This assignment is pretty fun since the story is not only interesting, but very relevant to Freud’s Family Romance. We can see that the boy whose name is Colonel Sartoris Snopes hates his father from most of the story. He calls his father as “our enemy” and says that “He aims for me to lie…again with that frantic grief and despair.” The boy also describes his father as an incompetent and ignoble person by mentioning that “the stiff back, the stiff and ruthless limp” and “If I had said they wanted only truth, justice, he would have hit me again.” The boy does do whatever his father orders because he is quite afraid of his father’s physical force. It shows family romance as the any event which make him feel dissatisfied afford him provocation for beginning to criticize his father, in order to support his critical attitude. The knowledge which he has acquired that other parents are in some respects preferable to them. (Jensen’s ‘Gradiva’ and Other Works)

He also hates his sisters a lot. In contrast, he describes his mother as a weak and nice person. We can see that his mother cares about the boy a lot whenever he gets a hurt. This relationship among the boy and family also expresses the family romance that the boy has no hesitation in attributing to his mother as many fictitious love-affairs as he himself has competitors while his sisters are eliminated by being bastardized.

However, boy respects his father and believes that his father is brave after he escapes his family at the end of the story. And it tells a mature part of family romance that he puts effort at replacing the real father by a superior one is only an expression of his longing for the happy, vanished days when his father seemed the noblest and strongest.

Sigmund Freud’s thesis in Family Romance is that certain children fantasize about being children of an aristocrat.  They tend to replace their real parents with an imaginary royal pair or with anyone who is higher in social standing.  In On Sexuality, Freud writes “[the child is merely] turning away from the father whom he knows today to the father in whom he believed in the earliest years of his childhood.”  Freud’s theory about this psychological complex can be seen in William Faulkner’s Barn Burning.  In Faulkner’s short story, the author illustrates Freud’s understanding of family, conflict, and maturation.

The main character, Satoris, has different moral values with his family, namely his father Abner Snopes. While Snopes perversely declares that one must be loyal to his or her family, no matter the circumstances.  Satoris is beset with this conflict.  He wants to obey the law but at the same time wants to please his father and family.  Ultimately, Satoris wishes for a father who follows through moral values; he desires for Snopes to be honest and not to resort to malice and violence.

In the end, Satoris rejects his father’s idea of family loyalty.  When Snopes obstinately plans to burn down a barn, Satoris rushes to tell the owner which leads to Snopes’ death.  This is Satoris’ maturation: that he becomes free from his father’s perverse belief, goes against his father, and conforms to his own morality.

Author used the “stream-of-consciousness” method to tell the story “Mrs. Dalloway”. In this way, Mrs. Dalloway’s story can be easier to connect to the story of Septimus Warren Smith. Both Clarissa and Septimus have similar situation that had the psychic trauma. Clarissa had the difficulty of finding “herself”, and Septimus had difficulty to release himself from the war. They both married with someone they didn’t really love but who can gave them “safe”. At the end of the story, Septimus chose to end his life; Clarissa thought this is Septimus way to keep “himself”. As the reverse, Clarissa didn’t do this way even though she wanted to find herself too. Even though she wanted to take off the “cotton wool” as Septimus, she was not as “brave” as Septimus.

When Peter Walsh, who was Clarissa’s ex-boyfriend, came back, Clarissa thought that she still loved him. She wanted the life when she was engaging with Peter, because she thought it was fall of freedom. She was trying to take off the “cotton wool”, but she cannot, Peter was not same as the past.

Then she started to think about Sally Seton, an intimate friend. When Sally was young, she was herself. No cotton wool, no anything. Sally did everything as she wanted to. Clarissa loved those feeling, but Sally was gone. Sally became a traditional woman who married and took care of her family. Sally was “behind the cotton wool” too.

Clarissa wanted to take off the “cotton wool”, but the world hold her behind it. And also everyone else in the world, including the people in the party.

In the novel Mrs Dalloway, the author, Virginia Wolf, intentionally places hidden patterns of connection create relationships which construct the text. One of these disguised relationships is the obscure bond between Clarissa and Septimus. The connection is the similar ideology of the different characters despite the contrast in their actions. Despite the fact that Septimus was insane, and that everyone knew it, Clarissa shares his ideology and his ultimate beliefs. The difference is that until he committed suicide, Septimus practices what he preaches, and in many ways Clarissa is envious of that. She only fully comprehends that they actually share the same ideals once Septimus commits suicide. From the reaction Clarissa learns that she must take a different approach to life, and the contrast between her thoughts and ideas must be amended.

Another deeper connection is that between Clarissa and Sally Sexton. Clarissa harbors   some unique feelings for her old friend and we constantly see her thinking about her. It seems as though Clarissa has sexual feelings for Sally, although she cant pursue them due to the social structure of the time.

In both these relationships we see Clarissa trying to escape the cotton wool unlike which all other characters seem wrapped up in. Characters such as her husband Richard Dalloway, the psychiatrist William Bradshaw, and Lucrezia Smith, Septimus’s wife, glorify life in the cotton wool. Each of them are enravled in the idea that there is nothing more to life than pursuing ones sentimental connections and emotions, rather live the way the times want you to .

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