Gendered portrayals of mental illness in Virginia Woolf's 'Mrs Dalloway'

Reinventing Grief Work: Virginia Woolf's Feminist Representations of Mourning in Mrs. Dalloway and To the Lighthouse[1] by Susan Bennet Smith, is an analysis of the ways in which Woolf depicts the opposite experience of grief as a male and female, against the backdrop of post- World War One London. Mrs Dalloway[2] is largely narrated by the female protagonist, Clarissa Dalloway, a wealthy woman in a loveless marriage. Smith states that Mrs Dalloway exposes the ways in which the feeling of grief is feminised and medicalised, simultaneously disenfranchising the male experience of bereavement. Woolf displays the ways in which male emotional displays of grief are frowned upon, viewed as feminine and unpatriotic, as shown through the character Septimus. Septimus is a shell shocked soldier, who is portrayed as emotionally paralysed from the trauma he suffered during the war. However, when he does experience an emotional outburst, as stated by Smith he is ‘met with disapproval, not sympathy’[3]. Bennet relates this to the over feminisation of mental illness, arguing that:

‘Because Septimus has internalised an excess of stoicism in the Great War, he reacts by expressing his grief in self-abnegation. Men, especially soldiers, do not cry. The authoritarian rest cure will not help him’ (p.313)

The above statement accurately describes how Woolf portrays the damaging effects of gender stereotyping in regards to emotion. However, it is not only males who are oppressed. Clarissa also becomes a victim of a repressive society. During a bout of illness, Clarissa is subjected by her husband Richard to the previously quoted ‘rest cure’:

‘There was an emptiness about the heart of life; an attic room…Narrower and narrower her bed would be…For the house sat so long that Richard insisted, after her illness, that she must sleep, undisturbed’ (pp. 45-46)

Smith notes that rest cure was viewed by feminists as a means enforcing ‘the doctor’s domination over rebellious women’ . The fact that her husband has taken on the role of a doctor through insisting on her seclusion, symbolises the way in which Clarissa is to an extent, imprisoned through her marriage. Throughout the novel, Clarissa’s grief is for the past ‘but she feared time itself, and read on Lady Bruton's face, as if it had been a dial cut in impassive stone, the dwindling of life; how year by year her share was sliced’ (p.34).  More specifically, for Clarissa’s past love for her female friend Sally, with their shared kiss being described as the ‘most exquisite moment of her whole life.’ (p.59) However, within 1920’s society, a non-platonic relationship between two women is unthinkable, leading Clarissa to find herself in a practical, yet frigid marriage. The depth of her feelings towards Sally, and the injustice of being unable to express her honest feelings could be an explanation for Clarissa’s superficial tendencies, used as a means of escaping her true self. For example her preoccupation with class and background, made evident through her less than favourable view of Miss Killman, a woman from an impoverished background. The way in which Miss Killman is referred to as a pitiful creature reflects Clarissa’s own arrogance:

Year in year out she wore that coat; she perspired; she was never in the room five minutes without making you feel her superiority, your inferiority; how poor she was; how rich you were; how she lived in a slum without a cushion or a bed or a rug or whatever it might be, all her soul rusted with that grievance sticking in it, her dismissal from school during the War – poor embittered unfortunate creature! 

It is argued by Smith that ‘Woolf tells a cautionary tale of the fatal results of the feminisation and medicalisation of grief, but offers no viable alternative’[4]. While this is a justifiable and logical statement, it could be expanded upon as the fact that Woolf’s offers no other substitute implies that this lack of a viable alternative is deliberate on Woolf’s part, most likely in order to reflect the rigidity of social rules and values for each gender in 1920’s England.  Through the previous statement, Smith criticises the text, however I am inclined to believe that Woolf offers no alternative as part of a literary technique in order to make a social point.

To conclude, Smith sheds light on the social gender inequalities in relation to expression of grief, through her comparison of Clarissa and Septimus’s experience of it. Although both characters suffer differently, Smith draws to the reader’s attention that Clarissa feels a sense of solidarity and empathy towards Septimus, perhaps because they both face emotional oppression regardless of living as different genders from different social classes, and having different life experiences.

Works Cited:

 Susan Bennet Smith, Twentieth Century Literature. Reinventing Grief Work: Virginia Woolf's Feminist Representations of Mourning in Mrs. Dalloway and To the Lighthouse , 41st edn (New York: Hofstra University, 1995), p. 310-327.

Virginia Woolf, Mrs Dalloway (London: Penguin Books, 2000).

Apocalyptic Narratives and Popular Culture

Note: This isn't a blog post about literature, I just found it very interesting to write about! 

According to Bendle (2005) ‘popular culture is awash with apocalyptic imagery and narratives’ , so for this posting I shall examine why apocalyptic scenarios are so prevalent within popular culture, and what this reveals about contemporary attitudes. In the archetypal apocalypse movie, the human race is presented from a misanthropic perspective, and everyday life is portrayed as dull, repetitive and tedious. The apocalypse then ensues, sometimes from a zombie plague which sweeps the world- this could be a suggestion that the way in which contemporary society which involves following a conventional lifestyle of perpetual consumerism has, or is deadening our capacity for independent thought. As stated by Marxist theorist Theodor Adorno, ‘Capitalist production hems them in so tightly, in body and soul, that they unresistingly succumb to whatever is proffered to them’^[1]. Therefore, it can be argued that the zombies are a metaphor for our lack of autonomy which is a part of mass culture, or perhaps, a reflection of how the masses are viewed by the economically elite. This can be further supported by the fact that many zombie movies such as Synder’s Dawn of the Dead[2] are set in an American shopping mall, which is the central hub of consumerism in America. 

In other cases, the apocalypse occurs when technology overrides humanity, for example in the Terminator franchise, which revolves around the battle against synthetic intelligence which threatens to wipe out the human race. This could reflect a fear of the way in which as a society we have become almost wholly dependent on technology. While this type of apocalypse is secular, or promethean in nature, as they were caused and therefore can be ended by humans, the Terminator franchise does draw on biblical themes. Firstly, through the naming of the films ‘Terminator 2: Judgement Day’[3] which directly refers to the apocalyptic judgement day in the Bible ‘I tell you, on the day of judgment people will give account for every careless word they speak’ (Matthew 12:36). Also the fact that the apocalypse is a result of humankind delving too far into technology, therefore having too much knowledge can be viewed as an allegory to Adam and Eve who eat from the tree of knowledge, so are banished from the garden of Eden ‘So the Lord God banished him from the Garden of Eden’ (Genesis 3:22).

The popularity of apocalypse movies within today’s society does draw on a religious fear of the Judgement Day which is detailed in the Bible, but they also act as a commentary on our contemporary lifestyles. Therefore, their prevalence could be due to the fact that the audience identifies with this scenario, reflecting our contemporary anxieties.

 Dawn of the Dead. (2004). [DVD] Hollywood: Zack Snyder.

Terminator 2: Judgement Day. (1991). [DVD] United States of America: James Cameron.

Secondary sources:

Horkheimer, M and Adorno, T. (2006). 4 The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception. In: Durham, M G and Media Cultural Studies. Revised edition. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing Ltd

Feel free to comment below, I would be interested to hear your take on the subject!

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[1] Horkheimer, M and Adorno, T. (2006). 4 The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception. In: Durham, M G and Media Cultural Studies. Revised edition. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing Ltd.  p. 94

[2] Dawn of the Dead. (2004). [DVD] Hollywood: Zack Snyder.

[3] Terminator 2: Judgement Day. (1991). [DVD] United States of America: James Cameron.

'The Love that Dare not Speak it's Name'

Lord Alfred Douglas wrote ‘Two Loves’[1] in eighteen- ninety two as a love letter to his partner, and fellow poet, Oscar Wilde. The final line of his poem refers to ‘The love that dare not speak its name’ (74), a phrase which later became recognised as a euphemism for homosexuality. This line illustrates the repression that Douglas and Wilde encountered, echoing the fact that within a sexually repressive Victorian society, homosexual love was viewed as shameful, and was punishable at the time by incarceration, as Wilde later experienced, after being publicly outed by Douglas's Father. Outraged at the company his son chose to keep, he penned the following letter to express his contempt:

Secondly, I come to the more painful part of this letter—your intimacy with this man Wilde. It must either cease or I will disown you and stop all money supplies. I am not going to try and analyze this intimacy, and I make no charge; but to my mind to pose as a thing is as bad as to be it. With my own eyes I saw you both in the most loathsome and disgusting relationship as expressed by your manner and expression. Never in my experience have I ever seen such a sight as that in your horrible features. No wonder people are talking as they are. Also I now hear on good authority, but this may be false, that his wife is petitioning to divorce him for sodomy and other crimes. Is this true, or do you not know of it? If I thought the actual thing was true, and it became public property, I should be quite justified in shooting him at sight. These Christian English cowards and men, as they call themselves, want waking up.

Your disgusted so-called father,
Queensbury [2]

In a highly conservative Victorian era, Douglas had to use highly ambigious yet implicity language in order to convey his emotions. The poem uses personification to categorise love in two ways- firstly, the heterosexual love between and male and female ‘I am true love, I fill//the hearts of boy and girl with mutual flame’ (72). The latter type of love which Douglas refers to is more cryptic, with it being referred to as ‘Shame’ (68). Douglas illustrates the latter type of love as forlorn ‘sad and sweet’ (53) ‘he sighed with many sighs’ (55), using sibilance, which creates a sense of secrecy, reflecting the way in which homosexual lovers were forced to lead double lives, hiding their feelings for each other in the public realm.
Many of Wilde's works also contained homosexual themes, particularly in The Picture of Dorian Gray, in which he laments the injustice of a heteronormative society 'your soul grows sick with longing for the things it has forbidden to itself, with desire for what its monstrous laws have made monstrous and unlawful'. Whilst Wilder doesn't explicitly refer to homosexuality in this quotation, yet it is clear what forbidden desires Wilde is referring to, not only forbidden to the soul, but made unlawful by a nineteenth century government. 

Crossing Boundaries: Transgression and Subversion in Gothic Literature

The Gothic genre is primarily characterised by its tendency to transgress and subvert the already precariously established laws and codes of its time. As Fred Botting succinctly puts it: ‘Gothic signifies a writing of excess.’ [1] The emergence of Gothic literature was a marked product of the social and political upheaval which was prevalent in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, and the period of the Gothic novel’s greatest popularity in the 1790s coincided with the French Revolution which overthrew the traditional monarchy and challenged many received ideas, as well as precipitating a period of reaction and nationalist fervour in British society. The relationship between Gothic as a revolutionary new literary movement and political revolution was one recognised by some at the time, including the Marquis de Sade, who claimed the Gothic genre was 'the inevitable product of the revolutionary shocks with which the whole of Europe resounded.'[2] As a result of these ‘revolutionary shocks’, great uncertainties were sparked regarding the nature of power, law, sexuality, religion and hierarchy. Societal principles were not the only thing to be put in question, so were the very boundaries of the individual mind, as Gothic literature attempts to move into the subconscious psyche, exploring the very darkest aspects of human nature. In this blog the ways in which these transgressions and subversions of physical, moral and societal boundaries and norms function in the Gothic novel will be explored through two primary texts:  Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto (1764) [3] which is widely regarded as the first Gothic novel and Matthew Lewis’ scandalous The Monk (1796) [4].

Firstly, it is necessary to acknowledge the difference between transgression and subversion in Gothic literature. While subversion seeks to transform or undermine the established social orders and its hierarchy of power, transgression is perhaps more sinister in its meaning. Transgression, in this blog posting, is to be understood as an extreme crossing of social and moral codes of value. Lewis’ The Monk explores the notion of illicit sexuality against the backdrop of the Catholic church. The fact that the abbot Ambrosio’s transgressions takes place against the backdrop of the Catholic church make the revelations of depravity perhaps more shocking to the reader, simultaneously illustrating the anti-Catholic feeling which was prevalent in eighteenth century England. This demonising of the Catholic ‘Other’ was a result of the ideological emergence of the English, Protestant national rhetoric. This anti Catholic feeling was exemplified by the Gordon riots, a violent Protestant reaction to the Papist Act of 1778 which intended to reduce discrimination against Catholics.

The Gordon Riots, 1780.

The French Revolution reawakened these fears of political crisis, and latent attitudes towards Catholicism were reanimated in England. As stated by Maggie Kilgour ‘While the nature of past and its relation to the present was debated through the eighteenth century, it gained new life with the French Revolution, as the Terror proved fertile for a literature of terror’ [5]. It can be suggested that Lewis exploits this national fear and its dramatic anti-clericalism through his novel. The re-demonisation of the Catholic religion is personified through the depiction of the sinful monk, Ambrosio. The ‘desires of the lustful monk’ (p.300) transgress moral boundaries, with the intention of keeping a young woman; the archetypally virtuous Antonia, in a crypt against her will, in order to have unlimited sexual access to her ‘cut off from all the world and totally in his power, Antonia should comply with his desires.’(p.392). Hidden away from the boundaries of the law, the crypt could be viewed as a physical manifestation the ‘ID’ coined by Sigmund Freud as the deepest, most unconscious part of the mind in which socially and morally unacceptable desires are stored. Whilst The Monk is heavily influenced by the societal and political chaos of the French Revolution, perhaps reliving it through the lens of the Gordon Riots, subversion of power structures in Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto address issues of constitutional power in the monarchy. It has been suggested by Toni Wein that ‘Manfred represents, if not the person, then the actions of, George III.’. Walpole wrote his novel during the reign of George the Third. Wein posits that ‘Manfred’s irrational attack on Theodore, culminating in the hero’s imprisonment for making empirical observations’, she suggests, ‘could be likened to George III’s wilful ignoring of common law in his use of general warrants, ultimately deemed an illegal violation of individual liberty’ [6].

While transgressions against morality and the law are explored in The Monk, Walpole’s novel The Castle of Otranto focuses of the subversion of societal hierarchies of power. The young, upper class female character Matilda, is portrayed helping the peasant Theodore to escape prison, in order to overthrow the tyrannical force of her father Manfred, the owner of the castle. Not only does this disturb the hierarchy of class, it can also be interpreted as a subversion of classic gender roles. Walpole draws on the medieval tradition of chivalry, yet he alters it to place Matilda in the position of power, through rescuing Theodore. Through this act of rebellion, Matilda also undermines her father’s patriarchal power, to which he reacts by stabbing her fatally. As stated by Kate Ferguson Ellis, ‘Resistance to parents or husbands, no matter how malicious these seeming pillars of patriarchy may be, leaves a typical heroine no alternative than to die with her virtue intact’[7]. In the Gothic imagination, there is no space in which a woman can be both rebellious and pure. This is particularly true of Matilda’s premature death ‘commend me to Heaven: —where is my father? —forgive him, dearest mother —forgive him my death; it was an error’ (p.85). Through this depiction of Matilda as forgiving of her father’s deadly transgression, and the mention of heaven, she is given a status of martyrdom through death.

The same type of fatalistic, vulnerable female character is presented in The Monk through Lewis' depiction of Antonia. Antonia is first described in over embellished pieces, describing her virginal beauty:

Her features were hidden by a thick veil; but struggling through the crowd had deranged it sufficiently to discover a neck which for symmetry and beauty might have vied with the Medicean Venus. It was of the most dazzling whiteness, and received additional charms from being shaded by the tresses of her long fair hair, which descended in ringlets to her waist. (p.9) 

This is an example of both the centralisation and dissection of the Gothic female. She is the visual focus of the description, yet she is fragmented into individual body parts. This ‘piecing’ of the female body intertwined with imagery of purity in ‘whiteness’ and ‘fair’ creates a fetishized object of desire for the male reader, subscribing to the misogynistic ideologies of its era. Similarly to Matilda in The Castle of Otranto, she is stabbed by her male oppressor, who in this case is Ambrosio. Antonio is murdered with the intent of highlighting the depth of Ambrosio’s evil. In both texts, it can be argued that female characters are used as disposable casualties of male transgression, which highlights the social injustices of their time. Rebellious women are also punished in Lewis’ novel through the character Agnes, a woman becomes pregnant outside of marriage, leading her to be imprisoned, and forced to give birth to her baby in the crypts below the monastery. In what is perhaps the most poignant moment in the plot, Agnes witnesses the death of her baby due to ‘the want of proper attendance’ (p.412) in complete confinement. The description of the way in which she holds on to her decaying baby ‘no persuasion could induce me to give it up. It soon became a mass of putridity’ (p.412) is particularly harrowing, for Agnes maternal instincts are used against her in order to augment her suffering. This is punishment for transgressing societal codes of conduct which reject female sexual autonomy.

Painting of Agnes being discovered in the crypts.

Whilst Gothic fiction does question established gender and class roles to an extent, exemplified through Walpole's depiction of Matilda's rebellion, ultimately, the misogynistic values of the 18^th century are upheld. This shown through the fatal punishment towards females who display autonomy such as Matilda in The Castle of Otranto, and The Monk’s Agnes.  The Gothic era was one marked by instability and blurred boundaries, sometimes even revolutionary in its subversion of hierarchies, however, it is important to acknowledge that each of these transgressions and subversions do not go unpunished. This is also prevalent through Ambrosio’s eventual death as a consequence for his moral and religious transgressions ‘six miserable days did the villain languish’ (p.442). These punishments perhaps deliver a conservative message. Maggie Kilgour suggests of The Monk’s conclusion that ‘extremes are punished, leaving in the end a society reaffirmed by the consolidation of a middle path, the breeding of those who balance difference and likeness’, therefore, the message of the story becomes ‘highly conservative and even reactionary’ (p.164). Furthermore, it can be suggested that both Agnes and Ambrosio’s fates are portrayed a result of the institution of Catholicism. If Ambrosio wasn’t made to suppress his sexual urges due to his status as a monk, perhaps he would not have expressed them in such a damaging and corruptive way. Also, the fact that the Catholic church forbade sex outside marriage led to Agnes’ imprisonment and consequential suffering, could possibly be a means of depicting Catholicism as ineffective. In contrast, the Protestant churches accepted co-habitation with the intent of marriage, conveying the message that if Agnes belonged to a Protestant country such as England, such disturbing scenes might not have had to take place. While in both novels, transgressions and subversions of power hierarchies and moral values take place, the effect is that of a conservative one, displaying the distressing consequences of rebellion.

Jessica Pickard, N0660430

Endnotes

[1] Fred Botting, Gothic (London: Routledge, 1996), p. 1.

 [2]Timo Airaksinen, The Philosophy of the Marquis de Sade (London: Routledge , 1995), p. 93.

[3]Horace Walpole, The Castle of Otranto (Oxford : Oxford University Press , 2014). (Further reference to this edition will be given after quotations in the text)

[4]Matthew Lewis, The Monk (Oxford: Oxford World Classics , 2008). (Further reference to this edition will be given after quotations in the text)

[5] The Rise of the Gothic Novel (London: Routledge, 1995), p.23. (Further reference to this edition will be given after quotations in the text)

[6] British Identities, Heroic Nationalisms and the Gothic Novel (Basingstoke: Palgrave 2002), p.55.

[7] Kate Ferguson Ellis, The Contested Castle: Gothic Novels and the Subversion of Domestic Ideology, (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1989), p. 43.