PDA

View Full Version : A Question



Harpo Marx
10-29-2007, 12:46 AM
I posted this in the Virginia Woolf forum, but haven't received any answers yet...can anyone help me out?

Is time a limit or a comfort for Clarissa in Mrs. Dalloway?

Sometimes, Clarissa seems to fear the forward progression of time, specifically in her musings on aging and death. Often, she associates these concerns with windows or mirrors, frames in which, it has been argued, the view of a visually constructed moment can be suspended in time. On the other hand, Clarissa also seems to fear this suspension. As Woolf’s narration style and diction reveals, the “plunge” of life is its substance: the constant flow of perception, consciousness, and memory is essential to living. Moments of hesitation are linked with as much foreboding as are moments of the realization of aging.

So how does Clarissa relate to time?

Reading recommendations on this question are welcome!

Related texts:
"Something Central Which Permeated: Virginia Woolf and 'Mrs. Dalloway'" by Reuben Brower
Herself Beheld: The Literature of the Looking Glass by Jenijoy La Belle
Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf

Princess_1986
10-30-2007, 08:17 AM
I wrote my dissertation on Woolf, so certainly I could recommend lots of good reading.

I find that Woolf's literature can only be coherent when it is applied to a certain image, symbol or pattern. In Mrs Dalloway - time is constantly sounding out throughout the narrative - it permeates everything.

Yours is a very difficult question. As you have said, time sometimes does seem to comfort her - but at other times it is an unstoppable enemy - or as Woolf has said an 'unseizable force': something to be feared.

If you take a reading from the novel which balances both arguements - that it is a limit and a comfort - then you will find that your own opinion will begin to shape the reading. I always find that anyway.

Is this an essay question you are working on?