Module A para 3 Flashcards
Repeatedly confesses ‘he could not feel’
By utilising a modernist stream-of-consciousness technique and focalising on the ‘shell-shocked’ war veteran, Septimus Smith, who repeatedly confesses “he could not feel”,
“His despondent rhetorical question, ‘The world has raised its whip; where will it descend?’”
Woolf captures the eradicated zeitgeist within her post-WW1 society. “His despondent rhetorical question, ‘The world has raised its whip; where will it descend?’” dismantles the idealistic beauty of life with the harsh connotations of the unyielding ‘whip’, reconstructing a cynical perspective of life as immutable suffering.
“lunching, dining, giving these incessant parties.”
However, Woolf contrasts the Freudian notion of ‘Thanatos’ (the death drive) embodied by Septimus against the vitality of Clarissa Dalloway, who discovers joy in “lunching, dining, giving these incessant parties.”
“in the middle of my party, here is death,”
However, this sense of vitality is challenged when Clarissa reveals, “in the middle of my party, here is death,” with the juxtaposition of the ‘party’ emblematic of vitality and social connections with ‘death’ signifying how life’s beauty is inherently threatened by mortality.
“But she must go back. She must assemble. She must find Sally and Peter”
high modality positioning readers to recognise the necessity of life through experiences and connections with others rather than an overshadowing fear of death.
Importance of mortality- it reconstructs one’s vitality.
Hence, Woolf dismantles the Victorian romanticisation of life by navigating the haunting influence of mortality upon the human psyche but ultimately asserts its integral role in reconstructing one’s vitality.
