Empty Time and the Split Subjectivity in Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway: A Deleuzian Analysis

Document Type : Research Paper

Authors

1 Department of English, Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literature, Tehran, Iran.

2 Department of English, Faculty of Literature and Humanities, Urmia, Iran.

Abstract

Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway (1925) is a critique of post-World War I England depicted in the image of a young veteran’s suicide. His death has been a topic of debate covering a wide range of concepts from tragedy to the scapegoat. Using Gilles Deleuze’s third synthesis of time and double death, this paper investigates Septimus Smith’s death in Woolf’s novel. As a symbolically charged event, the First World War has split Septimus’ subjectivity into two unequal halves, a former and an after. The split subject dissolves the self, and there is no longer an “I”. The dissolution of the self, however, has a positive side as well, which is liberation from law and identity. As the representative of social norms and authority, Bradshaw tries to hospitalize Septimus and restrict his mental and bodily freedom, which results in Septimus’ suicide as a liberating act. His death is the end of his life, yet it has a direct effect on Clarissa, who is restrained in a wealthy political class. The news of Septimus’ death interrupts her party and emancipates Clarissa’s thoughts, which is itself a form of “becoming”. For some moments, Clarissa gets away from her party and her guests and sees through the fake façade of her life. Thus, Septimus’ physical death causes an impersonal death in Clarissa and liberates her as well. It is an affirmation of life in a Deleuzian sense, since to Deleuze, life means the disruption of all that is repressive. Similarly, in Mrs. Dalloway, the repressed Clarissa and her double Septimus are both liberated.

Keywords

Main Subjects

References

References
Apter, Terri. E. Virginia Woolf and a Study of Her Novels. London: MacMillan, 1979.
Barret, Eileen, and Patricia Cramer, eds. Virginia Woolf: Lesbian Readings. US: New York University Press, 1997.
Bergson, Henri. Time and Free Will: An Essay on the Immediate Data of Consciousness. F. L. Bogson, Trans. NY: Dover Publications, 2001.
Berman, Jessica, ed. A Companion to Virginia Woolf. US: Wiley Blackwell, 2016.
Bethea, Arthur F. “Septimus Smith, the War-Shattered Christ Substitute in Mrs. Dalloway”. The Explicator, vol. 68, no. 4 (2010): 249-252.
Briggs, Julia. Reading Virginia Woolf. UK: Edinburgh University Press, 2006.
Childs, Peter. Modernism. John Drakakis Ed. London: Routledge, 2000.
Colombat, Andre Pierre. “Deleuze’s Death as an Event”. Man and World. vol. 29 (1996): 235–249.
Dalsimer, Katherine. Virginia Woolf: Becoming a Writer. London: Yale University Press, 2001.
Deleuze, Gilles. Difference and Repetition. Trans., Paul Patton. US: Columbia University Press, 1995.
---. Spinoza: Practical Philosophy. Trans., by Robert Hurley. San Francisco: City Lights Books,1988. Originally published as Spinoza: Philosophie pratique. Paris: Minuit, 1981.
Deleuze, Gilles, and Félix Guattari. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. trans. Brian Massumi. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987.
Derek, Ryan. Virginia Woolf and the Materiality of Theory: Sex, Animal, Life. Edinburgh University Press, 2013.
Fleishman, Avrom. Virginia Woolf: A Critical Reading. London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1975.
Gilbert, Sandra M., and Susan Gubar. No Man’s Land: The War of the Words. London: Yale University Press, 1988.
Gillis, Marry Ann. Henri Bergson and British Modernism. London: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1996.
Graham, John. “Time in the Novels of Virginia Woolf”. University of Toronto Quarterly. vol. 18 (1948): 186-201.
Guth, Deborah. “’What a Lark! What a Plunge!’: Fiction as Self-Evasion in ‘Mrs. Dalloway’.” The Modern Language Review, vol. 84, no. 1 (1989): 18-25.
Haffey, Kate. Literary Modernism, Queer Theories: Eddies in Time. US: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019.
Henke, Suzette. “Mrs. Dalloway: The Communion of Saints”. New Feminist Essays on Virginia Woolf. Edited by Jane Marcus, Lincoln, Nebraska, 1981, I25-147.
Hoff, Molly. “The Pseudo-Homeric World of Mrs. Dalloway”. Twentieth Century Literature, vol. 45, no. 2 (Summer, 1999): 186-209.
Hussey, Mark. The Singing of the Real World: The Philosophy of Virginia Woolf’s Fiction. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1986.
Jensen, Emily. “Clarissa Dalloway’s Respectable Suicide”. Virginia Woolf: A Feminist Slant. Edited by Jane Marcus, University of Nebraska, 1983, 162–179.
Lord, Catherine M. “The Frames of Septimus Smith: Through Twenty-Four Hours in the City of Mrs. Dalloway, 1923, and of Millennial London: Art is a Shocking Experience.” Parallax, vol. 5, no. 3 (1999): 36-46.
Lypka, Celiese Tamara. Dissolving Identity: Becomin Imperceptible in Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway. 2014. Department of English and Film Studies, University of Alberta. MA Thesis.
Majumdar, Robin, and Allen McLaurin, eds. Virginia Woolf: The Critical Heritage. US: Routledge, 1975.
Mattison, Laci. “Virginia Woolf's Ethical Subjectivity: Deleuze and Guattari's Worlding and Bernard's' Becoming-Savage'”. Deleuze and Guatarri Studies, vol. 7, no. 4 (2013): 562-580.
Mepham, John. Virginia Woolf, A Literary Life. UK: Palgrave MacMillan, 1991.
Miller, Nathaniel A. "Felt, Not Seen Not Heard: Quentin Compson, Modernist Suicide and Southern History”. Studies in the Novel, vol. 37, no. 1 (Spring 2005): 37-49.
Naremore, James. “The World Without a Self: The Novels of Virginia Woolf.” Novel, vol. 5 (1971): 122-34.
O’Hara, Daniel T. Virginia Woolf and the Modern Sublime: The Invisible Tribunal. US: Palgrave MacMillan, 2015.
Osaki, Harumi. “Killing Oneself, Killing the Father: On Deleuze’s Suicide in Comparison with Blanchot’s Notion of Death”. Literary and Theory, vol. 22, no. 1 (2008): 88-101.
Parsons, Deborah. Theorists of the Modern Novel: James Joyce, Dorothy Richardson, Virginia Woolf. UK: Routledge, 2006.
Pattison, Julian. Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf. UK: MacMillan, 1987.
Rouhani, Seyyed ali, and Emad Abouata amlashi. “Temporal Structure in the Literature of Magical Realism and its Impact on Cinema Based on the Theory of Gilles Deleuze”. Research in contemporary World Literature [ Pazhuhesh-e Adabiate Moaser Jahan], vol. 25, no. 2 (2021): 449-475.
Ronchetti, Ann. The Artist, Society and Sexuality in Virginia Woolf’s Novels. William E. Cain, ed. New York: Routledge, 2004.
Ryan, Derek. Virginia Woolf and the Materiality of Theory: Sex, Animal, Life. UK: Edinburgh University Press, 2013.
Sadeghi, Maryam, Fatemeh Azizmohammadi, Mojgan Yarahmadi. “A Deleuzian Analysis of the Concepts of Identity and Becoming in Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe”. Research in contemporary World Literature [ Pazhuhesh-e Adabiate Moaser Jahan], vol. 28, no 1 (2023): 343-368. DOI: http//doi.org/10.22059/jor.2022.331132.2209
Son, Youngjoo. Here and Now: The Politics of Social Space in D. H. Lawrence and Virginia Woolf. US: Routledge, 2006.
Spiropoulou, Angeliki. Virginia Woolf, Modernity and History: Constellations with Walter Benjamin. UK: Palgrave McMillan, 2010.
Thomson, Jean. “Virginia Woolf and the Case of Septimus Smith.” The San Francisco Jung Institute Library Journal, vol. 23, no. 3 (2004): 55-71.
Warner, Eric. Virginia Woolf: The Waves. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1986.
Voss, Daniela. Conditions of Thought: Deleuze and Transcendental Ideas. UK: Edinburgh University Press, 2013.
Woolf, Virginia. Collected Novels of Virginia Woolf. Stella McNicole Ed. London: McMillan, 1992.
Zlatcin, Rachel. “The Flesh of Citizenship: Red Flowers Grew.” Virginia Woolf and the Natural World: Selected Papers from the Twentieth Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf. Edited by Kristin Czarnecki and Carrie Rohman. US: Clemson University Digital Press, 2010, 84-89.
Research in Contemporary World Literature
Volume 29, Issue 1
July 2024
Pages 1-19

Files

Share

How to cite

Statistics