Cecilia Characterisation Flashcards
Narrative voice (writing style)
Languid prose/describes everything with precision and care, allowing readers to visualise the “wintery sedge” “unused rosewood music stands”
Descriptive writing provides precise contextual knowledge. “Genuine Meissen porcelain, the work of a great artist Horoldt”
Narrative voice (self conscious)
Introspective/self conscious as she describes her surroundings but also her place in them as if imagining how these descriptions will be judged.
Critics her family home to differentiate herself from her gaudy, tasteless environment. Irony as she too is a “tragedy of wasted chances”
John Berger, a postmodern art critic suggests in WOS that women will often imagine themselves being observed and act in accordance with this imagined gaze. Cecelia acts with keen awareness of how she appears to others and how she will look in memory.
“She had returned from Cambridge with a vague notion that her family was owed an interrupted stretch of her company.”
“When (Emily) wasn’t nuturing her migraines (she) seemed distant, even unfriendly.”
Intertextual reference: A developed secret language
“With a sound like a dry twig snapping, a section of the lip of the vase came away in his hand, and split into two triangulation pieces which dropped into the water…and lay there several inches apart, writhing in the broken light.”
“Denying his helpful, any possibility of making amends, was his punishment. The unexpectedly freezing water that caused her to gasp was his punishment.”
“She held her breath, and sank. Drowning helped would be his punishment.”
“She was being mocked or punished for being in a different circle at Cambridge, for not having a charlady for a mother…mocked for her poor degree.”
“Darling! What’s up?”
“Once again refused to fall into the artful disorder she preferred.”
“It happened a long time ago, and all the outcomes, and all the scales from the tiniest most colossal and the were already in place.”
