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Mrs Dalloway 3

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Title: Mrs Dalloway 3


1
Mrs Dalloway (3)
  • 4 May 2009

2
  • As Peter returns to the clamour of city life,
    Clarissa's parting words reverberate in his mind
    "Remember my party." Although he does not blame
    her, he cannot understand why she gives these
    parties.
  • English Society Although Peter critiques the
    governing class for a number of reasons,
    including their emotional stoicism, we see here
    that he still feels ashamed of his own emotional
    displays. This is our first glimpse of Peter as a
    compromised rebel.Peter's thoughts drift, and
    he is struck suddenly by an image of Clarissa
    falling where she stands. "No! No! he cried. She
    is not dead! I am not old" (65). He assures
    himself that he "cares not a straw" what the
    Dalloways, the Whitbreads, and their set say
    about him. English Society Repulsion and
    admiration.
  • Peter as the Anglo-Indian. Peter is reassuring
    himself that the passion and radicalism of his
    youth are not dead.

3
Anti-Militarism (Rigidity vs life)
  • cant keep up with them, Peter Walsh thought, as
    they marched up Whitehall, and sure enough, on
    they marched, past him, past every one, in their
    steady way, as if one will worked legs and arms
    uniformly, and life, with its varieties, its
    irreticences, had been laid under a pavement of
    monuments and wreaths and drugged into a stiff
    yet staring corpse by discipline.

4
  • As Peter continues, he spots a pretty, young
    girl, whom he follows until she disappears into a
    house. He fantasizes about a life with her. The
    moment she is gone, he feels empty and
    isolated.And it was smashed to atoms - his fun,
    for it was half made up, as he knew very well
    invented, this escapade with the girl made up as
    one makes up the better part of life, he thought
    - making oneself up making her up creating an
    exquisite amusement, and something more. But odd
    it was, and quite true all this one could never
    share - it smashed to atoms (70). Independence
    of the Soul Peter is left alone with his
    fantasy. Fantasies and dreams cannot be shared,
    as they are the privacy of the soul. In this
    passage, we also see the process of creation as
    the essence of life.

5
Anglo-Indian identity
  • Peter notices details of the city as he walks.
    However, unlike Clarissa or Septimus, he does not
    observe moments of beauty, but rather the
    "splendid achievement" of London, of civilization
    (71).
  • The colonial margin

6
  • Peter sees Regent's Park and remembers it fondly
    from his childhood. He decides to find a nice
    shady spot, next to a "grey nurse," to sit and
    smoke (73). He falls into reverie. He has a
    vision of a solitary traveller greeted by a
    nurturing, compassionate female force.(Feminine
    force as something for which Peter longs, lacking
    it himself.)

7
  • Peter awakens from his dream saying to himself,
    "The death of the soul" (76), words which remind
    him of Bourton. He recalls the day Clarissa met
    Richard and the awful moment of rejection, a
    moment that felt to him like the death of his
    soul.
  • Come along, she said. Theyre waiting. He had
    never felt so happy in the whole of his life!
    Without a word they made it up. They walked down
    to the lake. He had twenty minutes of perfect
    happiness. (81)

8
Marriage
  • While Peter sits on one park bench, Septimus sits
    on another, talking to himself. Rezia wanders
    away from her husband wondering, "Why should I
    suffer?" (84). Echoing Peters It was awful
    Rezia accepts that everyone gives up something in
    marriage. She has given up her home in Italy. But
    now, her husband is acting stranger and stranger
    seeing things talking out loud to no one, or no
    one living making her write things down
    claiming he knows the meaning of the world and
    threatening to kill himself.
  • Marriage is presented as a form of compromise, a
    theme that recurs in other marriages throughout
    the novel

9
  • Septimus insists on continuing to talk to his
    dead friend, Evans, who was his closest companion
    at the battlefront and was killed just before the
    war ended. Septimus sees Evans in the shrubbery
    and in the curtains, addressing him directly. Yet
    Dr. Holmes insists there is nothing wrong with
    Septimus. Rezia's thoughts drift as she notices
    her finger has grown too thin for her wedding
    ring. She takes it off and slips it into her bag
    to keep from losing it. When she returns to
    Septimus sitting on the bench, he thinks to
    himself that she has left him their marriage is
    over."Since his wife had thrown away her
    wedding ring," Septimus concludes he has been
    freed (87). He was now alone to "hear the truth,
    to learn the meaning, which now at last, after
    all the toils of civilization - Greeks, Romans,
    Shakespeare, Darwin, and now himself - was to be
    given whole to . . . 'to whom?' he asked out
    loud. 'To the Prime Minister,' the voices which
    rustled above his head replied" (102).

10
pp. 87-92 (Focus on Septimus)
  • P. 90 rising and falling
  • P. 90 (Time)
  • Sanity and Insanity Septimus, like Clarissa,
    experiences life as a succession of piercingly
    beautiful moments. However, for Septimus, the
    distinction between external reality and his
    personal response to the outside world is
    blurred. The sound of a motor car is like that of
    music bouncing between rocks, and the old man
    playing the penny whistle is a shepherd boy's
    piping. In Septimus' mind, his response to
    reality merges with reality itself.Much like
    Clarissa's sewing was interrupted by Peter
    ringing the doorbell, Septimus's visions of
    beauty as truth are interrupted by Rezia saying,
    "It is time" (90).As Peter Walsh passes the
    young couple in the park, the clock strikes a
    quarter to twelve. He has no idea he has been
    mistaken for a dead man named Evans. Instead, he
    thinks about the significance of the five years
    he has been gone.He thinks of his argument with
    Clarissa, p. 92

11
p. 93-- (Peter)
  • Reflecting on the people who figured largely in
    his past, Peter Walsh notes Hugh Whitbread
    embodies all that is detestable about the British
    middle class (95) Hugh, who plays no meaningful
    role in the governing body, nevertheless defines
    himself and his respectability by his "little job
    at court" (7). In their youth, Sally, like Peter,
    despised Hugh for he "read nothing, thought
    nothing, felt nothing" (95). Peter despises Hugh
    for all that he represents. He hates the
    governing-class mentality, yet as he leaves the
    park, railing against high society, he thinks
    about how he can get Hugh or Richard to help him
    find work.
  • And India(p. 93)
  • P. 98 Richard and Shakespeare

12
  • P. 102 Clarissa and life
  • Peter passes an old woman singing as he leaves
    the park. This woman is significant, insofar as
    she is a nurturing female image, like the nurse
    in Peter's park reverie. The song she sings is
    Strauss's Allerseden. Allerseden is the day on
    which a collective resurrection of spirits
    occurs. In the song, a bereaved woman hopes her
    beloved will return from the grave.
  • This passage, much like the ravings and visions
    of Septimus, is written in a style that bears a
    greater resemblance to verse than prose

13
  • London has swallowed up many millions of young
    men called Smith thought nothing of fantastic
    Christian names like Septimus with which their
    parents have thought to distinguish them. (p.110)

14
  • Septimus, we learn, is a self-educated man, who
    left home as a boy to pursue writing in London.
    He found he was anxious to improve himself and
    fell in love with Miss Isabel Pole. She inspired
    him to write and "lit in him such a fire as burns
    only once a lifetime" (111).

15
  • He volunteered early for the war so as to defend
    an England which, for him, consisted primarily of
    Shakespeare's plays and Miss Isabel Pool. There
    in the trenches, Septimus developed an important
    friendship with his officer, Evans. After Evans
    died, however, shortly before the end of the war,
    Septimus felt nothing. He found himself in Milan
    and married the young girl who made hats with
    "little artist's fingers . He married her not
    because he loved her, but because he was panicked
    by his lack of emotion (113). He could reason but
    he could not feel.

16
Septimus / Literature
  • Septimus's obsession with Shakespeare and his
    former literary ambitions mark him as an artistic
    outsider - a status that is reinforced by his
    marriage to a foreign hat-maker. The ruling class
    in this novel shuts out not only the lower
    classes and immigrants, but artists as well. The
    position of the power elite depends upon
    conservatism and complacency, and because artists
    threaten such conformity, the governing set has a
    deep distrust of writers Richard claims "no
    decent man ought to read Shakespeare's sonnets
    because it was like listening at keyholes Lady
    Bruton has "never read a word of poetry herself
    and Dr. Bradshaw "never had time for reading .

17
  • Here he opened Shakespeare once more. That boys
    business of the intoxication of languageAntony
    and Cleopatrahad shrivelled utterly. How
    Shakespeare loathed humanitythe putting on of
    clothes, the getting of children, the sordidity
    of the mouth and the belly! This was now revealed
    to Septimus the message hidden in the beauty of
    words. The secret signal which one generation
    passes, under disguise, to the next is loathing,
    hatred, despair. Dante the same. Aeschylus
    (translated) the same. There Rezia sat at the
    table trimming hats. (115)

18
  • Love between man and woman was repulsive to
    Shakespeare. The business of copulation was filth
    to him before the end. But, Rezia said, she must
    have children. They had been married five years.
    (116)
  • One cannot bring children into a world like this.
    One cannot perpetuate suffering, or increase the
    breed of these lustful animals, who have no
    lasting emotions, but only whims and vanities,
    eddying them now this way, now that.

19
Communication (122)
  • Once you stumble, Septimus wrote on the back of a
    postcard, human nature is on you. Holmes is on
    you. Their only chance was to escape, without
    letting Holmes know to Italy anywhere,
    anywhere, away from Dr. Holmes.(120)
  • Dr Holmes putting aside Antony and Cleopatra
    Holmes had won of course the brute with the red
    nostrils had won (121)
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