English 4420 – Twentieth-Century British Literature
Prof. Eatough
Small-Group Assignment #1
Mrs. Dalloway
Due Date: Sunday, 7/18 (by end of day)
Instructions: As mentioned on your syllabus, we will be completing four small-group assignments throughout the semester.
The goal of these assignments is to get you thinking about the major themes found in our readings; to practice identifying and articulating those themes in your writing; and to give you a chance to shape the topics we will discuss during our class meetings.
To this end, we will be using this particular assignment to create a list of themes, passages, and questions pertaining to Virginia Woolf’s novel Mrs. Dalloway. Each student should identify at least two (2) themes, questions, or key scenes relating to Woolf’s novel in the space provided below.
These can be preliminary ideas–i.e., you don’t need to have an answer to your question or to be able to fully explain your chosen theme–but they should be explained in clear and concise language. You should, however, strive to identify themes that are complex, nuanced, and open-ended.
If you identify specific scenes for discussion, try to say a bit about what makes them interesting and what you would like to analyze in them.
Why does this seem like an important scene to you? What called your attention to this particular scene?
And finally– make sure to identify your name alongside your contributions!
Mrs. Dalloway: Key Themes
Professor Eatough:
1. One prominent theme that noticed in the novel was its interest in the connection between masculinity and mental illness.
There seems to be an implication in the Septimus sections that his shell shock is caused not by the horrors of war, but rather by the insistence that he be “manly” by repressing his feelings of guilt and terror.
In this respect, Woolf seems to be suggesting that a certain English vision of masculinity–one that praises emotional restraint and rational logic (e.g., Bradshaw’s vaunted sense of “proportion”)–was not only the indirect cause of the war.
She also seems to be suggesting that this masculine ideal forces soldiers to cut themselves off from their feelings, which in turn leads to a sense of traumatic dissociation–one that is only exacerbated by medical professionals’ insistence that the afflicted “act like a man,” so to speak.
2. During her initial meeting with Peter, both Clarissa and Peter hold sharp objects (Clarissa’s knitting needle and Peter’s pocket knife). These objects seem to hint at the hostility and aggression that is bubbling just under the surface of this conversation (as we see when Clarissa reflects on how Peter is always [exact quote]).
like to close-read this passage and see what it can tell us about how Woolf is thinking about such issues as gender, marriage, friendship, and the relationship between the past and the present. I’d also like to talk about Peter’s pocket knife.
Why does he keep fiddling with this? And why is it important that it is a knife that he is playing with (as opposed to some other object)?
3. At times, this novel almost feels like it is two completely different stories stitched together.
On the one hand, we have Clarissa’s story, which revolves around her party and her memories of Bourton. On the other hand, we have Septimus’s story, which more directly concerns shell shock and the legacies of World War I.
Note that there is very little overlap between the overt themes of these two sections–Clarissa rarely thinks about the war, and Septimus has little experience of the upper-class world inhabited by Clarissa. So what, then, is Woolf doing by combining these two stories in her novel? How do these two tales connect with one another?
What similar themes are they speaking to? And why might Woolf have decided to approach these themes through two somewhat disconnected stories?
