Mrs. Dalloway - A Modern Tragedy
The narrative of Mrs. Dalloway may be viewed by some as random congealing of various character experience. Although it appears to be a fragmented assortment of images and thought, there is a psychological coherence to the deeply layered novel. Part of this coherence can be found in Mrs. Dalloway's psychological tone which is tragic in nature. In her forward to Mrs. Dalloway, Maureen Howard informs us that Woolf was reading both Sophocles and Euripides for her essays in The Common Reader while writing Mrs. Dalloway (viii). According to Pamela Transue, "Woolf appears to have envisioned Mrs. Dalloway as a kind of modern tragedy based on the classic Greek model" (92). Mrs. Dalloway can be conceived of as a modern transformation of Aristotelian tragedy when one examines the following: 1) structural unity; 2) catharsis; 3) recognition, reversal, and catastrophe; 4) handling of time and overall sense of desperation.
Structural Unity
Woolf read the Poetics in Greek and was cognizant of the Aristotelian criteria for tragedy. One necessary element, from Aristotle's definition, is structural unity. It consists of an interrelationship of events within the plot. Each event must follow, causally, preceding action to form a coherent whole. According to Aristotle, "a whole is that which has beginning, middle, and end" (233). The Poetics further states: "Again to be beautiful, a living creature, and every whole made up of parts, must not only present a certain order in its arrangement of parts, must also be of a certain magnitude" (233). The ideal Aristotelian plot should be well constructed, without any extraneous parts, and consists of memorable length.
Although upon first reading, ...
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...rior and exterior nuances. Although it seems contradictory, Woolf's use of fragmented imagery and thought colliding together almost randomly yet linked beneath the surface by fine threads of coherency represents an attempt synthesize the novel with life.
Works Cited
Aristotle. "The Poetics." The Rhetoric and the Poetics of Aristotle. Ed. Ingram Bywater. New York: McGraw Hill, 1984. 223-66.
Bazin, Nancy Topping. Virginia Woolf and the Androgynous Vision. New Burnswick: Rutgers UP, 1973.
Curd, Patricia Kenig. "Aristotelian Visions of Moral Character in Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway." English Language Notes 33.1 (1995): 40-57.
Howard, Maureen. Foreward. Mrs. Dalloway. By Virginal Woolf. New York: Harcourt and Brace, 1981, vii-xiv.
Transue, Pamela J. Virginia Woolf and the Politics of Style. Albany: State U of New York P, 1986.
The soldier’s time to serve would be up in just ten days, the British continued to win battles, all hope of winning the war was fading and everyone was ready to put down their weapons and surrender to Great Britain. However, George Washington was not settling with anything less than trying their best. He kept that little flicker of hope that was still left, alive. The Continental Congress did not see much hope in the war either and turned the responsibility of the war to General George Washington. Washington received a message from Congress saying,
From the farm lands of an estate in Mount Vernon, Virginia, rose a leader with one of greatest magnitudes of pomp and circumstance in United States history. This man is George Washington, the United States first president. Known as a 'demigod' and 'the father of our country', he consummated many great achievements during his lifetime for this country. He led this newly formed nation through a war to gain independence from the British Monarchy. Washington shaped the office of the president not only for the ones to follow, but also to show the people what this new office and constitution was to bring. On top of everything he prevented a possible downfall of a recently constructed government through his foreign policy involving the neutrality proclamation of 1793 and controversial Jay Treaty.
George Washington was born on February 22, 1732 in Wakefield, Virginia. He was born to Augustine Washington, and Mary Ball and he had nine other siblings. Some of his favorite foods were cream of peanut soup, mashed sweet potatoes with coconut, and string beans with mushrooms. He also bred hound dogs which he treated as family. He’d give some of them rather strange names such as, Tarter, True Love, and Sweet Lips. He had an interest in arithmetic from an early age. He was mainly schooled by his father. At the age of 15 he stopped his schooling because his mother couldn’t afford to send him to college. George's father died when he was only eleven and his eldest brother, Lawrence, took over the care of the family. Not long after the death of his father, his brother Lawrence became sick with tuberculosis and soon died from it leaving George as the head of the household. At six feet, two inches tall, and 200 pounds, he was one of our biggest presidents.(Facts about George Washington)
SOURCE5: Virginia Woolf, "Modern Fiction," in her Collected Essays, Vol. II, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1967, pp. 103-10.
George Washington was born on February 22th, 1732 in Virginia. He grew up as a country boy and loved his family. At the age of 17 he became a surveyor and had made a good reputation for himself as a responsible man. At the age of 20 he was assigned by the governor to send be a messenger
Woolf’s pathos to begin the story paints a picture in readers minds of what the
Chan, Fong et al. 2015. “Drivers of Workplace Discrimination against People with Disabilities: The Utility of Attribution Theory.” Research Gate: 77-88.
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
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.
In the twentieth century women did not have many rights. Women were expected to stay at home and do housework, cook food, have babies, and take care of them. Women was not supposed to be writers, Virginia Woolf and many other women overcame that standard. Virginia Woolf became a writer during this time and wrote about something she deeply cared about, feminism. Woolf’s work highlights women’s work, who does not have the rights or enough money to use it.
"So it is naturally with the male and the female; the one is superior, the other inferior; the one governs, the other is governed; and the same rule must necessarily hold good with respect to all mankind." Aristotle’s quote rings especially true in reference to the Victorian Era. In the late 1800s and early 1900s men were considered the dominant of the two sexes. Because of this, “For most of history, Anonymous was a woman” (Woolf 51). Female genius was undistinguished or nonexistent in the century in which Virginia Woolf lived, because it was completely and utterly dominated by males. Her surroundings influenced her to explore the history of women in literature through an unconventional examination of the social and material circumstances necessary for the process of writing. Virginia Woolf asserts that female genius cannot be attained in a society that solely praises the masculine desire for status and seniority because it opposes creativity, which is essential to the education and independence of women, which fosters genius.
Work Cited Woolf, Virginia. A. Mrs. Dalloway. Orlando, FL: Harcourt, Inc., 2005.
Along with many novels, she wrote essays, critiques and many volumes of her personal journals have been published. She is one of the most extraordinary and influential female writers throughout history. Virginia Woolf is an influential author because of her unique style, incorporations of symbolism and use of similes and metaphors in her literature, specifically in Mrs. Dalloway, To the Lighthouse, and The Waves. Virginia Woolf’s eccentric style is what causes her writings to be distinct from other authors of her time. The unique characteristics of her works such as the structure, characterization, themes, etc.... ...
Clarissa's relationships with other females in Mrs. Dalloway offer great insight into her personality. Additionally, Woolf's decision to focus at length on Sally Seton, Millicent Bruton, Ellie Henderson, and Doris Kilman allows the reader to see how women relate to one another in extremely different ways: sometimes drawing upon one another for things they cannot get from men; other times, turning on one another out of jealousy and insecurity. Although Mrs. Dalloway is far from the most healthy or positive literary portrayal of women, Woolf presents an excellent exploration of female relationships.
Actually, the average international gamer age is 29 years old (Rosser Jr. et al., 2007). Whilst, only one player out of five is below 18 years old.