It is like water,
in that it stagnates,
swirls and eddies.
Can cleanse
uproot and upsurge
A tidal wave of dessimation or destruction.
Or gently drip
steady erosion of even the strongest subjects
permeates,
seeps,
makes sodden even the most resolute.
Peculiar ability to transform and renew
coupled with enormous capacity
for absolute asphixiation
Tasteless
but instantly recognisable
Changing consistency and colour
from oil rainbow to the most transparent blue-
The upsurging, heaving waters,
converge and engulf
Either a boat riding the swell
or the shell of a wreck on the sea bed.....
Thursday 29 April 2010
Winter in the city
Winter in this city can be lonely and tough-
unyeilding concrete buildings instill a deep chill in your bones, a small unsettling feeling seeps in amongst the dark, dank river bridges and the jostle of drunken jarring night time streets. I knows this absence well, as it approaches through cracked windowpanes and rises up into the nose in piss reeking stairwells of decaying high rise flats.
On the streets people rush by at speed and i become illusory and imagine you walking these streets as well. You pull your coat closer to you to tighten that fragile circle of warmth around you and revel in minute security it affords you. I remember you always as without jumpers, and wearing your only pair of leaking plimsole shoes, striding like you were royalty always. Pride cloaked your shoulders better than any regal robes. But the reality of the precariousness of your existence remained- Standing scarecrow like on the side of the road, thumbs out, hanging on the moment. My one pair of heels and battered couture hat creating an illusion to hide the hunger which curled at the bottom of our bellies.
Our ride-rode on chance, on your all encompassing smile and quick wit and my quiet haughtiness and ability to pose! So here we are again, in another car sitting with another lift giver, life saver. You are selling your eagerness, your image, your musical self- and i sit back and contemplate the long line of yur back, imagining the ways your limbs will later uncurl themselves from our crumled bed of night time exhaustion; and wonder who you really are. Whorishly we will sell ourselves, in differeing ways, both to others and eventually to each other. We tried to remain aloof from the world, thought we were so wise and yet as is the way of the time it construed ways to bring us back down to earth. I thought i could out bid you, play this game far more magnificently than anyone else but you were conquered by another and i stepped of this board into the swirling mass of contradiction, of contemplation without clarity!
I hope this cold city affords you more warmth, my bony branch like limbs are not a comforting pillow to envelope you, may these new arms be a soft cushion to your world weary head.
unyeilding concrete buildings instill a deep chill in your bones, a small unsettling feeling seeps in amongst the dark, dank river bridges and the jostle of drunken jarring night time streets. I knows this absence well, as it approaches through cracked windowpanes and rises up into the nose in piss reeking stairwells of decaying high rise flats.
On the streets people rush by at speed and i become illusory and imagine you walking these streets as well. You pull your coat closer to you to tighten that fragile circle of warmth around you and revel in minute security it affords you. I remember you always as without jumpers, and wearing your only pair of leaking plimsole shoes, striding like you were royalty always. Pride cloaked your shoulders better than any regal robes. But the reality of the precariousness of your existence remained- Standing scarecrow like on the side of the road, thumbs out, hanging on the moment. My one pair of heels and battered couture hat creating an illusion to hide the hunger which curled at the bottom of our bellies.
Our ride-rode on chance, on your all encompassing smile and quick wit and my quiet haughtiness and ability to pose! So here we are again, in another car sitting with another lift giver, life saver. You are selling your eagerness, your image, your musical self- and i sit back and contemplate the long line of yur back, imagining the ways your limbs will later uncurl themselves from our crumled bed of night time exhaustion; and wonder who you really are. Whorishly we will sell ourselves, in differeing ways, both to others and eventually to each other. We tried to remain aloof from the world, thought we were so wise and yet as is the way of the time it construed ways to bring us back down to earth. I thought i could out bid you, play this game far more magnificently than anyone else but you were conquered by another and i stepped of this board into the swirling mass of contradiction, of contemplation without clarity!
I hope this cold city affords you more warmth, my bony branch like limbs are not a comforting pillow to envelope you, may these new arms be a soft cushion to your world weary head.
Tuesday 13 April 2010
Respect
It is a cold thing,
this respect you speak so willingly of!
It conjures up images
of starched Victorian children.
Stiffly standing sons,
who call father 'sir'
A no 'dinner fore bed'
'Spare the rod spoil the child'
Kind of respect
It is a hollow word,
devoid of meaning.
Dead and passionless
yet it is the only one
which now touches the listening ear
I am not to be loved
Only mistress or whore
A mad moment of lust
Never more than fleeting
moment of exploding ecstasy
Only dry and barren
Respect
to warm my solitary bed
Its bony back, cold comfort
Your constant retort,
My only compliment
in the web of desire and deceit
You often cunningly weave!
this respect you speak so willingly of!
It conjures up images
of starched Victorian children.
Stiffly standing sons,
who call father 'sir'
A no 'dinner fore bed'
'Spare the rod spoil the child'
Kind of respect
It is a hollow word,
devoid of meaning.
Dead and passionless
yet it is the only one
which now touches the listening ear
I am not to be loved
Only mistress or whore
A mad moment of lust
Never more than fleeting
moment of exploding ecstasy
Only dry and barren
Respect
to warm my solitary bed
Its bony back, cold comfort
Your constant retort,
My only compliment
in the web of desire and deceit
You often cunningly weave!
India
I not only lost you to another woman, I lost you to another continent as well. You broke the final cords between me and my Indian lover and now after all these months you leave for Indian shores. Even i can see the irony!
The hot Indian sun can become tiresome but its land is varied and exotic, let this new lover be a soft accepting cushion for your weary head instead of my bony branch like self.
Just be wary of mirages and night sweat delusions. I shall think of you at night in foreign beds, other arms encircling you, while in the dry heat of the night cities reverberate about your head. I will not have Asia's constant heat to dry up my sadness. I must find someone else to come slam up against me, to knock you out of my mind. I will erase you from my mind with my body, a lustful force will wash away the imprint, the scent of you on my skin.
Only this aridness could have dried you up so soon.
The hot Indian sun can become tiresome but its land is varied and exotic, let this new lover be a soft accepting cushion for your weary head instead of my bony branch like self.
Just be wary of mirages and night sweat delusions. I shall think of you at night in foreign beds, other arms encircling you, while in the dry heat of the night cities reverberate about your head. I will not have Asia's constant heat to dry up my sadness. I must find someone else to come slam up against me, to knock you out of my mind. I will erase you from my mind with my body, a lustful force will wash away the imprint, the scent of you on my skin.
Only this aridness could have dried you up so soon.
Thursday 8 April 2010
Old Woolf essay ?
'The old world ended in 1915;' (Lawrence). Discuss the effect of the Great War on the work of one or two writers in the modern period.
The great war broke out in 1914 and finally came to its terrible conclusion in 1918. It had been the first example of what would become modern warfare and thousands upon thousands of people died. It began with optimism and the cries of 'It will be over by Christmas' and then slowly the massacres of Verdant and the Somme eclipsed all patriotism. The war not only shattered the lives of those directly involved with the fighting, it fractured the whole social and political framework of the country. This 'old world' that Lawrence describes of Victorian colonialism and class structure was indeed broken down during the war, but also the old world of literary style and form. The emergence of the literary movement of modernism pre dates the war, but it is radically shaped and influenced by it, in particular Virginia Woolf's stream of conscience novel 'Mrs Dalloway'.
This old world and its differing sensibilities is summed up by Woolf, in her criticism of the works of Evelyn 1 'We seek the encyclopaedia, not the scissors' This is an example of the sizeable distance between experiential collection of knowledge, the going and the doing in order to learn, the way previous thinkers would collect knowledge and then its contrast with the modern day collective canon of knowledge that could be accessed without direct experience required. This distance from direct experience would be in sharp contrast to the reality of the war as was experienced by men at the front, their view of the world was based upon received knowledge and the shock of the experiences of the trenches would have created many casualties, not only in a medical sense. Woolf has to find a way to communicate this experience, without the use of the previous conventions which she has discarded. Yet in Mrs Dalloway, and in what may be considered her more successful works, to 'The Lighthouse', 'The Waves' and 'Between the Acts' she seems to be using more rigid restrictions upon time and place, in order to focus her readers attention.
'In Mrs Dalloway, a convention or art form has been evolved which is more than adequate to take the place of the older convention of narrative and characterisation. The necessary circumscription is imposed by the narrow framework of time'2
By reducing the time frame of the novel to one day, Woolf allows the reader to become intimately acquainted with a small number of characters and yet as we follow Mrs Dalloway through her day, the whole expanse of the wider world is expressed. Woolf includes the character of Septimus Warren Smith and his wife Reiza, and thus bringing into the novel this sense of the 'tension between misery and happiness'3 and also as a perfect example of this 'old world' struggling within the new context of modernity that it now finds itself. Woolf has not rejected the canon of pre-modernist works and in her characterisation of both Clarissa and Septimus this old world is allowed to shine through, in their soliloquy's the poetic phrasing of Shakespeare is interwoven with the descriptions of their direct experience of the world. Septimus, is a man, for whom the collision of the old world of received knowledge and romanticised colonialism with the vast brutality of the war, who has been unable to remain sane. Woolf carefully links the old world and the new and the differences between them with her characterisation of Clarissa, as 'Old' and Septimus as being unable to connect the two disparate worlds which his experience has forced into direct confrontation with one another.
The novel was written sometime after the catastrophe s of the first world war, some way into the decadence of the 1920's and yet the characters precede the war and are now standing upon the brink of this new age awaiting the rise of more economic change and political upheaval. In some ways Woolf's work encompasses the old world and the new, yet seems to predict the coming of another greater change within society. In the characterisation of Peter Walsh we see the culmination of these changes in society, his dismissal of Clarissa for staying within the confines of her marriage and of society when Woolf makes a careful link in Walsh's thinking and the mechanics of the modern age.
'Clarissa had grown hard, he thought... looking at the great motor cars capable of doing-how many miles... for he had a turn for mechanics...all of which Clarissa knew nothing whatever about'4
Yet Woolf does not allow Walsh's pomposity in his knowledge of the world be held up as an example totally in opposition to Mrs Dalloway. Walsh still holds on to his beliefs stating that the future of civilisation lay in 'the hands of young men, such as he was, thirty years ago, with their love of abstract principles'. Interweaving this with the example of Septimus as a young student of Shakespeare.
'Was one of the first to volunteer, he went to France to save an England which consisted almost entirely of Shakespeare's plays and Miss Isabel Pole..'5
Woolf manages shows that ultimately both have failed, they are isolated from the world that now exists, their reasoning and love of knowledge acquired has not allowed them a way to engage with the world as it now stands. In Walsh's mocking of Clarissa for her stoic removal from engagement with the world at large, and in Septimus's transformation into 'manliness' both are held up as parodies of themselves. The thoughts and ideologies did not give them any grounding with which they could shift and grow as the world that they were part of disintegrated around them. Even if the character of Clarissa is a source of mockery and disparagement for Walsh, he is reduced to crying in her presence, she dominates him despite his seeming masculine superiority.
The use of this powerful but seemingly insignificant femininty is highlighted as the character of Clarissa muses about her own invisibility as wife, and appendage to her moderately important husband 'the oddest sense of herself being invisible, unseen; unknown6 And yet she is presented as vibrantly alive in her role as hostess, the party giver and is the key character within the novel, it is indeed named after her. Feminist critics argue that it is with the emancipation and furtherance of these great women of society that created a way forward within this modern world. All the male characters within the story are at odds with the world, Walsh feels like he has failed in his literary ambitions, Mr Dalloway has not forged a great career in politics and Septimus Smith is crushed within himself and his acceptance of patriarchy and its mores ' congratulated himself on feeling very little and very reasonably'. Susan Gubar describe Mrs Dalloway as 'a kind of queen whom regenerates the post-war world' 7 This seems a little flippant though, for Woolf is not trying to hold up an example, a model but is rather trying to look at the differing ways in which people can cope with change in their private lives and within their public ones. Yet it does seem that Clarissa disengagement with the political world has allowed her a greater capacity for growth even in the last stages of her life, than perhaps the male character's whom have been ensconced within the rigidity of Victorian ideas of patriarchy.
One of the most interesting aspects of the novel, is the use of the use of differing perspectives, free from the constraints of normal narrative conventions. Although we have a fairly limited selection of characters we shift through their perceptions of each other, constantly revolving and looking at scenarios from every angle. These shifting perspectives, lend a sort of visual impact more akin to cinema and film techniques and also to artistic practise. As Proust wrote in relation to the cubist movement, that there could not only be a two-dimensional 'plane psychology but also a depth 'psychology in time and space'. Woolf seems to be echoing the fracturing of the social strata that the war created, as she breaks up the narrative framework with her differing perspectives and narrators. This depiction of the ending of the old world and the beginning of the new within the direct experiences of a selection of characters, is in direct contrast with works that went before. Woolf does not moralise or seem to be trying to really engage with the larger issues as corporeal items in themselves but rather she wishes to become involved in the minutiae of individuals' experience of these changes. It is as if that within this that she actually presents us with the reality of human experience, the whole expanse is expressed within ordinary daily experience, in the relationships between people and the conflict between the internal and external world of the characters.
What is most obvious in Woolf's work is the absence of the author from within the text, or narration of actions taken by the characters. It seems as this banishment of a directive voice that Woolf is echoing the changes in society, the lack of an authoritative voice echoes the changing roles of governance and the rise of an individualistic standpoint in which the individual has to challenge everything around them. From what is now a post modernist standpoint, we have learnt that this challenging of percieved authority, lays at our feet a more difficult question, how can one claim meaning in anything, but Woolf continues the process that the calamities of war and economic change started off with out giving us any answers as to how they will be resolved. Septimus' suicide leaves us in no doubt that this old world has definitely ended, and yet the lack of impact it seems to have upon those gathered at the party echoes that this old world that had survived was not going to continue much longer. Woolf illustrates this removal from reality with the example of the elderly Miss Parry
'an indomitable Englishwoman, fretful if disturbed by the war, which had dropped a bomb at her very door, from her deep meditations over orchids8
This refusal to be able to engage with the time that is upon these characters, is typical of the English ruling classes at the time after the war. The twenties were a time when large economic disasters, such as the Wall street crash in America, and the crippling reparation payments of the recovering German nation sent the allies into a further paralyses, that actually resulted at the end of the thirties another war, the largest conflict ever seen by mankind, the second World War. Rezia in her walk with Septimus through the bustling indifference of the city streets seems to offer a somewhat frightening vision of humanity which eerily seems to speak of mortality and of atrocities yet to come
'Are but bones with a few wedding rings mixed up in their dust and the gold stoppings of innumerable decayed teeth' 9
Which as contemporary readers seems to be a direct link with the death chambers of Nazi Germany, and the annihilation of one complete race. The disturbing changes within European social and political bodies, meant that there was a rise of far right and fascist politics, and nationalism. The old world had been challenged and was unable to shift in a way which could allow progression in a positive way . Theories of eugenics and race degeneration abounded, with even Lawrence outlining a plan of extermination as early as 1908
' if i had my way i would build a lethal chamber as big as Crystal palace'10
Alex Zwerdling argues that Mrs Dalloway is a 'sharply critical' examination of the ruling classes at this post war period. He argues that Woolf's characterisation, is indeed giving us a picture of
'A Class impervious to change in a society that desperately needs or demands it, a class that worships tradition and settled order, but cannot accommodate the new and disturbing' 11
What is important to note is that Woolf could have written a very different novel, one whose response to the situation of post war Britain could have been considerable more damning and controversial in its content. Yet it is through the form, characterisation, and the experiences of everyday events that she presents her novel. Woolf subtly weaves an illustration of a society in decline and sets up contrast with her characterisation of Septimus Smith, but she does not seem to be intent upon a moralistic standpoint in the traditional sense. Rather her work is interested in the patina of life, in capturing the essence of experience empirically through direct contact with the characters minds. However she is not totally removed from her novel, she is still dictating form and in limiting herself to a set time-scale she is reductive. However what Woolf encourages us, as the reader, to do is to accept and see the character within there own contexts. And within in the final closing words of the novel, Woolf brings us in a complete circle enforcing the notion that we have only ourselves and our perceptions of the world, we begin with Clarissa and end with Clarissa having been swept up into her world and the people surrounding her. Woolf implies that it is within ourselves that the answers, to the problems that the war and the changing society created, lie.
Bibliography
1.Mrs Dalloway- Woolf, Virginia. First published Hogarth press 1925, Penguin Classics edition reprinted in 2000 Edited by Stella McNichol, Introduction and Notes by Elaine Showalter.
2.Virginia Woolf: Her art as a Novelist. Bennet, Joan. Second edition, first published in 1945 this edition 1965, Cambridge university press.
3.Modernism and Eugenics: Childs, Donald.j. First published 2001, Cambridge university press.
4.Modernist Writing and reactionary Politics, Ferrall, Charles. First published 2001, Cambridge University press.
The great war broke out in 1914 and finally came to its terrible conclusion in 1918. It had been the first example of what would become modern warfare and thousands upon thousands of people died. It began with optimism and the cries of 'It will be over by Christmas' and then slowly the massacres of Verdant and the Somme eclipsed all patriotism. The war not only shattered the lives of those directly involved with the fighting, it fractured the whole social and political framework of the country. This 'old world' that Lawrence describes of Victorian colonialism and class structure was indeed broken down during the war, but also the old world of literary style and form. The emergence of the literary movement of modernism pre dates the war, but it is radically shaped and influenced by it, in particular Virginia Woolf's stream of conscience novel 'Mrs Dalloway'.
This old world and its differing sensibilities is summed up by Woolf, in her criticism of the works of Evelyn 1 'We seek the encyclopaedia, not the scissors' This is an example of the sizeable distance between experiential collection of knowledge, the going and the doing in order to learn, the way previous thinkers would collect knowledge and then its contrast with the modern day collective canon of knowledge that could be accessed without direct experience required. This distance from direct experience would be in sharp contrast to the reality of the war as was experienced by men at the front, their view of the world was based upon received knowledge and the shock of the experiences of the trenches would have created many casualties, not only in a medical sense. Woolf has to find a way to communicate this experience, without the use of the previous conventions which she has discarded. Yet in Mrs Dalloway, and in what may be considered her more successful works, to 'The Lighthouse', 'The Waves' and 'Between the Acts' she seems to be using more rigid restrictions upon time and place, in order to focus her readers attention.
'In Mrs Dalloway, a convention or art form has been evolved which is more than adequate to take the place of the older convention of narrative and characterisation. The necessary circumscription is imposed by the narrow framework of time'2
By reducing the time frame of the novel to one day, Woolf allows the reader to become intimately acquainted with a small number of characters and yet as we follow Mrs Dalloway through her day, the whole expanse of the wider world is expressed. Woolf includes the character of Septimus Warren Smith and his wife Reiza, and thus bringing into the novel this sense of the 'tension between misery and happiness'3 and also as a perfect example of this 'old world' struggling within the new context of modernity that it now finds itself. Woolf has not rejected the canon of pre-modernist works and in her characterisation of both Clarissa and Septimus this old world is allowed to shine through, in their soliloquy's the poetic phrasing of Shakespeare is interwoven with the descriptions of their direct experience of the world. Septimus, is a man, for whom the collision of the old world of received knowledge and romanticised colonialism with the vast brutality of the war, who has been unable to remain sane. Woolf carefully links the old world and the new and the differences between them with her characterisation of Clarissa, as 'Old' and Septimus as being unable to connect the two disparate worlds which his experience has forced into direct confrontation with one another.
The novel was written sometime after the catastrophe s of the first world war, some way into the decadence of the 1920's and yet the characters precede the war and are now standing upon the brink of this new age awaiting the rise of more economic change and political upheaval. In some ways Woolf's work encompasses the old world and the new, yet seems to predict the coming of another greater change within society. In the characterisation of Peter Walsh we see the culmination of these changes in society, his dismissal of Clarissa for staying within the confines of her marriage and of society when Woolf makes a careful link in Walsh's thinking and the mechanics of the modern age.
'Clarissa had grown hard, he thought... looking at the great motor cars capable of doing-how many miles... for he had a turn for mechanics...all of which Clarissa knew nothing whatever about'4
Yet Woolf does not allow Walsh's pomposity in his knowledge of the world be held up as an example totally in opposition to Mrs Dalloway. Walsh still holds on to his beliefs stating that the future of civilisation lay in 'the hands of young men, such as he was, thirty years ago, with their love of abstract principles'. Interweaving this with the example of Septimus as a young student of Shakespeare.
'Was one of the first to volunteer, he went to France to save an England which consisted almost entirely of Shakespeare's plays and Miss Isabel Pole..'5
Woolf manages shows that ultimately both have failed, they are isolated from the world that now exists, their reasoning and love of knowledge acquired has not allowed them a way to engage with the world as it now stands. In Walsh's mocking of Clarissa for her stoic removal from engagement with the world at large, and in Septimus's transformation into 'manliness' both are held up as parodies of themselves. The thoughts and ideologies did not give them any grounding with which they could shift and grow as the world that they were part of disintegrated around them. Even if the character of Clarissa is a source of mockery and disparagement for Walsh, he is reduced to crying in her presence, she dominates him despite his seeming masculine superiority.
The use of this powerful but seemingly insignificant femininty is highlighted as the character of Clarissa muses about her own invisibility as wife, and appendage to her moderately important husband 'the oddest sense of herself being invisible, unseen; unknown6 And yet she is presented as vibrantly alive in her role as hostess, the party giver and is the key character within the novel, it is indeed named after her. Feminist critics argue that it is with the emancipation and furtherance of these great women of society that created a way forward within this modern world. All the male characters within the story are at odds with the world, Walsh feels like he has failed in his literary ambitions, Mr Dalloway has not forged a great career in politics and Septimus Smith is crushed within himself and his acceptance of patriarchy and its mores ' congratulated himself on feeling very little and very reasonably'. Susan Gubar describe Mrs Dalloway as 'a kind of queen whom regenerates the post-war world' 7 This seems a little flippant though, for Woolf is not trying to hold up an example, a model but is rather trying to look at the differing ways in which people can cope with change in their private lives and within their public ones. Yet it does seem that Clarissa disengagement with the political world has allowed her a greater capacity for growth even in the last stages of her life, than perhaps the male character's whom have been ensconced within the rigidity of Victorian ideas of patriarchy.
One of the most interesting aspects of the novel, is the use of the use of differing perspectives, free from the constraints of normal narrative conventions. Although we have a fairly limited selection of characters we shift through their perceptions of each other, constantly revolving and looking at scenarios from every angle. These shifting perspectives, lend a sort of visual impact more akin to cinema and film techniques and also to artistic practise. As Proust wrote in relation to the cubist movement, that there could not only be a two-dimensional 'plane psychology but also a depth 'psychology in time and space'. Woolf seems to be echoing the fracturing of the social strata that the war created, as she breaks up the narrative framework with her differing perspectives and narrators. This depiction of the ending of the old world and the beginning of the new within the direct experiences of a selection of characters, is in direct contrast with works that went before. Woolf does not moralise or seem to be trying to really engage with the larger issues as corporeal items in themselves but rather she wishes to become involved in the minutiae of individuals' experience of these changes. It is as if that within this that she actually presents us with the reality of human experience, the whole expanse is expressed within ordinary daily experience, in the relationships between people and the conflict between the internal and external world of the characters.
What is most obvious in Woolf's work is the absence of the author from within the text, or narration of actions taken by the characters. It seems as this banishment of a directive voice that Woolf is echoing the changes in society, the lack of an authoritative voice echoes the changing roles of governance and the rise of an individualistic standpoint in which the individual has to challenge everything around them. From what is now a post modernist standpoint, we have learnt that this challenging of percieved authority, lays at our feet a more difficult question, how can one claim meaning in anything, but Woolf continues the process that the calamities of war and economic change started off with out giving us any answers as to how they will be resolved. Septimus' suicide leaves us in no doubt that this old world has definitely ended, and yet the lack of impact it seems to have upon those gathered at the party echoes that this old world that had survived was not going to continue much longer. Woolf illustrates this removal from reality with the example of the elderly Miss Parry
'an indomitable Englishwoman, fretful if disturbed by the war, which had dropped a bomb at her very door, from her deep meditations over orchids8
This refusal to be able to engage with the time that is upon these characters, is typical of the English ruling classes at the time after the war. The twenties were a time when large economic disasters, such as the Wall street crash in America, and the crippling reparation payments of the recovering German nation sent the allies into a further paralyses, that actually resulted at the end of the thirties another war, the largest conflict ever seen by mankind, the second World War. Rezia in her walk with Septimus through the bustling indifference of the city streets seems to offer a somewhat frightening vision of humanity which eerily seems to speak of mortality and of atrocities yet to come
'Are but bones with a few wedding rings mixed up in their dust and the gold stoppings of innumerable decayed teeth' 9
Which as contemporary readers seems to be a direct link with the death chambers of Nazi Germany, and the annihilation of one complete race. The disturbing changes within European social and political bodies, meant that there was a rise of far right and fascist politics, and nationalism. The old world had been challenged and was unable to shift in a way which could allow progression in a positive way . Theories of eugenics and race degeneration abounded, with even Lawrence outlining a plan of extermination as early as 1908
' if i had my way i would build a lethal chamber as big as Crystal palace'10
Alex Zwerdling argues that Mrs Dalloway is a 'sharply critical' examination of the ruling classes at this post war period. He argues that Woolf's characterisation, is indeed giving us a picture of
'A Class impervious to change in a society that desperately needs or demands it, a class that worships tradition and settled order, but cannot accommodate the new and disturbing' 11
What is important to note is that Woolf could have written a very different novel, one whose response to the situation of post war Britain could have been considerable more damning and controversial in its content. Yet it is through the form, characterisation, and the experiences of everyday events that she presents her novel. Woolf subtly weaves an illustration of a society in decline and sets up contrast with her characterisation of Septimus Smith, but she does not seem to be intent upon a moralistic standpoint in the traditional sense. Rather her work is interested in the patina of life, in capturing the essence of experience empirically through direct contact with the characters minds. However she is not totally removed from her novel, she is still dictating form and in limiting herself to a set time-scale she is reductive. However what Woolf encourages us, as the reader, to do is to accept and see the character within there own contexts. And within in the final closing words of the novel, Woolf brings us in a complete circle enforcing the notion that we have only ourselves and our perceptions of the world, we begin with Clarissa and end with Clarissa having been swept up into her world and the people surrounding her. Woolf implies that it is within ourselves that the answers, to the problems that the war and the changing society created, lie.
Bibliography
1.Mrs Dalloway- Woolf, Virginia. First published Hogarth press 1925, Penguin Classics edition reprinted in 2000 Edited by Stella McNichol, Introduction and Notes by Elaine Showalter.
2.Virginia Woolf: Her art as a Novelist. Bennet, Joan. Second edition, first published in 1945 this edition 1965, Cambridge university press.
3.Modernism and Eugenics: Childs, Donald.j. First published 2001, Cambridge university press.
4.Modernist Writing and reactionary Politics, Ferrall, Charles. First published 2001, Cambridge University press.
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