Memory in Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway 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). Clarissa Dalloway is content with her life with Richard, is content to give her party on a beautiful June evening, but she does regret at times that she can’t “have her life over again” (10). Clarissa’s memories of Bourton, of her youth, are brought back to her vividly by just the “squeak of the hinges. . . [and] she had burst open the French windows and plunged at Bourton into the open air” (3). The very intensity of these memories are what make them so much a part of what she is– everything in life reminds her of Bourton, of Sally Seton, of Peter Walsh. Peter and Sally were her best friends as a girl, and “with the two of them. . . she s... ... middle of paper ... ... eternally knotted in the combined tapestry of their lives, never to be disentangled from each other and therefore entwining their lives together as well as their memories of idyllic summers and bitter storms. Memory can be triggered by anything, causing life to run in a continual loop between the past and the future, the truth and the dream. Peter and Clarissa will always be shaped by their memories; that is, the core of their being. As Clarissa descends the stairs at the end of her party Peter wonders “what is this terror? What is this ecstacy? . . . What is it that fills me with extraordinary excitement? It is Clarissa . . . For there she was” (194). And there she will always be, forever bound in his memory just as he is forever tied into hers, together creating their true identities. Work Cited Woolf, Virginia. Mrs. Dalloway. Orlando, FL: Harcourt, Inc., 2005.
In Mrs. Dalloway, Clarissa Dalloway undergoes an internal struggle between her love for society and life and a combined affinity for and fear of death. Her practical marriage to Richard serves its purpose of providing her with an involved social life of gatherings and parties that others may find frivolous but Clarissa sees as “an offering” to the life she loves so well. Throughout the novel she grapples with the prospect of growing old and approaching death, which after the joys of her life seems “unbelievable… that it must end; and no one in the whole world would know how she had loved it all; how, every instant…” At the same time, she is drawn to the very idea of dying, a theme which is most obviously exposed through her reaction to the news of Septimus Smith’s suicide. However, this crucial scene r...
In the clouds of dust, stains, threadbare patches, and intricate patterns of the rugs, dragged out onto the lawn, Tom points out memories of the year. This again draws Douglas into the world of recollection (pp. 64-67). This gives the reader a deeper look into Tom’s character. Tom is observant and imaginative, and recalling events and sharing them is deeply important to him. This is demonstrated throughout the book, especially through his conversation with Grandfather about the summer, when he declares “I’ll never forget today! I’ll always remember, I know!” (pp.
Sharon Olds’s poem, “I Go Back to May 1937,” is an emotional piece that takes the reader back to the early days as the speaker’s existence was first thought about. The speaker is a female who describes the scene when her parents first met; she does this to show her wrestling thoughts as she wishes she could prevent this first encounter. She speaks about this topic because of the horrendous future of regret and sorrow that her family would experience, and also to contemplate her own existence if her parents had never met in May of 1937. Olds uses forms of contrasting figurative language, an ironic plot, and a regretful tone to convey the conflict between the speaker and her parents while she fully comes to understanding of past actions, and how these serve as a way for her to release her feelings on the emotional subject.
In John Connolly’s novel, The Book of Lost Things, he writes, “for in every adult there dwells the child that was, and in every child there lies the adult that will be”. Does one’s childhood truly have an effect on the person one someday becomes? In Jeannette Walls’ memoir The Glass Castle and Khaled Hosseini’s novel The Kite Runner, this question is tackled through the recounting of Jeannette and Amir’s childhoods from the perspectives of their older, more developed selves. In the novels, an emphasis is placed on the dynamics of the relationships Jeannette and Amir have with their fathers while growing up, and the effects that these relations have on the people they each become. The environment to which they are both exposed as children is also described, and proves to have an influence on the characteristics of Jeannette and Amir’s adult personalities. Finally, through the journeys of other people in Jeannette and Amir’s lives, it is demonstrated that the sustainment of traumatic experiences as a child also has a large influence on the development of one’s character while become an adult. Therefore, through the analysis of the effects of these factors on various characters’ development, it is proven that the experiences and realities that one endures as a child ultimately shape one’s identity in the future.
Jane had a testing childhood at the hands of her aunt Mrs Reed and her cousins. She lived with the Reed family until ten years of age and during these ten years she was bullied and unloved. Jane was then sent away to Lowood School she appeared excited to leave Gateshead, yet once at Lowood she experienced more ridicule and a hard school life. Nevertheless she did find friendship in Helen Burns, although this friendship was short lived as Helen died during a breakout of typhus, through their short friendship Helen had shown Jane that life at Lowood could be bearable; she was also the first friend Jane ever really had.
Woolf’s pathos to begin the story paints a picture in readers minds of what the
Clarissa interacts with women in both of these ways. Her relationship with Sally Seton, for example, is quite positive. Once upon a time, in their youth, Clarissa admired the individualistic woman and was charmed by her wayward manners; furthermore, the physical experience she enjoys with Sally is something she never equals with a man. On the other hand, Clarissa's contempt of Ellie Henderson reflects her snobbish outlook on social classes, while her feelings toward Lady Bruton represent her inferiority complex. Finally, Mrs. Dalloway's borderline hatred of Miss Kilman stems from her possessive feelings for her own daughter, Elizabeth. Looking carefully at these relationships brings Clarissa's own identity into clearer focus.
In Virginia Woolf’s novel, To the Lighthouse, childhood is portrayed as a time of tribulation and terror, rather than the stereotype that claims that childhood is a blissful period of innocence and wonder. Because of her more realistic point of view, Woolf molds her characters into complex adults that are products of their upbringings. This contributes to the piece as a whole because it has a sense of reality that allows readers to relate with the characters on a personal level. Throughout the novel, Woolf uses two main characters to embody her representation of childhood. Even though Charles Tansley is an adult, the reader can see the full effects his childhood had on his adult life. Moreover, the reader sees the troubling events of childhood and their effects on adulthood in James Ramsay’s life.
The three events that mark Jane as an evolving dynamic character are when she is locked in the red room, self reflecting on her time at Gateshead, her friendship with Helen Burns at LoWood, her relationship with Mr. Rochester, and her last moments with a sick Mrs. Reed. Brought up as an orphan by her widowed aunt, Mrs. Reed, Jane is accustomed to her aunts vindictive comments and selfish tendencies. Left out of family gatherings, shoved and hit by her cousin, John Reed, and teased by her other cousins, Georgina and Eliza Reed, the reader almost cringes at the unfairness of it all. But even at the young age of ten, Jane knows the consequences of her actions if she were to speak out against any of them. At one point she wonders why she endures in silence for the pleasure of others. Why she is oppressed. "Always suffering, always browbeaten, always accused, forever condemned" (Bronte, 12). Jane’s life at Gateshead is not far from miserable. Not only is she bullied by her cousins and nagged by her aunt, but help from even Bessie, her nurse and sort of friend, seems out of her reach. In the red room scene Jane is drug by Ms. Ab...
Memory in Toni Morrison's Beloved. Memories are works of fiction, selective representations of experiences, actual or imagined. They provide a framework for creating meaning in one's own life as well as in the lives of others. In Toni Morrison's novel Beloved, memory is a dangerous and debilitating faculty of human consciousness. Sethe endures the tyranny of the self-imposed prison of memory.
Rebecca West and Virginia Woolf give great significance to the families of their respective main characters in The Return of the Soldier and Jacob’s Room because it gives the reader a greater insight to the formation of and reasoning for both Chris and Jacob’s nature. Each of these characters have multiple families to deal with: Chris has Kitty and Jenny on the one hand, and Margaret on the other, while Jacob deals with his mother and brother as well as his connections to society and academia. The distinctions between each character’s multiple families cause them to behave differently in various situations, and provide reasons for their actions. It is said that we are shaped by our surroundings and molded by our families, and Woolf and West’s male protagonists prove to be no exception to this rule.
The interdependence of memory and identity is not unproblematic. Self-assessment and assessment of the characters in the novel will lead one to realise that manipulation of the past is integral...
The physical and social setting in "Mrs. Dalloway" sets the mood for the novel's principal theme: the theme of social oppression. Social oppression was shown in two ways: the oppression of women as English society returned to its traditional norms and customs after the war, and the oppression of the hard realities of life, "concealing" these realities with the elegance of English society. This paper discusses the purpose of the city in mirroring the theme of social oppression, focusing on issues of gender oppression, particularly against women, and the oppression of poverty and class discrimination between London's peasants and the elite class.
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.
War is an important theme in Mrs. Dalloway (1925), a post World War I text. While on the one hand there is the focus on Mrs. Dalloway’s domestic life and her ‘party consciousness’, on the other there are ideas of masculinity and “patriotic zeal that stupefy marching boys into a stiff yet staring corpse and perniciously public-spirited doctors” , and the sense of war reverberates in the entire text. Woolf’s treatment of the Great War is different from the normative way in which the War is talked about in the post world war I texts. She includes in her text no first hand glimpse of battlefield, instead gives a detached description. This makes it more incisive because she delineates the after effects in personal ordinary lives. Judith Hattaway remarks that “Woolf’s view of the war is different. It does not figure in terms of mud and barbed wire but rather through its points of contact with the ordinary life left behind and in its destruction of a secure past. Woolf actually looks at the ways in which the war has changed contemporary ways of looking at history, social structures, identity and boundaries.” Formally the war is over but in so many ways – the after effects, devastation that has not been compensated for, the horror that lingers in people’s minds – the war persists. As Mrs. Dalloway walks along the streets of London, she makes a very naïve statement, “for it was the middle of June. The War was over “but for people like Septimus Smith the war continues in the form of its everlasting destructive impact on their mind, their body, and their lives.