Riassunto esame Letteratura inglese, Prof. Ragni Cristiano, libro consigliato La signora Dalloway - con testo a fronte oppure "Mrs Dalloway", Virginia Woolf- a cura di Marisa Sestito. Letteratura Universale Marsilio

FLOWERS

Lucy → she’s probably the maid

For Lucy had her work cut out for her. The doors would be taken off Rumpelmayer's men→ they’re probably coming for sometheir hinges; Rumpelmayer's men were coming. And then, thought work at her home.Clarissa Dalloway, what a morning—fresh as if issued to children on a Clarissa really likes the fresh morning.beach. Then she makes two exclamations with 2 opposite type ofWhat a lark! What a plunge! For so it had always seemed to her, when, movements:with a little squeak of the hinges, which she could hear now, she had What a lark! = che bellezza! ma anche =che tuffo!burst open the French windows and plunged at Bourton into the open = che “caduta”!What a plunge!air. How fresh, how calm, stiller than this of course, the air was in the She is brought back to her past: she remembers when sheearly morning; like the flap of a wave; the kiss of a wave; chill and sharp was a girl of eighteen, at Bourton; this

morning that she’sand yet (for a girl of eighteen as she then was) solemn, feeling as she living really feels like the morning she lived in her past,did, standing there at the open window, that something awful was about before the war, with Peter Walsh.to happen; looking at the flowers, at the trees with the smoke winding before the war → we know that because there’s aoff them and the rooks rising, falling; standing and looking until Peter reference o the war, given by the words “something awfulWalsh said, "Musing among the vegetables?"—was that it?—"I prefer At that time she was happy, but theywas about to happen”.men to cauliflowers"—was that it? He must have said it at breakfast one had this strange feeling that something awful (=orribile,morning when she had gone out on to the terrace—Peter Walsh. He come la guerra) was about to happen.would be back from India one of these days, June or July, she forgot Peter

Walsh → we will discover more about him but whatwhich, for his letters were awfully dull; it was his sayings one is a pragmatic man; he’swe already can know is that: heremembered; his eyes, his pocket-knife, his smile, his grumpiness and, going to come back to London and meet Clarissa becausewhen millions of things had utterly vanished—how strange it was!—a he lives in India. There’s a peculiar relationship betweenfew sayings like this about cabbages. Peter and Clarissa.The written creation of Clarissa’s thoughts and way of thinking is the result of a style, called free indirect style → the freeindirect style, where the discourse is emanated by different points of view in the continuum and the flow is continuous,without distinctions. It’s easy«This narrative technique, whose first English practitioner was probably Jane Austen, is called free indirect style.to see how Mrs. Dalloway’s especially frequent an mobile use of the

Technique contributed to the novel's reputation as nebulous. Free indirect style imagines discourse as emanating not from a single point (a character, a narrator) but from perspectivalism of "point of view" shifting points along the continuum between the two; it may even reject the Cartesian altogether, replacing it with a charged and wavering field, a probabilistic cloud of perception. [Saint-amour 2016]

Novel Interpretation

She stiffened a little on the kerb, waiting for Durtnall's van to pass. A charming woman, Scrope Purvis thought her (knowing her as one does Mrs Dalloway from the point of view of Scrope Purvis, know people who live next door to one in Westminster); a touch of the bird her neighbor. Then, however, we are immediately launched into Clarissa's thoughts about her, of the jay, blue-green, light, vivacious, though she was over fifty, again, without and grown very white since her illness.

There she perched, never seeing connections. Him, waiting to cross, very upright. This is an example of free indirect style.

For having lived in Westminster—how many years now? over twenty,—one feels even in the midst of the traffic, or waking at night, Clarissa was positive, a particular hush, or solemnity; an indescribable pause; a suspense (but that might be her heart, affected, they said, by influenza) before Big Ben strikes. There! Out it boomed. First a warning, musical; then the hour, irrevocable. The leaden circles dissolved in the air. Such fools we are, she thought, crossing Victoria Street.

As we have already seen from the thoughts of Scrope Purvis, Clarissa’s portrait is never given by herself or the narrator in a specific paragraph. Clarissa’s portrait is created by other people’s thought: –Università degli Studi di Verona English literature and culture 1 Module 2«[Clarissa’s] portrait is to a great extent created by other

people’s thoughts about her. She takes form through other people’s expectations and is governed by other and her own desire to make a good impression.» [Larrson 2017]

Clarissa is described as a person that really cares about what the other thinks about her and wants to make a good impression, as she is the wife of the Prime Minister. She wants to be the perfect hostess of the party she’s going to organize on that evening.

Offill 2020:«“Mrs. Dalloway” is a remarkably expansive and an irreducibly strange book. Nothing you might read in a plot summary prepares you for the multitudes it contains. In fact, on the surface, it sounds suspiciously dull. The novel depicts a single day in June from the perspective of a number of characters. The year is 1923. The Great War is over, but the memory of its unprecedented destruction still hangs over England. In a posh part of London, a middle-aged woman plans a party. She goes out to get flowers. A man she

recurring in the novel is called“CLOCKINESS”. The novel has 12 MACRO-twenty,—one feels even in the midst of the traffic, or waking at night,Clarissa was positive, a particular hush, or solemnity; an indescribable SECTIONS, it is not divided into chapter and this structurepause; a suspense (but that might be her heart, affected, they said, by reminds the hours of the day.influenza) before Big Ben strikes. There! Out it boomed. First a The repetitions of sentences of time in the novel reminds usof the difference between subjective and historical time →warning, musical; then the hour, irrevocable. The leaden circlesdissolved in the air. Such fools we are, she thought, crossing Victoria a moment can last much longer than another, because weStreet. For Heaven only knows why one loves it so, how one sees it so, perceive time differently depending on the feelings of themaking it up, building it round one, tumbling it, creating it every moment.moment afresh; but the

veriest frumps, the most dejected of miseries Time flows differently for Clarissa and the other characterssitting on doorsteps (drink their downfall) do the same; can't be dealt in different moments.with, she felt positive, by Acts of Parliament for that very reason: theylove life. In people's eyes, in the swing, tramp, and trudge; in the bellowand the uproar; the carriages, motor cars, omnibuses, vans, sandwichmen shuffling and swinging; brass bands; barrel organs; in the triumphand the jingle and the strange high singing of some aeroplane overheadwas what she loved; life; London; this moment of June.

Saint-Amour 2016: «Mrs. Dalloway asserts its clockiness at both macro and micro scales, as if to insist that thewhole is isometric with the parts. Keyed to a single day and divided into 12 sections, the novel presents itself asit is a clock. At more local scales, too, it emulates the clock’sa device for quantifying diurnal experience:hour through a system of