Module A para 1

Question 1

‘invisible; unseen; unknown’

Answer 1

Woolf illustrates Clarissa’s confinement through the tricolon in her interior monologue, ‘invisible; unseen; unknown’, illuminating how her identity is reduced to her domestic role of ‘marrying and ‘having children.’

Question 2

‘swollen with some astonishing significance, some pressure of rapture, which split its thin skin and gushed and poured.’

Answer 2

Furthermore, Woolf dismantles the heteronormative gender roles of her society by presenting Clarissa’s sexual emancipation. Mrs Dalloway explores queer desire in inexplicit ways because of the conservatism around homosexual relationships in the early 20th century. Clarissa’s desire for Sally is visualised in explosive, orgasmic, imagery: ‘swollen with some astonishing significance, some pressure of rapture, which split its thin skin and gushed and poured.’

Question 3

‘if it were now to die ‘twere now to be most happy’.

Answer 3

The overwhelming ecstasy of being in Sally’s presence is furthered in the intertextual reference to Othello when Clarissa says ‘if it were now to die ‘twere now to be most happy’. Woolf’s coded depiction of queer desire reflects the legal trials that were brought against literature that featured homosexual content.

Question 4

‘present…wrapped up’

Answer 4

he secrecy around queer desire is symbolised in Woolf’s description of Sally kissing Clarissa as a ‘present…wrapped up’, exemplifying the hidden nature of queer identities and feelings at the time. Woolf ultimately echoes a harsh truth as Clarissa and Sally’s eventual resolution to ‘marry well’ at the expense of their unfulfilled desires reflects eventual social conformity.