A room with a view: Narrating intersubjectivity in Mrs. Dalloway and To the Lighthouse

Type :

Term papers

Pages :

23 pages

Format :

.doc

Published date :

05/08/2009

Category :

Philosophy & literature

Sub category :

Literature

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Summary :

Introduction
Woolf's characters: Void of internal definition
1. Savage: Thinking of subjectivity as contained in one coherent, internally defined unit
2. Clarissa's inability to define herself in opposition to people
Subjectivity in Woolf
1. Woolf's expansive notions of subjectivity and symbolism
2. The intersubjective self that emerges in Woolf
3. The idea that consciousness is not a self-contained whole
Understanding why Woolf's version of subjectivity has eluded critics
The alienated, incarcerated subjectivity, that critics like Gliserman and Poresky propose vs. critics lik Dona Reed and James Naremore
1. Reed's reading: Just as problematic as Gliserman's and Poresky's
2. The World Without A Self by James Naremore: Woolf's narrative style
3. Naremore's room analogy
4. To the Lighthouse and Mrs. Dalloway
Clarissa's characterization of her intimate relationship with Sally Setton
The contiguity of rooms
Mrs. Dalloway's party
The context of the passage in Cymbeline
Connecting Lily's 'vision' with Woolf's vision
Woolf's uses of a homogenous narrative voice
Conclusion
Bibliography

Abstract

The outcry in 1942 was definitive: Virginia Woolf wrote novels without characters. According to D.S. Savage, Woolf's characters are completely incoherent, "void of internal definition" that would distinguish one character from another or from the world that surrounds them. According to Savage, Woolf's characters are a bit like impressionable teenagers, who, lacking a sense of self, latch on to anything that surrounds them. According to Savage, characters are so "passively caught up in the stream of events, of 'life', of their own random perceptions" as to be completely inert. In fact, the boundaries between characters and the world are so muddled as to make the text completely incoherent, leading readers to an "undiscriminating and finally pointless embracing of everything featured in mrs. dalloway... [which] obviated the very possibility of order achieved through discrimination" (Savage).While too many this will seem like an embarrassing misreading, Savage's critique is important because it reveals how Woolf's characters defied critical expectations in 1942. What constituted "character" for Savage and for Woolf must have been significantly at odds; Something fundamental about what we call "subjectivity" must have shifted between Woolf and her predecessors that can account for poor Mr. Savage's confusion.