04/11/16

Mrs. Dalloway Map – Daniel Namdar

One aspect of Virginia Woolf’s novel, Mrs. Dalloway, which makes its difficult to comprehend is the 2 story lines that are going on at this same time. The following two charts distinguish the main characters that are associated with the 2 different parts of the novel. Note that some characters are found in both story lines.

 

Mrs. Dalloway – Story 1

  • Richard Dalloway (Mrs. Dalloway’s Husband)
    • Lady Bruton (Husband’s Lover)
  • Peter Walsh (Mrs. Dalloway’s Lover)
  • Sally Secton (Friend)
  • Elizabeth (Mrs. Dalloway’s Daughter)
    • Doris Kilman (Daughters Tutor)
  • Septimus (Veteran)
    • Lucrezia (Veterans Wife)

 

Mrs. Dalloway – Story 2 

  • Peter Walsh (Mrs. Dalloway’s Lover)
  • Septimus (Veteran)
    • Lucrezia (Veterans Wife)
04/10/16

Map the connection in Mrs. Dalloway

Photo of the Map

Well, I tried to insert the big image of my works, but the picture looks so unclear. Thus, I insert the link of my file here.

 

The character map makes us easy to understand the relationship between each character. And then we can easy to understand the story. There were some plots related these two story line. For example, in the early story of the novel, a car was backfired when Clarissa is in the flower shop and a lot of people were attracted by a loud voice. Septimus Warren Smith, a veteran of World War I who  also hears the car backfire. He suffered from shell shock, mental illness brought the horrors of war and he believed that he has responsible for the cause of the traffic car. This is the first plot, Woolf  brought the two story lines at the same time. As we see the life of Septimus changed after the war, we can fell  that the war had influenced people’s life.  However, there is no direct connection between Mrs. Dalloway and Septimus, but both Mrs. Dalloway and Septimus had similar traits that frequently  reminisced the past experiences.

04/10/16

Map the connections in Mrs. Dalloway

Woolf represents in “A Sketch of the Past” that “Behind the cotton wool [of daily life] is hidden a pattern; that we—I mean all human beings—are connected with this…” It helps us to understand the relationships which Woolf describes in Mrs. Dalloway. Mrs. Dalloway appears as simply narrating the random events in one day of Clarissa, but actually is filled with hidden pattern of complicated connections between all characters. Woolf uses a comparison, “that the whole world is a work of art; that we are parts of the work of art” to explain how each individual fit into the relationships with others and intermingles mystically. This is how each individual takes effects to the world as a whole. Clarissa is the center who brings all other characters into the novel. Her steam of conscience constantly goes through the connections between them. Septimus shares the most similarities with Clarissa because of their similar mental state. They both are suffered by World War I, and both are traumatically experience the anxiety and depression which makes both of them have psychological problems but others don’t seem to recognize. They both are mentally lost and disconnected from society, lacking sense of identity. Richard, Peter and Sally are meaningfully related to Clarissa because of their romantic relationships with her. Richard is the one Clarissa doesn’t love at all but have to be with. Peter is the one Clarissa used to love but refuse to be with now. Sally is the one who can give Clarissa erotic thrill but Clarissa cannot be with. These three relationships are complicatedly intertwined in Clarissa’s mind. This is how Woolf forms characters’ connections.

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04/10/16

Mapping of Characters

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I decided to group the characters found in Mrs. Dalloway based on their characteristics. Through the creation of this map, I was able to better understand how the characters relate to each other in terms of the way they think and perceive the world.

04/10/16

“The whole world is a work of art; that we are parts of the work of art.”

This image represents all the major people in Clarissa’s life. The most important people (in her perspective) are towards the top of the page, while those towards the bottom become increasingly less prominent. The work of art in this image is the book cover, which represents Clarissa’s story as a whole. The thought bubbles sort the different people in Clarissa’s life, and represent their placement in her work of art, or story.

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Book cover image citation:

Mrs. Dalloway. Digital image. Literature and Maps: Mrs. Dalloway. Pinterst, n.d. Web. 10 Apr. 2016.

04/10/16

The Beginning of Mrs. Dalloway

Slide1

I decided to map/draw out the beginning of Mrs. Dalloway, until the scene where the car backfires. I wanted to concentrate on the parts we talked about in class. We start off with Clarissa Dalloway thinking about past memories of her childhood home, the Bourton. Along the way to the flower shop, Mrs. Dalloway bumps into a few characters including Hugh Whitbread. This led her to rethink about her old love interest Peter Walsh who proposed to her. In addition, she worried about death and Lady Bexborough who she is envious of. When she arrived at the flower shop, a car backfires and then the book scened to a new character Septimus Warren Smith, a war veteran of WWI sitting in Regent’s Park with his wife. He suffers from PTSD or what they called shell shock back then, and this noise brings him back to his memories of war.