods just beyond the sharecropper cabin. Myop’s flowers are laid down as she blooms into maturity in the face of her fallen kinsman, and the life of summer dies along with her innocence. Grim realism has never been so cruel to the innocent children.
... about things and develop a critical thinking, such as in the alienating subject as well as accepting a black person into the white society in the 1960’s.
Virginia Woolf’s novel, Mrs. Dalloway, features a severely mentally ill man named Septimus Smith. Throughout the novel the reader glimpses moments of Septimus’s dementia and how his poor frazzled wife, Rezia, deals with him. Septimus, who has returned from the war and met Rezia in Italy on his discharge, has a seriously skewed version of reality. He has been through traumatic events during the war, including the death of his commanding officer and friend, Evans. Upon his return to England he suffers from hallucinations, he hears voices (especially Evans’), and he believes that the trees have a special message to convey to him. Rezia attempts to get Septimus help by taking him to several doctors. Ultimately Septimus commits suicide rather than let the doctors get to him.
Nineteenth century Britain was a dominate empire across the globe. Despite the country’s loss of a major colonial force — the United States — the country still dominate world trade, allowing for a sense of pride to be installed within the hearts of the English. As exposed throughout Virginia Woolf’s, Mrs. Dalloway, the mindset of the British was one of grand superiority. Due to the success of the British empire's colonial expeditions, many British citizens felt as though their country was the greatest and most advanced in the world, creating a sense of superficial, self-centered, pride, as reflected through the character of Clarissa. This pride, however, had many dangerous side effects later in history. British Imperialism, combined with unnecessary pride, caused many racial issues for England that would be fought over for centuries to come.
Clarissa Dalloway and Peter Walsh are defined by their memories. Virginia Woolf creates their characters through the memories they share, and indeed fabricates their very identities from these mutual experiences. Mrs. Dalloway creates a unique tapestry of time and memory, interweaving past and present, memory and dream. The past is the key to the future, and indeed for these two characters the past creates the future, shaping them into the people they are on the June day described by Woolf. Peter and Clarissa’s memories of the days spent at Bourton have a profound effect on them both and are still very much a part of them. These images of their younger selves are not broad, all-encompassing mental pictures, but rather the bits and pieces of life that create personality and identity. Peter remembers various idiosyncracies about Clarissa, and she does the same about him. They remember each other by “the colours, salts, tones of existence,” the very essence that makes human beings original and unique: the fabric of their true identities (30).
The extensive descriptions of Mrs. Dalloway’s inner thoughts and observations reveals Woolf’s “stream of consciousness” writing style, which emphasizes the complexity of Clarissa’s existential crisis. She also alludes to Shakespeare’s Cymbeline, further revealing her preoccupation with death as she quotes lines from a funeral song. She reads these lines while shopping in the commotion and joy of the streets of London, which juxtaposes with her internal conflicts regarding death. Shakespeare, a motif in the book, represents hope and solace for Mrs. Dalloway, as his lines form Cymbeline talk about the comforts found in death. From the beginning of the book, Mrs. Dalloway has shown a fear for death and experiences multiple existential crises, so her connection with Shakespeare is her way of dealing with the horrors of death. The multiple layers to this passage, including the irony, juxtaposition, and allusion, reveal Woolf’s complex writing style, which demonstrates that death is constantly present in people’s minds, affecting their everyday
Woolf, therefore, takes advantage of the lyrical short stories’ structure to create a liminal space that both breaks through barriers to form a unified, impressionistic world and to emphasize the imposing negative aspects of such a transitory structure. As a result, Woolf prompts the reader to question whether the liminal space created within the short story is positive in its ability to unite nature and human or negative in its apparent unsustainability. Regardless, the form and structure of the short story are pivotal in Kew Gardens. Without the liminal space of the short story, it is questionable if Woolf could have succeeded in creating the unstable, yet peaceful, world in Kew Gardens.
In this paper, I examine the concept of “a central oyster of perceptiveness, an enormous eye”, the device through which Woolf sees the London street in “Street Haunting”. I will then move on how the principles of movement, transition, focus, digression and concentration of this eye apply to narrative movement in Mrs Dalloway and To the Lighthouse.
This essay will look at Clarissa Dalloway, who is the main character in Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway. Even though she is a woman, Clarissa’s statements, actions and attitudes in the story comply with modernism. Modernism is ideas of actions and feelings that change from what it used to be back then. An example of modernism is that education is for wealthier men only and no woman can get an education without being criticized for being a woman, only the rich can attend and the poor cannot. Even though at a few points in the novel, it looks like Clarissa’s throwing parties all the time but it’s much more than that. I’ll be introducing three main points of Clarissa Dalloway’s character which consist of gender roles, modernism, and the Bloomsbury Group.
George is an intelligent character and his education shoes when he speaks. His intelligence is displayed with his eloquent way of speaking.
Virginia Woolf's 'To the Lighthouse' is a fine example of modernist literature, like her fellow modernist writers James Joyce and D.H Lawrence. This novel in particular is of the most autobiographical. The similarities between the story and Woolf's own life are not accidental. The lighthouse, situations and deaths within the novel are all parallel to Woolf's childhood, she wrote in her diary 'I used to think of [father] & mother daily; but writing The Lighthouse, laid them in my mind ….(I believe this to be true – that I was obsessed by them both, unheathily; & writing of them was a necessary act). Woolf, Diary, 28 November 1928) Woolf like many other modernist writers uses stream of consciousness, this novel in particular features very little dialogue, preferring one thought, memory or idea to trigger another, providing an honest if not reliable account of the characters lives. There novels motifs are paired with many of the novels images. The novel features two main motifs that Woolf appears to be interested in examining, firstly we notice the relationships' between men and women and the other appears to be Woolf's use of parenthesis. The novels images only become apparent once these motifs have been explored, allowing the reader to examine the relationships between the different characters.