Free English Literature Dissertations - Bloom Further Notes That (1990 P 58) When She Returns Home To Discover That
Bloom further notes that (1990 p 58) when she returns home to discover that her husband, Richard, has been invited to lunch without her, Clarissa feels empty and lost: her identity once more drains away, because she has not been included. To regain her sense of identity she detaches herself from the present and dips into the past, into her memories. As the sense of a rich relationship (with Sally Seton) and a moment of vision returns to her, the emptiness occasioned by her exclusion fills. She abruptly returns to the present, and "plunged into the very heart of the moment, transfixed it, therethe moment of this June morning on which was the pressure of all the other mornings." This circling of the moment with all the other moments of life gives her identity point and continuity.
Therefore, it is evident that memory thus plays a double role, both disturbing and restoring the individual's sense of identity. Littleton (1995 p 1) states while in most respects Woolf does show memory as spontaneous, she too deals with intermittencies. There are instances of profound lapses of memory, as when Lady Bruton remembers Hugh's kindness, but not the occasion for it (Mrs. Dalloway p 104). Insofar as metaphysical Being exists in human minds and not in the objective world, losing awareness of Being is tantamount to losing Being. For Clarissa, forgetfulness is not simply a prefiguration of death; it is itself a very real death. The procession of time leads to death, and time's passage leads also to the oblivion of forgetfulness. This condition of oblivion is inherent in the fractured, isolated conditions of life, in which people drift toward experiential isolation.
To conclude with Littleton (1995 p 1), Clarissa's isolation, the fact of death in her life, is caused by a social order which requires the subjugation of the private self, for Clarissa the real self, to the individual's social position. Woolf writes, "She had the oddest sense of being herself invisible, unseen . . . this being Mrs. Dalloway; not even Clarissa any more; this being Mrs. Richard Dalloway". "Mrs. Dalloway" is that part of her fixed in a social position: her femininity, in a patrilineal culture, subsumed by her identity as Richard's wife. The novel begins with the words "Mrs. Dalloway."
Bibliography
Books
Bloom, H. (1990) Clarissa Dalloway Chelsea House
Ford, F. M. (1915) The Good Soldier. 1915. New York: Vintage
Poplawski, P. (2003) Encyclopedia of Literary Modernism Westport, CT USA Greenwood Press
Woolf, V. (1925) Mrs Dalloway. United Kingdom, Hogarth Press
Journals
Littleton, J. (1995) 'Mrs' Dalloway': Portrait of the Artist as a Middle-Aged Woman
Twentieth Century Literature, Vol. 41 Hofstrsa University
Witkowski, P. (1998) Cranford Revisited: Ford's Debt to Mrs. Gaskell in 'The Good Soldier. Twentieth Century Literature, Vol.
Dissertations - Free English Literature Dissertations
