Category Archives: Woolf

New Women

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The character of Sally in The Berlin Stories helped me to gain a better understanding of Modernism’s New Woman. As I was reading I began to see the essence of Sally in several of the female characters in modernist literature. I thought of Sally Seton from Mrs. Dalloway, Daisy Buchanan from the The Great Gatsby, Kitty Baldry from The Return of the Soldier, Lily from The House of Mirth, Lady Brett Ashley from The Sun also Rises, Petronella from “Till September Petronella.” (Although not within the modernist time frame, I also thought of Holly Golightly from Breakfast at Tiffany’s because of the parallels in the relationship between Holly and the narrator of Breakfast at Tiffany’s and the relationship between Sally and Chris.)

Notwithstanding the individuality of these women, to varying degrees they share very similar characteristics and personality traits. They are sexaully liberated and are very aware of the power of their bodies to their male counterparts and even to themselves. They are explicit in their desires. They are outspoken. They are at times selfish. Their personalities are sometimes dramatic and purposely exaggerated as if they constantly have to perform to an audience. They are also clever and skilled at manipulation if not checked by other characters. One thing that is important to note is that they are also all seemingly white.

Is Emma Lou a New Woman? Are there Black female characters in modernist literature that are New Women? We have discussed in class the supposed responsibility put upon Black writers to be representative of their race. There were damaging stereotypes that plagued Black women at the time. These writers must “uplift” the race. Does that mean not including women characters that share the characteristics of New Woman? I think Emma Lou is a type of New Woman.

 

Hidden Queerness in Rhys

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I found myself continuously puzzled by the consistent hidden queerness in Rhys’ short stories. We began with “Illusion” which has this hidden relationship between two women. However, it feels increadibly awkward. There is this frantic feeling of urgency that things must happen very quickly and in a strong manner. It doesn’t have the feeling of a relationship (even one in it’s final stages) or casual sex. Instead it feels like pressuring someone to take an exam or to finish packing to catch a train. While clearly being sexual, there is so much tension that it feels unusual for even the most awkward and introverted of relationships.

I see this again in “Till September Petronella”. While Petronella has a relationship that clearly ended negatively with Estelle, there is this bizarre intensity between her and Frankie. While we talked about numerous sexual relationships in class, we did not mention anything between Petronella and Frankie. There is one scene in which Frankie is in Petronella’s room that feels incredibly strong and uncomfortable. In some other texts including “Illusion” this implied a sexual relationship.

This incredibly intense but seemingly hidden relationships in Rhys’ work puzzle me. Woolf wrote explicitly about queer female relationships in Orlando and other texts. Additionally, Rhys was criticized for so many other things that she had nothing to lose by including more explicit queerness.

Clarissa – “there she was”

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As we have noted previously, one of the most engaging aspects about Mrs. Dalloway is Clarissa’s identity and how it morphs depending on the occasion and her observers. As we discussed in class, there are only a few characters that see “Clarissa”, while everyone else see Mrs. Dalloway or Mrs. Richard Dalloway. Noting the moment though where she sees herself, we have a glimpse to what Peter and Richard admire in the woman they love, “…collecting the whole of her at one point (as she looked into the glass), seeing the delicate pink face of the woman who was that very night to give a party; of Clarissa Dalloway; of herself” (37). She views herself in the mirror and distinguishes the unique characteristics she has to carry a room. She does not simply “have” a party, but has the ability and power “gives” a party to society, almost as a gift.

Whereas Peter sees her beyond her abilities to have a party, both in the middle of the book and at the end, he highlights that even though there was not anything overtly special about her, – “Not that she was striking; not beautiful at all; there was nothing picturesque about her; she never said anything specially clever…” (76) – Clarissa still possesses a quality which allows her to be her own person and stand out in a crowd of those with greater power positions in society (“For there she was” (194)). Again, this references our discussion in class about Woolf’s use of parataxis. Even though there are political figures and members of society’s top social strata, Peter (the eye through which we finish the novel) sees her, Clarissa. This lens highlights the importance of the individual, and a woman at that, by placing both the political sphere and the domestic together.

Walter Pater, “to burn always with this hard, gemlike flame”

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Hows does Pater’s foundational manifesto for Aestheticism resonate with Woolf’s Mrs.  Dalloway and Clarissa’s “exquisite moment” with Sally Seton?

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Walter Pater, Conclusion to The Renaissance (1873)

Every moment some form grows perfect in hand or face; some tone on the hills or the sea is choicer than the rest; some mood of passion or insight or intellectual excitement is irresistibly real and attractive to us, — for that moment only. Not the fruit of experience, but experience itself, is the end. A counted number of pulses only is given to us of a variegated, dramatic life. How may we see in them all that is to be seen in them by the finest senses? How shall we pass most swiftly from point to point, and be present always at the focus where the greatest number of vital forces unite in their purest energy?

To burn always with this hard, gemlike flame, to maintain this ecstasy, is success in life. In a sense it might even be said that our failure is to form habits: for, after all, habit is relative to a stereotyped world, and meantime it is only the roughness of the eye that makes any two persons, things, situations, seem alike. [236/237]

 

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Lori’s Post

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As discussed in class, one of the precepts of the modernist tradition is in making the small big. In Mrs. Dalloway, we get this in the physical book itself: one day is stretched across two hundred pages of a fully formed novel. This aesthetic of magnification applies to the story’s characters as well. When Clarissa ascends the stairs to her attic room, she does so “like a nun withdrawing, or a child exploring a tower” (Woolf, 31).  Instead of being confined to Clarissa’s world, we discover fragments from other worlds as well: the nun in her convent, and the child in the tower.  While Clarissa mends her green dress, her thoughts wander and the motions of her needle and thread become waves rolling on a beach during a summer’s day (Woolf, 46).  When she and Peter sit side-by-side on the sofa, “horses paw the ground; toss their heads” and “the light shines on their flanks; their necks curve” (Woolf, 44).  Clarissa gets up from the sofa, and she moves “as a woman gathers her things together, her cloak, her gloves, her opera glasses, and gets up to go out of the theater into the street” (47). The physical realm does not dictate the psychological landscape. Leaning in for a kiss does not make Clarissa think to herself that she’s nervous or feel her heart flutter. Instead it gives a fugitive glimpse of “plumes like pampas grass in a tropic gale,” (Wool, 46).  The character’s internal worlds are vast and innumerable, and in some ways more expansive than the physical realm. Because the outside world is relatively large compared to our bodies, it is easy to think of us as small and finite. However, Woolf shows that our minds cover a much broader scope, and individuals hold within themselves their own universe.

– Lori

3/5 – Human Nature’s Judgment

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“They went in and out of each others minds without effort” (Woolf 63)

This quote appears within Peter Walsh’s nostalgic reflection on the happiest moment he experienced with Clarissa Dalloway. I had paused after I read it because of its sweet intimacy and profound significance to Woolf’s writing style. As we’ve discussed in class, Woolf pulls the reader in and out of her characters minds, almost seamlessly. In the early part of the novel a scene occurs in Regent Park where Woolf glides the reader, all within a few of pages, among the psyches of Maisie Johnson, Mrs. Dempster and then to Mr. Bentley (not even major characters!). I agree that there is this sense that a camera zooms to and from the characters with curious sleuthlike attention. Septimus serves as a rather difficult mind to transition into, as if the camera lens has been scratched. His thoughts are disorienting because I am not sure how I should be understanding them. With the recognition that Septimus is a victim of “shell shock” and a major character in Woolf’s novel how much merit should I attribute to his words and actions and what should I count as nonsense? Septimus asserts that human nature has condemned him to death. Mr. Holmes, at one point, stands in as a spokesperson for human nature. So human nature is both abstract and physical, which makes sense. I can even fathom Septimus’ thought process and him questioning why he is alive. He witnesses the death of his friend Evan, he survives the horrendous war, yet, he emerges without the ability to feel (a detail of utmost significance because the narrator repeats the fact six times). If I were to consider human nature as a sort of character and force in the novel, I don’t think it can rightfully judge Septimus because war and killing is within human nature. Septimus has condemned himself.

*3/11: I think I should have tried to understand Septimus more as a symbolic figure within the English society of the novel’s time. It’s a bit harsh to conclude that only Septimus has condemned himself without looking at roles of the two Doctors in the novel and Mrs. Dalloway.

Lady Bruton’s Gender Ambivalence

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Lady Bruton’s apathetic, and perhaps even antagonistic, attitude toward the wives of her male friends, such as Clarissa Dalloway, reminds me of the attitude Gertrude Stein takes toward her partner Alice B. Toklas and the “genius’ wives” who she expects Alice to entertain while she talks to the male geniuses in Stein’s The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas:

“Thus, when [Lady Bruton] said in her offhand way ‘How’s Clarissa?’ husbands had difficulty in persuading their wives and indeed themselves, of her interest in women who often got in their husbands’ way, prevented them from accepting posts abroad, and had to be taken to the seaside in the middle of the session to recover from influenza. Nevertheless her inquiry, ‘How’s Clarissa?’ was known by women infallibly, to be a signal from a well-wisher, from an almost silent companion, whose utterances…signified recognition of some feminine comradeship which went beneath masculine lunch parties and united Lady Bruton and Mrs. Dalloway” (106)

We sense at the end of this passage, however, that Lady Bruton is also a self-identified, card-carrying woman, and her loyalties lie with women as well as, and apart from, her bonds to their husbands, “beneath masculine lunch parties.” Lady Bruton, like Gertrude Stein, insists on creating a female-mediated space, where she holds authority, even if the other most powerful people in the room are all men; in Stein’s case, those men are artists like Picasso, and in Lady Bruton’s, they are men like Dalloway and Whitbread. It’s an odd in-between place that Lady Bruton holds, between feeling a kinship to her female “comrade[s]” and dismissing them in favor of their husbands, considering them to be mere accessories to their husbands’ more important trajectories. Nevertheless, her unmarried, self-empowering, gender-ambivalent societal status is certainly radical.