Apart from its negligence of countering fetishistic scopophilia, another indication of the underlying presence of male gaze in the Hours is its failure of opposing the voyeurism, which is the second avenue of defending the castration fear aroused by females as cinematic images, cf. Mulvey’s point that it is a kind of undervaluation by asserting males’ control and strength through “punishment or forgiveness” on females (311). Laura Braun is the most evident one, portrayed with guilt of abandoning her family for her pursuit of freedom. Her guilt is exaggerated by the tragedy of her son, Richard, who suffers from both serious illness and depression and consequently commits suicide. From his writing, in which the protagonist’s mother is dead, it …show more content…
Woolf, as mentioned above is a famed feminist, yet judged by her husband, Leonard, and the doctor, representing the power of patriarchy. Standing on and speaking for the rational side, Leonard keeps deciding his neurotic wife, Woolf’s lifestyles, works and interests, which is out of concerns for her health, but in essence, disavows her existence as an independent subject. For instance, Leonard regards the print factory as “a ready source of absorption and of remedy” for Woolf, which is compared to the “needlework”, rather than her real career. Armed with sufficient evidences about Woolf’s “history”, the husband is persuasive for the spectators and owns the ability of informing Woolf’s own interests and also depriving her rights of choice and expression. Although consciously offering opposition against the obligations like eating breakfast and dinners and staying in the countryside in an articulate way, like expressing directly that “there is no such obligation”, she still requires and appears gratitude toward the final approval from Leonard about any issues about her life choices, which in depth shows the hidden impact of male …show more content…
The reason is revealed by Margret Fetszer that “the audience of a Hollywood picture cannot be expected to confront mere ordinariness when going to the cinema” (80). More ironically, Virginia Woolf, who aims at “illuminating the richness and complexity of ‘an ordinary mind on an ordinary day’” (Sim 62), in this film is disengaged from and turns opposition to the mundane life, run by her maids. Instead, she is portrayed to be a sick, eccentric woman, who holds the vain hope of escaping from her everyday life, which is also the case of Laura Braun, for whom, things like making cakes are overwhelmingly difficult and harmful for her ego. Clarissa’s enthusiasm on details like schedules and parties is spurned by Richard and his boyfriend, too, and finally she herself is threatened by Richard’s death to give up the party. The story then becomes “eventfulness” with significant and memorable events, but loses the spirit of everyday life in feminist
Willingly or grudgingly, the women in Woolf and Browning’s works are regulated to the domestic circle, discouraged from the literary world, and are expected to act as foils to their male counterparts. Without the means to secure financial independence, women are confined to the world of domestic duties. In Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own, Mary Seton’s “homely” mother is neither a businesswoman nor a magnate on the Stock Exchange. She cannot afford to provide formal education for her daughters or for herself. Without money, the women must toil day and night at home, with no time for conversations about “archaeology, botany, anthropology, physics, the nature of the atom, mathematics, astronomy, relativity, geography” – the subjects of the men’s conversations (26).
They would both agree that this inequality feeds the other motifs described in their own works, such as: the individuality of truth, the importance of monetary means, or the hatred and ridicule that society directs at women writers. Woolf might not have agreed with all of Stael’s beliefs, but she would find Stael’s views on gender inequality and the causes of these inequalities to contain the essential oil of truth she was desperately searching for. Gender Inequality was what Woolf emphasized as the major downfall of women writers, and Stael shared those views on this subject.... ... middle of paper ...
The heroine, Mrs. P, has some carries some characteristics parallel to Louise Mallard in “Hour.” The women of her time are limited by cultural convention. Yet, Mrs. P, (like Louise) begins to experience a new freedom of imagination, a zest for life , in the immediate absence of her husband. She realizes, through interior monologues, that she has been held back, that her station in life cannot and will not afford her the kind of freedom to explore freely and openly the emotions that are as much a part of her as they are not a part of Leonce. Here is a primary irony.
Throughout Virginia Woolf’s writings, she describes two different dinners: one at a men’s college, and another at a women’s college. Using multiple devices, Woolf expresses her opinion of the inequality between men and women within these two passages. She also uses a narrative style to express her opinions even more throughout the passages.
A work of literature affects the reader by appealing to his or her matter of perspective. Though contrasting out of context, two particular assessments of Wakefield-- one derived from an existentialist viewpoint, the other stemming from a truly feminist archetype— do agree on the conflict of Mr. Wakefield’s actions versus himself and the inconclusive nature of that conflict. Furthermore, both points of view attack Wakefield for his insensitivity toward the good Mrs. Wakefield.
Woolf’s pathos to begin the story paints a picture in readers minds of what the
The idea of male gaze in cinema is best addressed by Laura Mulvey in her article “Visual Pleasures and the Narrative Cinema”. One idea she looks at is the notion that women are related to the image, and men assume the role as bearer of the look. She quotes “In their traditional exhibitionist role women are simultaneously looked at and displayed, with their appearance coded for strong visual and erotic impact so that they can be said to connote to-be-looked-at-ness.” The traditional exhibition role is what Sarah Polley must overcome in order to express female and national identity in a position of strength. In order to do this she must alter some the traditional constructions associated with the gaze in cinema to bring in order to critique the gaze that is male.
While Mrs Dalloway focuses on the lack of feminist individuality and societal constraints, Laura Brown struggles to bake a “ridiculously easy” cake, in the hours, emphasising the pressures surrounding her inability to uphold the perceived normalities of modern wifehood. This conjures a sort of frustration, relating Brown to Mrs Dalloway the same text she reads in the film, stating, “maybe because she’s confident everybody thinks she’s fine”. This demonstrates that Laura, like Mrs Dalloway, employs her potent facade to conceal her inner emotions, allowing the successful maintenance of the charade of 1950s housewife. Laura’s inability to forsake her house-life despite her internal adamancy embodies the allegorical and literal struggles of both Clarissa Dalloway and the author Virginia Woolf, in escaping social conformity, as contextually women were obligated to prize their reputation rather than individuality. Mrs Dalloway’s postmodern parallel Clarissa Vaughn embodies the prospects of life Clarissa Dalloway idealises in the nostalgic Bourton. Emancipated, working and socially accepted lesbian, Clarissa continues “throwing parties to cover the silence” interlacing her motives with not only Mrs Dalloway but also her cinematic counterpart Laura brown, using the role of social organiser as camouflage for the
By exploring the various queer references in The Hours, I have untangled some, but hardly all, of the queer references that Cunningham wove into his novel by adopting, and adapting, Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway for his own purposes. He was able to transform the reader’s view of literature and of queer narratives by reviving an old work and giving it a modern spin – replacing World War I with AIDS and exploring the sexuality of Mrs. Woolf, Mrs. Brown and Mrs. Dalloway through their respective eras.
Born in 1882 Virginia Woolf is a noted novelist and essayist, prominent for her nonlinear prose style and feminist writings. Her essay “Professions for Women” designed as a speech to be given at the Women’s Service League in 1931, informs her audience of the powerful internal dispute she and other women face in an attempt to live their everyday lives as women living in a masculine controlled society, especially within the careers they desire. Woolf adopted an urgent and motherly tone in order to reach her female audience in 1931 during her speech and in response her audience gathered. As a result of her distinct and emotional writing in Professions for Women, Woolf created an effective piece, still relevant today.
To the Lighthouse is an autobiographical production of Virginia Woolf that captures a modern feminist visionary thrusted in a patriarchal Victorian society, as embodied by Lily Briscoe. Lily’s unique feminist vision and her ability to transcend artistic and patriarchal conventions progressively allows her to locate her quest for identity as an aestheticized epiphany journey. However, no matter how Woolf attempts to present Lily’s aestheticized exploration of her identity as a radical opposition to patriarchy alone, therein lies a specific aspect of feminism that Lily secretly wants to achieve. Therefore, I argue that although Lily is a symbolic rebel of patriarchal conventions who strives for women individuality, she brings her struggles a
British Feminist Film theorist Laura Mulvey uses psychoanalysis to show the pre-existing “patterns of fascinations” (Mulvey) with the sexual differences in society that is portrayed through film. She says in her paper “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema”, that there is a structured film form that feeds a patriarchal order because of social patterns based on the fascinated subject-women. Drawing from Freud’s Three Essays on Sexuality, Mulvey states that cinema allows for a lot of pleasures, and one of these pleasures is scopophilia, or the love of looking, because there is pleasure in looking as well as being looked at. Film allows for an amazing outlet for this scopophilia because it gives one the pleasure of looking at something pleasurable on screen as well as scopophilia is a narcissistic aspect because the audience will identify with a character on screen. With the patriarchal structural form in place as well as the scopophilia present in films, it leads to the main idea of Mulvey’s paper; that Hollywood films use women to create a pleasurable experience for men. In the films the Mulvey studied, the women are just objects to be looked at never the main driver of the plot. Budd Boetticher put it best when he said, “What counts is what the heroine provokes, or rather what she represents. She is the one, or rather the love or fear she inspires in the hero, or else the concern he feels for her, who makes him act the way he does. In herself the woman has not the slightest importance.” (Mulvey)
Alex Zwerdling states that “Woolf gives us a picture of a class impervious to change in a society that desperately needs or demands it. She represents the governing class as engaged...
Woolf pioneered in incorporating feminism in her writings. “Virginia Woolf’s journalistic and polemical writings show that she made a significant contribution to the development of feminist thought” (Dalsimer). Despite her tumultuous childhood, she was an original thinker and a revolutionary writer, specifically the way she described depth of characters in her novels. Her novels are distinctively modern and express characters in a way no other writer has done before. One reason it is easy to acknowledge the importance of Virginia Woolf is because she writes prolifically.
Throughout her life Virginia Woolf became increasingly interested in the topic of women and fiction, which is highly reflected in her writing. To understand her piece, A Room of One’s Own Room, her reader must understand her. Born in early 1882, Woolf was brought into an extremely literature driven, middle-class family in London. Her father was an editor to a major newspaper company and eventually began his own newspaper business in his later life. While her mother was a typical Victorian house-wife. As a child, Woolf was surrounded by literature. One of her favorite pastimes was listening to her mother read to her. As Woolf grew older, she was educated by her mother, and eventually a tutor. Due to her father’s position, there was always famous writers over the house interacting with the young Virginia and the Woolf’s large house library.