Internalization And Philosophical Introspection In Dorothy Richardson's To The Lighthouse And The Lighthouse

    I chose to compare and contrast two women authors from different literary time periods.  Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861) as a representative of the Victorian age (1832-1901) and Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) as the spokeswoman for the Modernist (1914-1939) mindset.  Being women in historical time periods that did not embrace the talents and gifts of women; they share many of the same issues and themes throughout their works - however, it is the age in which they wrote that shaped their expressions of these themes.  Although they lived only decades apart their worlds were remarkably different - their voices were muted or amplified according to the beat of society's drum.

Moreover, the fluidity, represented by the thoughts of the characters, is enhanced by the form of the novel: Mrs Dalloway is not divided into chapters; thus, it does not leave behind a sense of completeness. It is largely intertwined with the narration of Clarissa and that of the other characters and the action largely takes place in the mind. This is presented in form of free indirect discourse: the narrative conveys the thoughts of the selected character. This leaves the readers with an impressionistic story. To demonstrate how different characters bring about unequal messages, here is an illustration from the work: when Clarissa is strolling the streets of London, she and Septimus both see the same car. The vehicle leads them to different thoughts: for Septimus it is seeing in it the power of the modern world, which “was about to burst into flames” (13) or rather the oppressive relationship of technology and war, which ultimately leads to his suicide. He is bound by the internal, his suffering thoughts cannot help but to be captured in the memories of the World War I he fought in. For Clarissa, hearing the noise of the car provokes her to think she has heard “a pistol shot in the street” (12) (which later turns out to be true). By using such a form of representation, Woolf points to the invisible connections of people in a dehumanised, yet technology-bound, world, which create between them a form of interaction that serves as compensation for what Septimus (and

Analyzing the ways in which a piece of literature includes feminist ideologies can bring out the potential messages that the creators of these productions were attempting to portray, while allowing the reader to critique the literature from a feminist perspective.

The following sections of this BookRags Literature Study Guide is offprint from Gale's For Students Series: Presenting Analysis, Context, and Criticism on Commonly Studied Works: Introduction, Author Biography, Plot Summary, Characters, Themes, Style, Historical Context, Critical Overview, Criticism and Critical Essays, Media Adaptations, Topics for Further Study, Compare & Contrast, What Do

The Cambridge Introduction to the 19th-Century American Novel, the traditional sentimental novel’s storyline focuses around a young woman finding her way through life, usually without the support of a conventional family. The women overcome life’s hardships, and “the key to these women’s triumphs lies in their achievement of self-mastery” (Cane 113). According to Gregg Cane, these didactic novels are targeted at young women to instill the idea that a domestic home, marriage, and family are what construct a morally good woman. The plot is used to extract an emotional reaction from the audience. Nina Baym describes all sentimental novels as having the same plot,

James' manipulation of appearances in Daisy Miller as well as other character's notions of these appearances provides us with a novella of enigmatic and fascinating characters. Daisy, the most complicated of these ambiguities, is as mysterious as she is flirtatious. James gives her a carefully constructed enigmatic quality that leaves the reader wondering what her motivations were and who she truly was. He structures the novella in such a way as to stress the insights that the supporting characters provide into Daisy's character, weather accurate or erroneous. Despite their questionable reliability, they allow James to make commentary on both European and American cultures and social class.

In Virginia Woolf’s feminist essay “A Room of One’s Own,” Woolf argues that “a woman must have money and a room of her own” (16) if she is to write fiction of any merit. The point as she develops it is a perceptive one, and far more layered and various in its implications than it might at first seem. But I wonder if perhaps Woolf did not really tap the full power of her thesis. She recognized the necessity of the writer’s financial independence to the birth of great writing, but she failed to discover the true relationship to great writing of another freedom; for just as economic freedom allows one to inhabit a physical space---a room of one’s own---so does mental freedom allow one to inhabit one’s own mind and body “incandescent and

     Does turmoil in people promote chaos in the world, or does chaos in the world create turmoil in people? To uncover a single answer to such a question is impossible. Therefore, those who seek a solution find themselves at a stalemate, and the query posed becomes rhetorical. Nevertheless, it initiates another inquiry worth thought and reflection: since the chaotic world is already well established, whether or not a product of human havoc, how is one to escape it and live uninhibitedly? Fences, by August Wilson, The Awakening, by Kate Chopin, and Wuthering Heights, by Emily Brontë embody people who struggle against the chaos in the world to be rid of

Throughout history, female artists have not been strangers to harsh criticism regarding their artistic works. Some female artists are fortunate to even receive such criticism; many have not achieved success in sharing their works with the world. In Virgina Woolf’s third chapter of her essay “A Room of One’s Own,” Woolf addresses the plight of the woman writer, specifically during the Elizabethan time period of England. Woolf helps the reader appreciate her view on how stifling and difficult this time period was for women and how what little creativity emerged would have been distorted in some way. Through a number of claims, examples and other literary techniques, Woolf is able to

In Virginia Woolf’s “Night and Day”, we, as the reader, can examine various feminist themes throughout the novel. Even though, “Night and Day” is one of her more conventional novels, many of the issues fly in the face of traditional values and capitalizes on the female oppression that was present in that time era. Even though, this was one of her earlier works, I believe that her conventional structure was an intentional creation, as she was trying to make a point on literary tradition and feminism. In contrast to many of her later novels, like “To The Lighthouse”, which had much anti-structure and stream of consciousness, “Night and Day”, is full of carefully written

The following sections of this BookRags Literature Study Guide is offprint from Gale's For Students Series: Presenting Analysis, Context, and Criticism on Commonly Studied Works: Introduction, Author Biography, Plot Summary, Characters, Themes, Style, Historical Context, Critical Overview, Criticism and Critical Essays, Media Adaptations, Topics for Further Study, Compare & Contrast, What Do I Read Next?, For Further Study, and

In her essay “In Search of a Room of One’s Own” Virginia Woolf used Shakespeare’s sister as a metaphor to explain the position of women in Elizabethan era. Since author finds it difficult to find any trace of women in the Elizabethan era, she creates a fictional character through imagination, and to feel situations that the women in Elizabethan society would have had to go through. Woolf compares fiction to a “spider’s web” (520) that permeates life “at all four corners” (520). Through this metaphor, she personifies narratives of women suffering as a spider’s web that cling to our material reality. For Woolf, our lived stories are a part of this web which can be changed, destroyed or, re-spin with our imagination. In my paper, I argue that Wolfe uses the metaphor of a spider’s web as a heuristic device to make a case for literacy analysis and fiction as tools for exercising narrative agency and challenging stories that deny us representation in this world. To illustrate this, she creates an imaginative character, named Judith Shakespeare, to surface the gender inequality in the Elizabethan era. For this purpose, she not only writes a new chapter of Elizabethan history that centers the perspective of the women, but she also gives voice to women of that era who, like Judith her main character, were silenced and delegitimized by the spider’s web of their time.

In the various works provided to the class many themes are present in all of them, this paper will be focusing on the authors methods of critiquing social norms. The short story, A Telephone Call by Dorothy Parker paints a harsh reality from the perspective of a highly anxious woman forced into a lifestyle that many would relate to in the 1900s. “My Last Duchess” by Robert Browning exposes the duke and the terrible social norms he reinforces through a poetic format allowing the reader to interpret his strange behavior on their own. Their Eyes Were Watching God, a novel, by Zora Neale Hurston attempts to defy social norms and showcase the positive outcomes of such. Lastly, A Streetcar Named Desire is a play by Tennessee Williams which satirically points out the extremist behaviors that are approved and even rewarded by society. These pieces of literature from different genres still point out the same issues in social norms in regards to the power struggle between men and women and gender roles. Although the perspective changes, as the characters are different or the economy of words is different between the genres the message stays the same.

Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse has been described as a Künstlerroman or artist novel. It traces the development of an artist, much like the Bildungsroman traced the development of a child into adulthood (Daughtery 148). The main artist of the novel is Lily Briscoe. As the novel progresses, Lily comes to terms with art and with life. To the Lighthouse is, in many ways, a quest novel (Daughter 148). This is evidenced by the title, which includes the preposition “to”. Nearly all the characters in the novels have a goal which they are aiming for. For example, in Part I, James Ramsay wants nothing but else but to go on an expedition to the lighthouse. Mr. Ramsay muses about how to reach the letter “R”. Lily sets sail with her canvas and her

As we read, Woolf’s novel, to the Lighthouse we see different aspects of art being used and how it is being used. Lily Briscoe plays a huge role in art in the story. She is working on a painting throughout the book but she does not want anyone to see it (Woolf 17-18). She feels that it is not good enough. However, Mrs. Ramsay, William Bankes and Charles Tansely seem to have different opinions about the painting. During Mrs. Ramsay’s dinner party, Lily realizes what she needs to do to fix her painting but does not until the end of the story. The painting itself grows and changes throughout the book, just as Lily grows and changes as a person as she lives her life (Woolf 102).