Mention Virginia Woolf and almost inevitably the words "stream of consciousness" will pop up. But what does this actually mean, and how does Woolf distance herself from both the reader and Clarissa, and, indeed, does she care? Mrs. Dalloway is, we are often told, a radical new form of prose that breaks the mold of 19th-century fiction. Virginia Woolf herself predicted that "we tremble at the approach of one of the greatest ages of English literature" as she and James Joyce struggled to define a new method of capturing character. She argued here that "all human relationships changed" as a result of the Great War, rendering Edwardian character portraiture obsolete. The entanglement of reader, author, and character was as much a part of this new effort to depict personality as a "multi-layered self, in which dreams, memories, and fantasies were as important as actions and thoughts” that they are vital to reading the novel. Using as a copy a text edited by Stella McNichol, this essay will boldly attempt to determine the subtle network of relationships woven between these three fighters. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned"?Get the original essayWoolf felt that his greatest breakthrough in composing Mrs. Dalloway was his discovery of a "tunneling process" by which she learned to 'unearth beautiful caves behind my characters...the idea is that the caves should connect and each one appears in the light of the present moment.' . As he developed, she believed he acquired a "more analytical and human quality" and so her portrayal of the character developed. She frequently had discussions with the painter Jacques Raverat about fictional form, who said that the problem with writing was that it was "essentially linear". It is almost impossible to express the way a person's mind reacts to an idea, where, like a pebble thrown into a pond, the "splash in the outside air" is followed "below the surface" by " waves that follow one another in darkness and obscurity.” forgotten corners. This idea of ​​the distant depths of the mind and the multiple consequences of an action was relatively unknown in caricature literature before this time. Woolf responded that it is "precisely the task of the writer to go beyond the 'formal railway of the sentence' and to show how people 'think or dream...everywhere'". His concept of tunneling allowed him to move from linear characters to a form that gave "the impression of simultaneous connections between the inner and outer world, past and present, speech and silence: a form modeled like waves in a pond rather than a railway line.” This character development is what catalyzes the generation of a new, extraordinarily complex spider's web of attachments and bonds, which the mad Septimus sees all around him: They beckoned to him; the leaves were alive, the trees were alive. And the leaves, connected by millions of fibers to his own body, there on the seat, made him go up and down; when the branch stretched out, he also made this statement. (page 24) And yet, it is not only Septimus who is connected to this vast web of interconnected consciousness and thought, but Clarissa as well. When he died, she believed that “death was an attempt at communication.” The two characters seem closer together in a deeper way than their simple acquaintance would allow.occasional joint with Sir William Bradshaw. The extent to which Woolf is personally involved in her characters is debatable. It is always dangerous to assume that an author's work is based on his or her life, as demonstrated by the distinction between poet and character, and between playwright and character in other mediums. Desdemona may have died, but it would obviously be absurd to say that it was because Shakespeare didn't like women. However, perhaps we should not attempt to strip a work down to its bones and deny the fundamental relationship between an author, a creator, and her creations. Mrs. Dalloway's text and some of Woolf's life experiences seem, and this is by no means certain, to be related. It has often been suggested that many of his characters seem based on people within his background. Clarissa's world is a social arena of parties and hostesses, much like the one into which the eligible Miss Stephen found herself drawn by her cousin George Duckworth and Kitty Maxse, a family friend. Virginia Stephen found Kitty superficial and many critics considered that she could have been the model for Clarissa. It is certainly a compelling argument that Woolf is not creating an impression of herself in Mrs. Dalloway and the evidence for this is provided by her confession that she "found Clarissa somehow" and that '"a certain disgust for her persisted" throughout the composition of the novel. . In the novel, even in the first pages, we find sentences, even at the beginning of the novel, which appear in what must be Clarissa's thoughts, and yet are in blatant contradiction to Woolf's socialist tendencies: God only knows why we love him so much. ...but...the most despondent miseries sitting on the doorstep (drinking their fall) do the same (page 4). Here, the ascorbic blame inherent in the phrase "drinking their downfall" seems unlikely to come from Woolf, the friend of the working classes. Mrs. Dalloway is a worldly woman, superficial and self-reliant, and the development of an earlier character from another story. Further parallels with the adolescent Woolf can be seen in the depiction of Sally Seton, based on her cousin, Madge Symonds. . When she was fifteen, she was apparently "in love" with Madge, and one day "Virginia... grabbing the handle of the water jug ​​in the upper room at Hyde Park Gate... exclaimed: “Madge is here; right now she's actually under this roof. with another woman. Other current acquaintances have been identified as characters in the books. Lydia Lopokova, the dancer, was "observed" as "a Rezia type", and Lady Bruton probably based this on Woolf's knowledge of Lady Colefax, who said: "I have been too often tolerant." The truth is that people don't really care about each other. This reflects the woman who can “dominantly brush aside all these unnecessary trifles.” There are therefore many silhouettes, even caricatures, of Woolf's friends and acquaintances in the characters of the novel. Clarissa's world is similar to Woolf's, unlike Septimus's. But it infiltrated Septimus' character on a much deeper level than just the social environment. She said: “I am sketching here a study of reason and suicide; the world seen side by side by the sane and the insane. In this character, she draws on memories of her own intermittent states of madness, which led her, in 1895 and 1915, to suicide attempts. The intensity with which she recalled her own experience can be seen in the fact that in September 1923, while writing about Septimus, she had a "mental tremor", threatening to recall her periods of madness. That the madness ofSeptimus's assimilation to Woolf's own experience can be verified from the stories of Quentin Bell and Leonard Woolf. The first explained that "her symptoms were manic-depressive in character", while the second described his wife's illness as "manic-depressive madness", although "doctors called it neurasthenia... a name which covered a multitude of sins, symptoms, and miseries. His alarming clinical categorization of his symptoms includes progression from exhaustion and insomnia to high excitement, violence and delusions alternating with comatose melancholy, depression, guilt and disgust for food, which have all points of similarity in Septimus' delusions and misery. He hears: A sparrow... sings in a fresh and piercing way in Greek how there is no crime (page 26). This matches Woolf's memories of her own madness, where she listened to the birds chirping in Greek and imagined that King Edward VII was hiding. in the azaleas using foul language. Another parallel can be seen in Woolf's hostility towards her doctors, particularly towards Sir George Savage, towards Sir William Bradshaw. Clarissa and Septimus form the two pillars of Woolf's “study of reason and suicide”. One character circulates in a strange facsimile of Woolf's story and environment, the other displays some of her more alarming traits. Her modification of her original title, "The Hours," shows how she had to manipulate the focuses of her book and change the title as she began to focus her attention on the characters rather than the structure of the day . The focus is now clearly on Clarissa, although Woolf works hard to ensure that she does not overshadow any of the book's other themes by giving equal attention to each of her characters and their ideas (to have the proof, see the plot summary in Lee, 1977, p 96 - 98). As for the "stream of consciousness", what we can see from the first pages is that while the novel deceptively seems to provide the beginning of a conventional "story", we are immersed in Clarissa, as much as she "divers » during the day (page 3). The morning's pleasure brings back Bourton-like feelings to him, making him think of Peter Walsh and telling us that he must return from India soon. Already, as Lee says, “we are aware that the past is not in contrast to the present, but is implicated in it.” . Clarissa makes the connection between past and present as her consciousness swims between them, feeling the same, recognizing Peter Walsh's remarks about vegetables and playing with his pocket knife. As she remembers "his eyes, his penknife, his smile, his bad mood," she herself is evaluated by Scrope Purvis even in the act of evaluating the past. This outward view of Clarissa as "jay, blue-green, light, lively" is in balance with the emotional life in which the reader is involved. Clarissa exists on different levels in relation to the reader, to the other characters and also, perhaps, to Woolf. One of the things to determine when reading Mrs. Dalloway is the certainty that none of the characters are lying to the reader or making mistakes. . We see different perspectives on Clarissa, and yet we have to be sure that Scrope Purvis and Miss Pym are not lying, or simply unreliable. These two characters draw our attention to Clarissa's age and fragility, perhaps making the irony of her love of life and vitality more painful. There are countless other views of Clarissa seen through the eyes of the other characters; Sally says she's "hard on people"; Richard imagines that she “wanted support” (page129). At the party, there are also many more views of Sir Harry liking her despite her cursed and difficult upper-class refinement, which made it impossible to ask Clarissa Dalloway to sit on his lap (page 194) to Jim Hutton who thinks it "A fool, but how charming to look at! (page 195). Clarissa then exists as a creature in the eyes of others, and these viewpoints help Woolf guide the reader. Woolf shows her to us without personal commentary, emphasizing the "striated, involved, inextricably confused" side and chaos of human existence, while offering the reader the multi-layered awareness of the inner Mrs. Dalloway. On the outside, Clarissa is a worldly hostess, but the character herself warns us of the dangers of judging people so singularly on their appearance, which exposes the dangers of saying "about anyone in the world ...that he was this or that.” Perhaps, then, this outer self is a mockery of the inner, true self, but at the same time it is a valid aspect of Clarissa. Interestingly, Clarissa also thinks of "herself" as a "character" and sums herself up as in the third person. She looks in the mirror and sees herself “sharp”; dart-shaped; definitive” (page 42). She recognizes that her face and herself are the sum of many different and incompatible parts. But it's the whole self that others see as the woman who "couldn't think, write, or even play the piano...confused Armenians and Turks." Beneath Clarissa's perfect hostess exterior lies her emotional self, comprised of her love for Sally Seton. and Peter Walsh, and of his feelings for those around him: Richard, Elizabeth, Miss Kilman, his party and life alone. There is an ongoing conflict between his desire to reach out to others, to “combine, to create” (page 135) and his desire to withdraw and respect “the privacy of the soul.” His party represents his love of bringing people together or harmonizing them (page 140), and this perhaps equates to the passion for "the match that burns in the crocus" (page 36) and his hatred of Miss Kilman. And it is the act of this passionate hatred that brings energy and life; “We wanted enemies, not friends” (page 193). On the other hand, Clarissa's tendency to retreat "like a nun who has left the world" (page 33), to climb upstairs to her narrow bed like "a child exploring a tower" (page 35) leaves her a sexual failure towards Richard, unable to do so. gives up, feeling his share in the world diminishing because Lady Bruton has not invited him to lunch. This cold, restrained, restrictive world is best shown in contrast to the passion of memories that Peter evokes in her, and in an image that Woolf provides us: It was all over for her. The sheet was tight and the bed narrow. She had gone up to the tower alone and left them to ripen in the sun. (page 523) Deeper inside Clarissa is her belief in her connection to the world through the same intangible web that Septimus feels: Somehow, on the streets of London, on the flow and the ebb and flow of things, here and there, she survived,... is one of the people she had never met (page 12). We have the feeling that Septimus' death "perhaps redeems the emptiness of his life" and the "corruption, the lies, the chatter" (page 204) that surrounds him. Woolf's portrait of Clarissa. is perhaps less charitable. The image of Lucy, Clarissa's servant, "taking Mrs. Dalloway's parasol, wielded it like a sacred weapon into which a goddess, having honorably acquitted herself on the battlefield, throws it away and places it in the door -umbrella” (page 34). Royalty, empire and government (which make Clarissa stiffen with pride when she..