Category: Authors

Posted on Alex Gjaja

The Geographical and Historical Context of Mrs. Dalloway’s Walk

The geographical and historical context of the passage serve as particularly helpful means to introduce themes of class difference in relation to post-war legacy.  As Clarissa walks, she passes Devonshire House, Bath House and “the house with the china cockatoo.” This refers to a set of homes owned by wealthy socialites who threw extravagant parties, which Clarissa and her friends would attend. “The house with the china cockatoo” was the home of Baroness Burdett-Coutts, who used to hang a white china cockatoo to be visible in a window and indicate that she was in residence, a nod to the Royal Standard (Diana Orton, Made of Gold: a biography of Angela Burdett Coutts). But, already these homes either have faded or are in the process of doing so in the post-war era: Burdett-Coutts died in 1906 so the grandeur of her parties would have been just a figment of this 1923-era Clarissa’s memories of youth, and the famous Devonshire House was demolished in 1924, shortly after the time of Clarissa’s walk. Unlike when these homes were “all lit up at once,” many of the wealthy fled the city during the war, leaving behind their homes as grim reminders of how utterly different post-war London was from the past revelry. Just as this passage invites us to ponder individual legacy, the reader must also grapple with post-war legacy as it reflects onto the very buildings Clarissa passes. Perhaps we are meant to view these formerly great houses as models of post-war decay, showing just how much the elite were impacted by the War as well as lower classes, that this truly was the war that spared no one. Alternatively, the empty houses show the reader just how removed the social elites were from wartime horrors — abandoning their city mansions but not their country estates, sacrificing their parties but not their limbs. Although the upper-class Clarissa ponders a sense of universal human connection or a collective “well of tears,” the historical context of the passage suggests that this theory may be too naive; that, rather than bond, the true legacy of WWI may be to further divide the different social classes of London.

An image of Devonshire House from the road in 1896.
A portrait of Baroness Burdett-Coutts, circa 1840.
Posted on Alex Gjaja

Clarissa’s Walk in the Park: Human Connection, Death and Legacy in Mrs. Dalloway

“Her only gift was knowing people almost by instinct, she thought, walking on. If you put her in a room with some one, up went her back like a cat’s; or she purred. Devonshire House, Bath House, the house with the china cockatoo, she had seen them all lit up once; and remembered Sylvia, Fred, Sally Seton—such hosts of people; and dancing all night; and the waggons plodding past to market; and driving home across the Park. She remembered once throwing a shilling into the Serpentine. But every one remembered; what she loved was this, here, now, in front of her; the fat lady in the cab. Did it matter then, she asked herself, walking towards Bond Street, did it matter that she must inevitably cease completely; all this must go on without her; did she resent it; or did it not become consoling to believe that death ended absolutely? but that somehow in the streets of London, on the ebb and flow of things, here, there, she survived, Peter survived, lived in each other, she being part, she was positive, of the trees at home; of the house there, ugly, rambling all to bits and pieces as it was; part of people she had never met; being laid out like a mist between the people she knew best, who lifted her on their branches as she had seen the trees lift the mist, but it spread ever so far, her life, herself. But what was she dreaming as she looked into Hatchards’ shop window? What was she trying to recover? What image of white dawn in the country, as she read in the book spread open:

Fear no more the heat o’ the sun

Nor the furious winter’s rages

This late age of the world’s experience had bred in them all, all men and women, a well of tears” (Woolf 9).

The titular character of Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway, Clarissa, begins this passage by naming her “only gift”: a near-instinctive sense of others’ characters. She describes these instincts through a metaphor, comparing them to how a cat — an animal popularly regarded as a uniquely insightful judge of character — might respond to an unfamiliar person. For a character frequently described as the consummate hostess by family and friends, this metaphor seems to offer the reader an explanation for Clarissa’s social success. However, Woolf complicates this metaphor through her use of a semicolon, writing that, with a new person, “up went [Clarissa’s] back like a cat’s; or she purred.” Here, Clarissa’s concern about a new person is presented as her first response; her comfortable, friendly “purring” only occurs after a break in the sentence. Clarissa is fundamentally interested in people but she is also wary of them, leading the reader to wonder whether Clarissa sits entirely comfortably with human connection, even as she spends the rest of this passage considering its power.

Clarissa soon extends this idea of connecting with and impacting others into an exploration concerning legacy after death. Woolf employs anaphora to show how Clarissa interrogates herself on the question of death. “Did it matter then…did it matter that she must inevitably cease completely…did she resent it; or did it not become consoling….” The repetition of the word “did” suggests a sense of active urgency driving towards answering the question. Even more striking, once Clarissa reaches a sort of conclusion with the repetition of “did,” the sentence itself does not conclude. Clarissa rhetorically asks, “Did it not become consoling to believe that death ended absolutely? but that somehow in the streets of London, on the ebb and flow of things, here, there, she survived…” Here, the sentence structure mirrors the point that Clarissa makes about legacy. Even though the natural stop of the sentence is the question mark that follows the idea that death ends absolutely, Woolf chooses to not capitalize the “but” that would have begun the next sentence. Thus, rather than two separate sentences, the sentences merge into one and continue on: a representation of the unbroken life force flowing into legacy-after-death that Clarissa ponders. 

The notion that one can live on after death in the people and places one encountered in life is a huge part of Clarissa’s sense of the world, and very similar to what Peter describes as Clarissa’s “theory” later in the novel (153). In this passage, Clarissa imagines herself after death as a mist laid out “between the people she knew best, who lifted her on their branches.” Beyond the obvious connotation of being lifted towards Heaven and physically supported by the loved ones left behind after death, this imagery of mist is powerful when trying to understand Clarissa’s ideas about death and legacy. On the one hand, mist acts as a blanket covering the trees here, evoking a sense of comfort or of peace for loved ones. However, there is also a strong thread running through this image that Clarissa’s legacy might not be the comfort she imagines — rather, it comes “between the people she knew best,” acting as an obscuring agent more than as a peaceful one. Just as Peter struggles to interpret Clarissa throughout the novel, here too there is a suggestion that Clarissa’s legacy after death might be in forcing the “people she knew best” into futile efforts to comprehend her (after all, they are not called the ‘people who knew her best’). As with the cat metaphor that begins this passage, here too human connection serves as a stressor as well as a boon.

All of this musing about death and legacy brings the reader to the conclusion of the passage, in which Clarissa’s eye is drawn to a quote from a book in the window of Hatchards. It reads, “Fear no more the heat o’ the sun / Nor the furious winter’s rages,” pulled from Shakespeare’s Cymbeline. It is an excerpt of a song that Guiderius sings to two dead bodies at his feet, Cloten and Imogen (disguised as the page Fidele). The song looks at death through a lens of hope, and uses apostrophe to tell the dead to rejoice because they have escaped the many fears life presents, like the heat of the sun or the raging winter. Once again, Clarissa is drawn towards death as a welcome escape from life’s challenges. The allusion to Cymbeline also serves another purpose, though this interpretation is admittedly more of a stretch. In Cymbeline, both Cloten and Imogen lie dead, but Cloten is genuinely dead while Imogen merely appears dead, but is actually only temporarily weakened by the effects of poison (Act IV, Scene 2). These characters can be read as doubles of Septimus and Clarissa. Despite how Septimus and Clarissa are linked as two liminal figures, existing between life and death, only Septimus actually dies in the book. Crucially, even at this early stage in the novel (before the reader has been officially introduced to Septimus), he still casts a subtle shadow over Clarissa’s meditation on what death may actually offer to a sufferer.

Posted on Claudia Frykberg

Futility, Sex & Revenge in Eliot’s The Fire Sermon

III. THE FIRE SERMON

A rat crept softly through the vegetation
Dragging its slimy belly on the bank
While I was fishing in the dull canal
On a winter evening round behind the gashouse
Musing upon the king my brother’s wreck
And on the king my father’s death before him.
White bodies naked on the low damp ground
And bones cast in a little low dry garret,
Rattled by the rat’s foot only, year to year.
But at my back from time to time I hear
The sound of horns and motors, which shall bring
Sweeney to Mrs. Porter in the spring.
O the moon shone bright on Mrs. Porter
And on her daughter
They wash their feet in soda water
Et O ces voix d’enfants, chantant dans la coupole!

Twit twit twit
Jug jug jug jug jug jug
So rudely forc’d.
Tereu

~~~

My chosen passage begins with the image of a rat, immediately establishing one of the poem’s recurring symbols. The rat is vile, degenerative and infamous for its ability to transmit disease and lurk in dirty places. This image is consolidated in the onomatopoeic “slimy belly”, which the rat “drags” along the bank — the word “slimy” evoking disgust, just as the rat’s slinking draws attention to its physical and figurative lowness.

The passage then shifts to describe the speaker as fishing in the “dull canal” — the assonance suggesting a lifelessness contradictory to the normal association of water as life-giving. The word “fish” introduces the allusion to “The Fisher King”, an Arthurian legend that refers to a “King” who, after being injured becomes impotent and turns the world barren. In order to restore the land to fertility, the knight Parsifal must endure various trials, reach the Perilous Chapel, and answer questions relating to the Holy Grail. While Parsifal’s quest speaks of hope, Eliot’s wasteland appears fixed in The Fisher King’s state of endless futility.

This idea of a cold, sterile world is continued in the following line beginning ‘on a winter evening’. Winter is the darkest season where growth is inhibited. Further, it is “evening”, a liminal time belonging to neither day nor night. Light lingers but the onset of darkness is imminent, thus invoking a portrait of a speaker, and perhaps a civilisation, on the brink of its demise.

The following line, beginning with “musing”, draws the reader into the internal thoughts of the speaker. Here the speaker is pondering ‘the king my brother’s wreck / And on the king my father’s death before him,’ — an allusion to Shakespeare’s “The Tempest” in which Prospero schemes revenge on his brother who cast him off to an island and usurped his role as Duke of Milan. This allusion is striking for two reasons. Firstly, the repetition in “king my brother” and “king my father” blurs familial distinctions thus confusing the nature of traditional, reliable institutional structures. Secondly, Eliot alludes to a story that hinges upon revenge – a theme reinforced through other allusions I will discuss later in my analysis.

Sex is another point of interest for Eliot in this excerpt. The line, ‘but at my back from time to time I hear’, is a reference to Marvell’s, To His Coy Mistress — its alliteration and repetition suggesting time creeps up from behind, ticking away to its ultimate conclusion. In Marvell’s poem his speaker acknowledges that if he had an infinite amount of time, he would woo the woman to whom he speaks. However, he argues that given the imminent ageing of their bodies, the woman should forego her coyness and sleep with him. Thus Eliot twists the meaning of the allusion in a manner that demeans traditional values of a woman’s chastity and a man’s chivalry.

The concept of sex equalling connectivity is similarly challenged in the following lines where Eliot introduces “Mrs Porter”, a character in an Australian drinking song sung by soldiers stationed in Egypt prior to being sent to the front. “Mrs Porter”, and her similarly mentioned daughter are prostitutes. The rhyming of “Porter”, “daughter” and “water” encourages a rhythmic meter of a soldier’s merry song — but in reality alludes to young men doomed to die, and mother and daughter prostitutes trying to scrub themselves clean. This allusion is used in conjunction with another — John Day’s, Parliament of Bees which recounts the Greek myth of Diana and Actaeon and, like The Tempest, is centred around revenge. In the poem, Actaeon comes upon Diana, the goddess of war, bathing unclothed. Noticing him, Diana turns him into a stag so that he may never speak of what he saw. Thus, in his allusion, Eliot reduces Diana to a common sex object — the belittling of such a revered figure furthered through the mocking tone evoked by the rhyming couplets.

In the final stanza, Eliot creates a sense of uneasiness by abandoning a more traditional verse for repetitive stressed syllables —“Twit” and “Jug” and iambs — ‘So rudely forc’d / Tereu’. Here he references Philomena, who, in Greek mythology, was raped by her brother-in-law Tereus, who later silenced her by slicing her tongue. Unable to speak, the Gods took pity on Philomena making her nightingale — but while Eliot’s reference could be seen as redemptive, in nature, it is the male, not the female nightingale that sings.

In The Waste Land, Eliot interweaves a variety of collective moods and personal experiences in order to cultivate a tone that is rooted in sterility and meaninglessness. Historically, Eliot uses a plethora of imagery – the scurrying rat which evokes images of soldiers in the trenches, the mention of bones and bodies – to capture a nihilistic post-WWI zeitgeist.

The poem is representative of a time where the war was over but ‘revenge’ brought only disenchantment. Thematically Eliot explores these concepts through his allusions to Shakespeare and John Day. In a world that has been irreversibly changed through suffering, the notion of “revenge” appears empty and any true solace unachievable.

A new era of industrialisation forced an end to romanticism and a confusion as to how society might reconfigure itself in this state of “in-between”. Urbanisation brought a lack of traditional guidance — in family, Elizabethan conventions and religion that failed to ease the deep post-war grief. Eliot’s experimentation with poetic construction can then perhaps be seen as a reflection of this uncertainty, as he shifts from traditional verse to jarring stressed syllables and iambs.

In light of this suffering, Eliot reveals how civilians sought meaning through connection, ultimately turning to sex (“Mrs Porter”, “His Coy Mistress”). However, through these allusions Eliot degrades the value of sex examining how individuals’ attempts to cultivate connectedness were only met with disappointment.

Finally, we can consider Eliot’s own disenchantment as a soon-to-be middle-aged poet grappling with a desire to write with authenticity. Hospitalised for depression in 1921, he perhaps looked to the authenticity of others, littering the poem with allusions. Through these constructs he explored the lingering repercussions of war, the torment of an inability to find meaning in intimacy, and a loss of hope for the future of society as a whole.

 

Posted on Eve Brewer

Historical and Geographical Context of Children of the Ghetto

The historical moment of the 19thcentury as well as the geographical of the east end is clearly presented through Zangwill’s soup kitchen scene. The passage comes from the first chapter of Children of the Ghetto, following a prologue which described life in the ghetto and the strong personal and religious community that was found there in the past. The contrast between the community seen in the prologue and in the first chapter is incredibly strong. In the past, rich individuals (the Takeefin) “gave charity unscrupulously” to the poorer members of their community but in the first chapter we see “the President addressed the meeting at considerable length, striving to impress upon the clergymen and other philanthropists present that charity was a virtue.” While not stated directly, in the passage above Zangwill appears to be mocking the new generation of Takeefin who seemingly need the poor to validate their charitable acts in order to perform it which undercuts the basis of their charity  I believe that the rich’s attitude towards charity was less condescending and came more from a genuine desire to help others in past generations as the community was congregated in closer proximity to one another and the rich felt a connection to the people that they were serving. In the passage I discussed above, the rich have transformed from a helpful neighbor to a semi-divine because the community is no longer as closely in touch spiritually or geographically. In the time period of the book, the rich lived “far away” in neighborhoods like Belgravia while the larger poor community was left in Spitalfields as opposed to when nearly all of the Jewish population of London was living in Whitechapel. The passage illustrates the effects that decentralizing the Jewish community has taken on the feeling of community and the spiritual reasons for upholding Jewish values.

This map shows where the original ghetto was located, where the soup kitchen described in the passage is, and where some of the rich Takeefin now reside (far from the majority of the Jewish community in Spitalfields).
Posted on Eve Brewer

Rhetoric in Children of the Ghetto

“They felt hungry, these picturesque people; their near and dear ones were hungering at home. Voluptuously savoring in imagination, the operation of the soup, they forgot its operation as a dole in aid of wages; were unconscious of the grave economical possibilities of pauperization and the rest, and quite willing to swallow their independence with the soup. Even Esther, who had read much, and was sensitive, accepted unquestioningly the theory of the universe that was held by most people about her, that human beings were distinguished from animals in having to toil terribly for a meagre crust, but that their lot was lightened by the existence of a small and semi-divine class called Takeefim, or rich people, who gave away what they didn’t want. How these rich people came to be, Esther did not inquire; they were as much a part of the constitution of things as clouds and horses. The semi-celestial variety was rarely to be met with. It lived far away from the Ghetto, and a small family of it was said to occupy a whole house. Representatives of it, clad in rustling silks or impressive broad-cloth, and radiating an indefinable aroma of superhumanity, sometimes came to the school, preceded by the beaming Head Mistress; and then all the little girls rose and curtseyed, and the best of them, passing as average members of the class, astonished the semi-divine persons by their intimate acquaintance with the topography of the Pyrenees and the disagreements of Saul and David, the intercourse of the two species ending in effusive smiles and general satisfaction. But the dullest of the girls was alive to the comedy, and had a good-humored contempt for the unworldliness of the semi-divine persons who spoke to them as if they were not going to recommence squabbling, and pulling one another’s hair, and copying one another’s sums, and stealing one another’s needles, the moment the semi-celestial backs were turned.” – Children of the Ghetto, Chapter 1

In Children of the Ghetto, Zangwill attempts to embody the voice of the Anglo-Jewry, displaying the realities of life in the poor Jewish neighborhoods of East London. From the prologue to his first chapter, he creates the foundation of his story; he investigates the liminal space that Jews of the 19th century occupied between the tight knit community of the ghetto and the modern attempt to mesh with British life while remaining true to their community and heritage. The passage above illustrates Zangwill’s use of realism tinged with irony and sarcasm. We can see all of these elements from the first line of the paragraph when the narrator describes the poor who gathered at the soup kitchen writing, “they’re hungry, these picturesque people.” There is a clear use of sarcasm here as the large impoverished crowd would look nothing but picturesque (as one can see in the photo 1). It is interesting to note where the narrator appears to be placed in relationship to Esther, the young poor girl we are following throughout the first chapter. By describing the crowd this way, Zangwill seems to be placing the narrator behind the eyes of the rich, philanthropic individuals serving at the soup kitchen, who look at the poor naively and seemingly condescendingly. The use of a third person narrator throughout the story allows the story to observe multiple entities at once to better showcase the wide range of perspectives and characters within the story. In this scene, the third person narrator allows us to see how the Takeefin have become separated from the greater Jewish community both emotionally and physically through the use of sarcasm.

Throughout the passage there are numerous mentions of “semi-divine” beings and superhumanity in reference to the Takeefin, or rich Jewish class, who become religious quasi-archetypes as we view them through Esther’s eyes. Yet despite her divine view of these individuals, she holds contempt for them for their lack of worldliness. The use of irony further flavors the scene as the narrator shows us how out of touch the Takeefin are with the poorer members of Jewish society – they are divine entities with little connection to those they are supposed to be serving. Zangwill dehumanizes the Takeefin by referring to the individuals as “it”, illustrating the lack of a relationship between  them and the poor, a drastic change from the days of the ghetto. This can be clearly seen when he writes, “The semi-celestial variety was rarely to be met with. It lived far away from the Ghetto, and a small family of it was said to occupy a whole house. Representatives of it, clad in rustling silks or impressive broad-cloth, and radiating an indefinable aroma of superhumanity, sometimes came to the school.”  The Takeefin are being dehumanized by the narrator, yet the continual use of sarcasm serves to illustrate how out of touch they are with the larger Jewish community as the narrator mocks them.

Zangwill also uses various methods of juxtaposition when describing the rich and poor members of community. We can see the tensions between the worldly and the semi-divine in the final two lines of the paragraph. Both lines are almost identical in structure and length and the juxtaposition between the façade and reality of interactions with the Takeefin illustrates the growing lack of true understanding within Anglo-Jewish community. The first line presents the façade saying, “then all the little girls rose and curtseyed, and the best of them, passing as average members of the class, astonished the semi-divine persons by their intimate acquaintance with the topography of the Pyrenees and the disagreements of Saul and David, the intercourse of the two species ending in effusive smiles and general satisfaction.” By calling the girls and the Takeefin “two species”, the narrator is emphasizing the cultural divide that has appeared between these different factions of Jewish life. The line also presents the performance that is required of the children in order to gain the grace of these divine beings, insinuating that the Takeefin need to be catered to in order to obtain their charity. The next line illustrates the worldly reality saying, “But the dullest of the girls was alive to the comedy, and had a good-humored contempt for the unworldliness of the semi-divine persons who spoke to them as if they were not going to recommence squabbling, and pulling one another’s hair, and copying one another’s sums, and stealing one another’s needles, the moment the semi-celestial backs were turned.” By substituting the worlds rich and poor with the divine and the worldly, Zangwill is able to starkly present how separated these two factions of Jewish society have become. The narrator illustrating how easily these “godly” individuals are able to be fooled by the earthly beings, using sarcasm to nullify their divinity by calling attention to their flaws.

These dualities present in Zangwill’s writing reflect the two sided lives that the individuals in the story live – one side Jewish and the other British, one side isolated and the other filled with community, and one side poor and the other rich. Children of the Ghetto produces pathos in its readers as we are shown a group of people who are in between two worlds – the modern British world and that of the Jewish ghetto.

Drawing of customers of the Jewish Soup Kitchen.
The outside of the soup kitchen referenced in this passage.
Posted on Kayra Guven

Peter Walsh’s Flashback: Memory, Austen, and Tradition in Mrs. Dalloway

Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway, pp. 60-61 (Penguin, 2012 edition):

“He sat down beside her, and couldn’t speak. Everything seemed to race past him; he just sat there, eating. And then half-way through dinner he made himself look across at Clarissa for the first time. She was talking to a young man on her right. He had a sudden revelation. ‘She will marry that man,’ he said to himself. He didn’t even know his name.

For of course it was that afternoon, that very afternoon, that Dalloway had come over; and Clarissa called him ‘Wickham’; that was the beginning of it all. Somebody had brought him over; and Clarissa got his name wrong. She introduced him to everybody as Wickham. At last he said ‘My name is Dalloway!’—that was his first view of Richard—a fair young man, rather awkward, sitting on a deck-chair, and blurting out ‘My name is Dalloway!’ Sally got hold of it; always after that she called him ‘My name is Dalloway!’

He was a prey to revelations at that time. This one—that she would marry Dalloway—was blinding—overwhelming at the moment. There was a sort of—how could he put it?—a sort of ease in her manner to him; something maternal; something gentle. They were talking about politics. All through dinner he tried to hear what they were saying.”

Through using free indirect discourse in Peter’s recollection of the day Clarissa met Richard Dalloway, Virginia Woolf’s language mimics the pace and nature of Peter’s thoughts, allowing the reader to peek into his point of view despite the third person narration. From the perspective of someone who was at Bourton that day and did not have access to Peter’s mind, he appears to not care much for his environment as he barely moves and does not speak; however, since Woolf shows us Peter’s line of thought, we know that this expressionless exterior is a result of his inner conflict. This mute and immobile state is reflected in the punctuation. In the first sentence of the passage, there is a comma before “and couldn’t speak,” causing the reader to pause like Peter. Most of the sentences in the passage are fragmented by semicolons, dashes, and commas. Peter is nervous, because he is not aware of everything that is happening and is too afraid to do anything at that moment, and the punctuation emulates his emotions. It is almost as if he is trying to stop—or at the very least slow down—time through semicolons and dashes; however, he only manages to speed his perception of the passage of time by trying to slow down while everyone else is moving at normal speed. As a result, “everything seemed to race past him.” The rest of the first paragraph in the passage has no pauses within sentences as Peter is rushing to make up for lost time. The following two paragraphs, however, revert to using increasingly fragmented sentences as Peter gets more and more nervous. The inconsistent pacing from sentence to sentence is disorienting, and the reader is able to feel Peter’s discomfort.

Peter’s anxiety comes from his limited viewpoint. He “sa[ys] to himself” that Clarissa will marry Richard, but he does not talk to Clarissa about this fear. When the narrator confirms Peter “didn’t even know [Richard’s] name,” we also understand from the use of the word “even” that this lack of knowledge frustrates Peter. He seems disappointed at how little he really knows Clarissa’s life. Here is this man who Clarissa will one day marry, and Peter does not even know his name. It is clear that Clarissa does not know Richard at this point either; however, Peter has a fatalistic tone that suggests he pinpoints the end of his potential relationship with Clarissa to this event. Despite being in the room, Peter is an outsider to Clarissa and Richard’s meeting. “All through dinner he tried to hear what they were saying,” meaning he was not actually able to listen. Again, there is that nervous tone exacerbated by the five dashes, two semicolons, and question mark used in the sentences leading up to this line. It makes sense that Peter cannot hear anybody else as he is too distracted by his own thoughts, leading to a myopic recounting of events.

The fragility of memory further complicates Peter’s recollection of the events of that day, making Peter an unreliable narrator. Peter superimposes his current thoughts into the past “for of course it was that afternoon, that very afternoon, that Dalloway had come over.” The addition of “of course” is Peter’s current thought. At the time, Richard was just some guy. However, Peter is having a hard time believing his luck in what he is recounting, which explains the desire to pretend all of his regrets were predestined. The incredulous tone is evident in the repetition of “that afternoon” with the addition of “very” for emphasis the second time around.

Peter’s relative insignificance to Clarissa is explored in Woolf’s allusion to Pride and Prejudice. Clarissa accidentally calls Richard “Wickham,” the charming yet deceitful soldier in Austen’s novel. In that case, is Clarissa Lydia? Or is she Elizabeth, disillusioned with Wickham’s character? Since she will eventually marry Richard Dalloway, it is tempting to say Clarissa is Lydia; however, Richard refuses his identity as Wickham by “blurting out ‘My name is Dalloway!’” He is described as “awkward,” and he shares Mr. Darcy’s pride and wealth. Nonetheless, it does not feel appropriate to compare Clarissa’s marriage to that of Lizzy’s, because there does not appear to be that similar happiness. Here, we see Woolf’s twist. In Mrs. Dalloway, Darcy is split into two characters: Richard and Sally. Pride and Prejudice makes it abundantly clear that Elizabeth Bennet is interested in Darcy because he makes her happy, but also because he is wealthy, and “to be mistress of Pemberley might be something!” (P&P, ch.43). Austen does not make her protagonist choose between security and happiness in the end. Woolf does. Clarissa’s kiss with Sally Seton is the happiest moment in all of her life, but Richard Dalloway provides a certain security that Sally could never. This leaves Peter as Mr. Collins. Earlier in the novel, Clarissa thinks to herself that she made the right choice marrying Richard as being in a relationship with Peter would have never worked, which parallels the relationship between Elizabeth and Mr. Collins.

In A Room of One’s Own, Woolf talks about the importance of tradition and the want of a “common sentence ready for [women authors]” (ch.4). In Mrs. Dalloway, there is a deliberate evocation of women authors past, especially Austen (Woolf not only explicitly mentions Austen’s characters but also develops Austen’s frequent use of free indirect discourse in her own writing); this is a novel steeped in tradition. At the same time, there is a reinvention of tradition. In addition to Austen, Woolf is also reinventing the themes and styles of contemporary authors—most notably Joyce and Proust. The novel takes place over one day in June, like Joyce’s Ulysses. In addition, there are two protagonists, one of whom could be seen as a semi-autobiographical Woolf, akin to the relationship between Stephen Dedalus and Joyce. What is more, both novels depict the ordinary moments of life as beautiful and worthy of the same examination and reflection as the actions in epics. In this veneration for the daily, Mrs. Dalloway is also taking elements from Proust’s body of work. However, especially in this passage, Proust’s influence is most visible in the representation of memory as both fragile and sometimes involuntary. As a result of this simultaneous reinvention and preservation of tradition, Mrs. Dalloway becomes a bridge between the past and the present.

Posted on Nicole Kresich

Surviving Isolation: A Commentary on Clarissa’s Parties in Mrs. Dalloway

“Since she was lying on the sofa, cloistered, exempt, the presence of this thing which she felt to be so obvious became physically existent; with robes of sound from the street, sunny, with hot breath, whispering, blowing out the blinds. But suppose Peter said to her, “Yes, yes, but your parties – what’s the sense of your parties?” all she could say was (and nobody could be expected to understand): They’re an offering; which sounded horribly vague… But to go deeper, beneath what people said (and these judgments, how superficial, how fragmentary they are!) in her own mind now, what did it mean to her, this thing she called life? Oh, it was very clear. Here was So-and-so in South Kensington; some one up in Bayswater; and somebody else, say, in Mayfair. And she felt quite continuously a sense of their existence; and she felt what a waste; and she felt what a pity; and she felt if only they could be brought together; so she did it. And it was an offering; to combine, to create; but to whom? An offering for the sake of an offering, perhaps. Anyhow, it was her gift. Nothing else had she of the slightest importance; cannot think, write, even play the piano.” (Woolf, 121-122)

The presence of the omniscient narrator in Virginia Woolf’s, Mrs. Dalloway unveils Clarissa Dalloway’s struggle to balance her innermost thoughts with the external yet intimate world of the socially elite. Coupled with the overwhelmingly sensorial imagery, Clarissa’s tendency towards introspection in the opening lines suggests a deeper purpose in organizing her party. Lying on the sofa, the isolating diction the narrator ascribes to Clarissa’s “cloistered” and “exempt” state illustrates her in private seclusion, sheltered from the outside world and the social happenings of upper-crust society (Woolf, 121). However, the “presence of this thing,” the gravity of her impending party, “became physically existent,” (Woolf, 121). In possessing knowledge about interior thoughts and emotions, Woolf’s omniscient narrator relays the tangible impact that Clarissa’s departure from isolation provoked in her sudden feeling of excitement and vivacity surrounding her nearing party. Woolf’s employment of the semicolon in this opening sentence connotes a sudden shift in tone from an overwhelming sense of solitude to a visceral stream of sensory experience. The personification of the outside world that Clarissa suddenly becomes aware of– the heat of the sun, the noise from the street, and the “blowing of the blinds”– corroborates an immediate introduction of life into the bleak space surrounding Clarissa’s position on the sofa (Woolf, 121). 

Clarissa’s preoccupation with what she presupposes as Peter’s demanding inquisition into the purpose of her parties in the dialogue of her innermost thoughts (“what’s the sense of your parties”) reiterates the internal struggle Clarissa faces with defining meaning and purpose in hosting these extravagant social events (Woolf, 121). The structural significance of the parentheses Woolf effects in Clarissa’s response to this question, “(and nobody could be expected to understand),” reveals an aside into Clarissa’s innermost thoughts, where the significance of “nobody” connotes Clarissa’s self-ostracism from exterior society (Woolf, 121). Clarissa’s tendency towards introspection in this parenthetical break recognizes that her hesitation in returning to the public eye stems from a deeper, more personal reasoning that she alone can understand. 

In positing her parties as “offerings,” the diction Clarissa manipulates suggests that her social events operate as gifts in contribution to society. The effect of proposing the party as one would describe a gift or a blessing beholds a deeper purpose in her intention. However, before we arrive at this intention, Woolf structurally interrupts with another parenthetical, “(and these judgments, how superficial, how fragmentary they are!)”, marking a return to Clarissa’s internal debate between the frivolity of her parties despite her previously excited tone (Woolf, 122). Yet, in succeeding this parenthetical with a question preoccupying her purpose in life, Clarissa refocuses on what brings her existence joy. This newfound responsibility to celebrate life conflicts with the moment of bleak isolation in the passage’s opening where the deeper purpose of Clarissa’s party is unveiled to share this joy through the community engagement that her parties offer. 

Clarissa responds to her own question with clarity: living in isolation is a “waste” and should be “pitied,” therefore her purpose in life is to bring people together (Woolf, 121). Stemming from her own experience in isolation, Clarissa questions the purpose in existing without the intimate connections formed that celebrate humanity as it should operate: together. Therefore, her “offering for the sake of an offering” occupied the highest importance, not solely for Clarissa herself, but as her social motivation and responsibility to instill the joy of human interaction and engagement with her guests (Woolf, 122). In describing her parties as “offerings” and “gifts,” Clarissa relies upon her social gatherings to provide meaning to a world that would otherwise be considered wasted. Despite the superficiality she criticizes about social events, Clarissa posits her party as a gift to both herself and those amongst her social sphere to extract the essential function in hosting: Clarissa throws parties in an attempt to draw people together and offer the community engagement essential to achieving a sense of fulfillment and belonging. 

Clarissa’s desire to achieve purpose in her rediscovery of the social world reflects the notion of rebirth experienced during this post-World War I and post-pandemic locale. Recovering from the isolating effects of quarantine herself, Clarissa’s nervousness about her reintegration into society stems from her recently having been ill with the Spanish Influenza. Woolf explores the isolating effects of the war and the pandemic on human behavior and the idea of permanence in Mrs. Dalloway. However, it is in this passage that we see Clarissa struggling with post-pandemic social anxiety, as well as a nostalgia for a world before this sense of discontinuity. Clarissa raises the question amidst her inner struggle with returning to society, “(and nobody could be expected to understand),” because none of her peers had undergone similar seclusion, uncertainty, and fear that plagued Clarissa while she was ill. As someone who had evaded death herself, Clarissa’s motivation and hesitation to refocus on life becomes clear; she suffers from the social anxiety of her isolating experience, yet has returned to the forefront intending to share her appreciation for social interaction (Woolf, 121). The tension implicated in Clarissa’s internal struggle to exist in a world following the uncertainties about the aftermath of war and influenza affirms Clarissa’s socially charming yet private and protected demeanor. The language Woolf invokes to describe Clarrisa’s party as an “offering” connotes something open to the public, yet intimately privatized with a guest list. Contextualized in a way that revives the socio-political history of the early 20th-century, this tension embodies the lived experiences and attitudes of this impacted, post-war society yet inspires a new appreciation and perspective towards human belonging.

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Hannah on the Threshold: Children of the Ghetto Commentary

‘The hands of the clock crept on. It was half-past nine. Hannah sat lethargic, numb, unable to think, her strung-up nerves grown flaccid, her eyes full of bitter-sweet tears, her soul floating along as in a trance on the waves of a familiar melody. Suddenly she became aware that the others had risen and that her father was motioning to her. Instinctively she understood; rose automatically and went to the door; then a great shock of returning recollection whelmed her soul. She stood rooted to the floor. Her father had filled Elijah’s goblet with wine and it was her annual privilege to open the door for the prophet’s entry. Intuitively she knew that David was pacing madly in front of the house, not daring to make known his presence, and perhaps cursing her cowardice. A chill terror seized her. She was afraid to face him—his will was strong and mighty; her fevered imagination figured it as the wash of a great ocean breaking on the doorstep threatening to sweep her off into the roaring whirlpool of doom. She threw the door of the room wide and paused as if her duty were done.

“Nu, nu,” muttered Reb Shemuel, indicating the outer door. It was so near that he always had that opened, too.

Hannah tottered forwards through the few feet of hall. The cloak and hat on the peg nodded to her sardonically. A wild thrill of answering defiance shot through her: she stretched out her hands towards them. “Fly, fly; it is your last chance,” said the blood throbbing in her ears. But her hand dropped to her side and in that brief instant of terrible illumination, Hannah saw down the whole long vista of her future life, stretching straight and unlovely between great blank walls, on, on to a solitary grave; knew that the strength had been denied her to diverge to the right or left, that for her there would be neither Exodus nor Redemption. Strong in the conviction of her weakness she noisily threw open the street door. The face of David, sallow and ghastly, loomed upon her in the darkness. Great drops of rain fell from his hat and ran down his cheeks like tears. His clothes seemed soaked with rain.

“At last!” he exclaimed in a hoarse, glad whisper. “What has kept you?”

“Boruch Habo! (Welcome art thou who arrivest)” came the voice of Reb Shemuel front within, greeting the prophet.

“Hush!” said Hannah. “Listen a moment.”‘ – Children of the Ghetto, Chapter 25

 

The passage above reflects the inner turmoil of Hannah, the daughter of a rabbi, as she chooses between running away with the man that she loves and remaining a part of her family.  It begins with a focus on time. She is thirty minutes late to meet David. As Hannah is caught in indecision, the focus on the slow, creeping movement of the hands of the clock in the first paragraph is important to increasing the suspense of the moment. This moment of suspense and fear is further captured by the anathema present in the articulation of Hannah’s feelings. “Her strung-up nerves…, her eyes…, her soul”, the structure of this sentence takes us into the interior life of Hannah. We more personally feel her panic in these lines as she is frozen with indecision.

The reasons for this indecision, a choice between her religion and her love, are partly revealed by references to previous points in the passage. “Her soul floating along as in a trance on the waves of a familiar melody” clearly refers to a moment earlier in the chapter when she sits with her father through the Seder service. When she hears the choir, she says that “the words seem fateful, pregnant with a special message”.  This message is all about adhering to the strict obedience of the very Law she is about to defy. Her guilt steered her back to the words of this song, making it more difficult for her to choose her lover over her religion.

Religion continues to play a role in the meaning of the passage as the Seder dinner continues. It is Hannah’s “annual privilege to open the door for the prophet’s entry”. In the Bible, Hannah gives birth to the prophet Samuel after fervent prayer to God.  In a matter of speaking, Hannah opens the door for the entry of the prophet into the world just as her namesake opens the door during the Seder dinner. Ironically, the person waiting outside the door is David, who is not the prophet Elijah nor a prophet in the Bible. In fact, the downfall of the biblical David resembles that of his namesake, for he falls in love with the wife of Uriah although it is unlawful for them to be together (2 Samuel 11).

Realizing that David would be waiting for her once she opened the door for Elijah is the “returning collection” that “whelmed her [Hannah’s] soul”, as it meant that she could no longer ignore David. The will of David to marry her is compared to a great ocean “threatening to sweep her off into the roaring whirlpool of doom”. This is likely a Biblical reference to the great flood. In this story, God sends a great flood upon the earth to wipe out the wickedness of humanity, preserving only the righteous, Noah’s family, in an ark. Here, it seems David is among the wicked and is doomed to drown Hannah as well as himself if she goes with him. Later in the passage, David is described as “soaked with rain”, his face “sallow and ghastly”, almost as if he was already drowned. To go with David would be to risk drowning and dying with him. This is further hinted to in the passage where it says “Hannah saw down the whole long vista of her future life,…on, on to a solitary grave”. She associates death with her life with David.

This is in contrast with Hannah’s thoughts earlier in the passage. She seems to desperately want to go with David before it’s too late. When she thinks “Fly, fly; it is your last chance”, it is suggestive of the Israelites flight from Egypt. Like her, they were fleeing persecution, but unlike her, they were being persecuted by the Egyptians, while Hannah is being persecuted by her own religion. This becomes even more important in the light of the fact that they are eating the Seder meal, the meal that commemorates the Israelites’ freedom from the Egyptians. In the original instructions for how this meal was to be eaten, Moses told the Israelites that they must eat the meal in haste, wearing sandals on their feet and holding their staff (Exodus 12:11), as if ready to make flight. Hannah, too, seeks to make flight, but hesitates. When she thinks of her choice, she feels defeated, saying “there would be neither Exodus nor Redemption”. Here, Exodus refers to the fact that she cannot flee, while Redemption could refer to her belief that she cannot be redeemed, or saved from her unhappiness, by David. Redemption could also refer to her unwillingness to abandon her religion, as Jesus is called the Redeemer (and Jesus is from the line of David). Either way, Hannah’s final lines of the passage clearly show that she has made up her mind. She chooses to listen to her father, who is greeting the prophet in Hebrew, rather than David, who is speaking in English. She is drawn back to her family and religion, leading her to finally reject David.

The historical context that this story is placed in is the late 19th century. During this time, the Jewish population in Cape Town, including people such as David, began to rapidly expand. The Eastern European Jews who came to Cape Town in this period shed the traditional garb and customs of Judaism for more Anglo-Jewish customs. Coming from such a background, David’s shock at such a strict adherence to the laws of Judaism is understandable. A kohein could not marry a divorcee, a convert, a promiscuous woman, a woman who is the offspring of a forbidden marriage to a kohein, or a woman who is the widow of a man who died childless but who has been released from the obligation to marry her husband’s brother. An ordinary Jewsh man is only prohibited from marrying certain close blood relatives, the ex-wives of certain close blood relatives, a woman who has not been validly divorced, the daughter or granddaughter of his ex-wife, or the sister of his ex-wife during the ex-wife’s lifetime (jewishvirtuallibrary.org). We can see from this that the title of kohein changes much of what is expected by Jewish law, expectations that David was unwilling to reckon with. It is through exploring this context that we’re better able to understand the events that happened in Children of the Ghetto.