London as setting for Mrs. Dalloway - 1470 Words

When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford. --Samuel Johnson In Mrs. Dalloway, Virginia Woolf uses the setting of the city of London to effectively show the vastly different emotional responses of the characters. The city of London, in June, is the primary location in which three of the novels characters are placed; although they inhabit the same period of time, they display completely different responses. The protagonist, Clarissa Dalloway, enjoys the experience from her position of privilege and comfort. Septimus Warren Smith, by contrast, is being swallowed up by the city since he is in the depths of shell-shocked depression; he contemplates suicide because he cannot cope†¦show more content†¦Clarissa seems unaffected by the serenity of the park, except for a cursory acknowledgement of the silence; the mist; the hum; the slow-swimming happy ducks; the pouched birds waddling (5). She is more interested in the social encounter with her old friend, Hugh Whitbread, and what he may think of her and the hat she is wearing. Hughs presence in the park reminds her of happier times at Bourton where they spent considerable time together on the lawns and gardens. Conversely, Septimus finds himself in this same peaceful setting, yet he is tormented by his interpretation of the ordinary activities of the people in the park. As the injured, shell-shocked war veteran, he contemplates suicide while drifting in and out of lucidity as he is caught in a downward spiral of depression. The normal, everyday life in Regents Park feeds his psychosis to the point where he sees everything as a threat to him. Septimus experiences hallucinations of trees being alive and connected to him by millions of fibres (24); birds singing to him in Greek; a dog turning into a man; promises of beauty from the smoke of the sky-writing plan, and ultimately, Peter Walsh seeming to take the form of Septimus friend, Evans, who was killed in the war. Despite the intervention of his wife and doctors, Septimus is unable to bear life as he perceives it; he is swallowed up by London, and eventually commitsShow MoreRelatedLondon of Mrs Dalloway1184 Words   |  5 PagesMrs. Dallow ay’s London When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford. --Samuel Johnson The early part of the Twentieth Century saw England as the major super power in the world. During this time, England ascended to the height of its imperial powers, with its grasp and influence worldwide. A phrase was even coined in recognition of this fact: â€Å"The Empire on which the sun never sets†. And yet despite England’s great power, its citizenryRead MoreMrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf981 Words   |  4 Pagesobserver. But what happens when the times of the external and internal differ? In the novel Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf, Woolf begins to explore this question through her unique writing style of free indirect discourse to travel forward and back in time, as Woolf narrates freely through the thoughts and memories of each character. With each half-hour and hourly strike of Big Ben in the heart of London, the clock serves as a tool to remind each character of the reality of life. The clock furtherRead MoreSocial Oppression Virginia Woolf Essay1507 Wo rds   |  7 PagesThe physical and social setting in Mrs. Dalloway sets the mood for the novels 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 issuesRead MoreIntertextuality in the Hours4441 Words   |  18 PagesVirginia Woolf wrote â€Å"Mrs. Dalloway,† a novel about a woman’s ordinary day, from which the reader can extract essential elements of life of her and human as well. Michael Cunningham, years later, reads that book, and writes another one about three seemingly normal days of three women. And then David Hare and Stephen Daldry write and direct a movie based on Cunningham’s book that adds eve n more layers to the whole story. The Hours was Woolfs working title for Mrs Dalloway. The book and the filmRead MoreThe Hours - Film Analysis12007 Words   |  49 Pagesnovel (229-30), and his central intertext taken from fiction, Woolfs Mrs. Dalloway. By entitling his novel The Hours -- one of the titles Woolf considered for her novel in its early stages (Hussey 172)--he shows his indebtedness as a postmodernist writer to one of the principal texts of the modernist canon. In The Hours, all three narrative strands are in one way or the other connected to Mrs. Dalloway: the sections entitled Mrs. Woolf follow the author Virginia Woolf through a single day in 1923Read MoreEssay on Virginia Woolfs Mrs. Dalloway1927 Words   |  8 Pagesstatistic, has thrown his life out of a window. The book Mrs. Dalloway’s Theme is to show proper balance in the lives of all characters because Mrs. Dalloway, who chooses a life of safety with Richard, Septimus couldn’t keep stability in his life, and lady burton wa nts to enforce balance by sending people to Canada. Raised by a privileged English household in 1882, writer Virginia Woolf had freethinking parents (Adeline). Born Kensington, London, England, United Kingdom, January 25, 1882 as AdelineRead 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 MoreThe Between Septimus And Dr. Holmes1602 Words   |  7 PagesFrom pages 90 - 100 of Mrs. Dalloway, we see the interaction between Septimus, Dr . Holmes, and Dr. Bradshaw. Dr. Holmes tries to force Septimus to see that he is not crazy, that there is absolutely nothing wrong with him, which doesn’t help either Rezia or Septimus. Then there is Dr. Bradshaw who sees that there is something wrong with Septimus, but his only method of helping him is to put him in a home to rest, away from the rest of society. Both men should be trying to help him, but they are alienatingRead MoreVirginia Woolfs Mrs. Dalloway and Samuel Becketts Waiting for Godot2438 Words   |  10 Pages Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway and Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot are representative works of two separate movements in literature: Modernism and Post-Modernism. Defining both movements in their entirety, or arguing whether either work is truly representative of the classifications of Modernism and Post-Modernism, is not the purpose of this paper; rather, the purpose is to carefully evaluate how both works, in the context of both works being representative of their respective traditions, employRead MoreThe And Of The Light Brigade By Alfred Lord Tennyson2214 Words   |  9 PagesThroughout history, authors have responded to historical events like the war through different genres of literature from novels to poems. In this paper; I will look at how Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf, September 1st, 1939 by Wystan Hugh Auden and The Charge of the Light Brigade by Alfred Lord Tennyson respond to various historical events. A comparison between these texts will show the many similarities and differences in how they respond to the theme of war. In addition to this, I will examine