When WWI was over, many people questioned the brutality that carried on over the four years that the war was happening. The Europeans trust in authority and in their country began to collapse, and Modernism was a way they could respond to the damage of those beliefs. It was obvious that the old world was gone and a new one had started to arise. In this new world, while other aspects of Europe were advancing, improvement in the psychiatric treatment of mental conditions, for example shell-shock, fell short. Most of British society remained unaware and uninterested in the problems that these illnesses forced on the veterans. This insensitive attitude toward the soldiers inspired Virginia Woolf to write Mrs. Dalloway. In this novel she shows us society’s attitude towards mental illness by featuring a post war veteran named Septimus Smith. The author uses Septimus’s struggles with post traumatic stress disorder as a symbol to illustrate the problems of a modern society that doesn’t understand how deeply the damage of World War One has affected people.
An example of the difference between Septimus and the modern world as a whole is when the airplane flies above the people in the city as it spells out the word toffee. Most of the people watching were amazed by this new technology. “‘Glaxo,’ said Mrs. Coates in a strained, awestricken voice…’Kreemo,’ murmured Mrs. Bletchley, like a sleepwalker…as they looked the whole world because perfectly still…(and the car went in the gates and nobody looked at it)” (20-21). The people were so enthralled with the plane; they didn’t even care about the royal car coming in to the palace. Septimus on the other hand is completely lost in his own thoughts and interprets the plane differently. “So, t...
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...g to grasp the legitimacy and severity of the disease. From this unfortunate reality emerged a Modernist novel in which Virginia Woolf sets out to juxtapose the ‘sane’ and the ‘insane’ in an attempt to express her disgust of society’s lack of sympathy and blindness towards those who suffer with mental illness.
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No person is capable of perfectly articulating Virginia Woolf’s opinions on certain matters. However, through the observation of her works one might be able to gather her thoughts and form a more accurate description of her ideals. A Room of One’s Own contains Woolf’s ideals dealing with women in the arts, especially those associated with liberal arts. In this piece Woolf always describes a lack of strong women writers for her research but does name a few she deems worthy. It seems odd that Woolf would overlook Germaine de Stael while researching women with literary talent. The reasons for why Stael was disregarded could range from a language barrier at the time, Stael’s ideals on how a woman should behave within society, political propaganda, or Stael’s works might have simply gone unnoticed at the time. If Woolf had read Stael’s, On Women Writers, surely she would have mentioned it somewhere in her novel. Why would it be required that Woolf write about Stael? To simply answer this question, Stael was an intelligent woman in her time and many of Woolf’s main arguments coincide with Stael’s. Gender Inequality is one of these major themes where Stael shares similar views. 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.
I have chosen to write about Virginia Woolf, a British novelist who wrote A Room of One’s Own, To the Lighthouse and Orlando, to name a few of her pieces of work. Virginia Woolf was my first introduction to feminist type books. I chose Woolf because she is a fantastic writer and one of my favorites as well. Her unique style of writing, which came to be known as stream-of-consciousness, was influenced by the symptoms she experienced through her bipolar disorder. Many people have heard the word "bipolar," but do not realize its full implications. People who know someone with this disorder might understand their irregular behavior as a character flaw, not realizing that people with bipolar mental illness do not have control over their moods. Virginia Woolf’s illness was not understood in her lifetime. She committed suicide in 1941.
World War I is quite possibly the most influential event of the 20th century world-wide. Britain was no exception. The global powerhouse had seen copious amounts of loss in the forms of death, destruction, and economics to name only a few. In the rubble of aftermath, the people of the world’s greatest empire were starving for explanation, solace, and hope. In a response to the trauma of the Great War, the people of Britain created new cultures that utilized the new idea of modernism to push forward and forge a new path into the future. From the phenomenon of the radio and BBC, to the London Underground, Commonwealth, and recreation of the youth, it is clear that the interwar period in Britain was something different entirely.
As a first hand observer of the Civil War, the great American Poet, Walt Whitman once said,"The real war [of the mind] will never get in the books."Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is a horrible mental ailment that afflicts thousands of soldiers every year. Besides the fact that it is emotionally draining for the soldier, it also deeply alters their family and their family dynamics. Ernest Hemingway’s “Soldier's Home” illustrates how this happens. Harold Krebs returns home from World War I. He has to deal with becoming reaccustomed to civilian life along with relearning social norms. He must also learn about his family and their habits. The ramifications of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder have a ripple effect on the lives of not only the victim, but also the friends and family they relate to.
*"Virginia Woolf." Gay & Lesbian Biography. St. James Press, 1997. Reproduced in Biography Resource Center. Farmington Hills, Mich.: The Gale Group. 2004. http://galenet.galegroup.com/servlet/BioRCć
Holden caulfield meets several criterias of having post traumatic stress disorder. Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a mental health condition that 's triggered by a terrifying event — either experiencing it or witnessing it. Symptoms may include flashbacks, nightmares and severe anxiety, as well as uncontrollable thoughts about the event. Holden meets by far to many criterias for this not to be his disease.
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In Virginia Woolf’s book, Mrs. Dalloway, Clarissa Dalloway and Septimus Warren Smith grow up under the same social institutions although social classes are drawn upon wealth; it can be conceived that two people may have very similar opinions of the society that created them. The English society which Woolf presents individuals that are uncannily similar.
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 unimpeded.” Woolf seems to believe that the development and expression of creative genius hinges upon the mental freedom of the writer(50), and that the development of mental freedom hinges upon the economic freedom of the writer (34, 47). But after careful consideration of Woolf’s essay and also of the recent trend in feminist criticism, one realizes that if women are to do anything with Woolf’s words; if we are to act upon them---to write the next chapter in this great drama---we must take her argument a little farther. We must propel it to its own conclusion to find that in fact both the freedom from economic dependence and the freedom from fetters to the mind and body are conditions of the possibility of genius and its full expression; we must learn to ‘move in’: to inhabit and take possession of, not only a physical room, but the more abstract rooms of our minds and our bodies. It is only from this perspective in full possession of ourselves that we can find the unconsciousness of ourselves,...
In the Broadview Anthropology of Expository Prose, Buzzard et al. describe Virginia Woolf’s essay “Professions for Women” as a “lecture to a society of professional women” (100). As a queer writer, Woolf’s voice during the 1930’s received much attention, along with praise and criticism. Woolf’s fight for women’s empowerment and gender equality are evident throughout her essay, and as of now, in the 21st century, it is unequivocal that Woolf saw herself as a feminist. However, as Woolf writes her “Professions for women” she makes use of the blanket terms “the woman” and “herself” to refer to a general professional woman. It leads us to question who the woman really is: which kinds of individuals are included in and excluded from Woolf’s filtered view of women. How does
Goldman, Jane. The Feminist Aesthetics of Virginia Woolf: Modernism, Post- Impressionism and the Politics of the Visual. Cambridge, U.K., New York,