COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS

I am going to compare the beginning of two related novels: V. Wollf’s Mrs Dalloway and M. Cunningham’s The Hours in order to find out differences between a Modernist text and a Postmodern text.

Text 1: V. Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway

The text is typically modernist, because of the narrative techniques chosen by the narrator and the characterization of the protagonist. There are the previously analyzed criteria of Modernist texts (Look “Unveiled Novel”).

The Content: Mrs Dalloway is getting everything ready for a party in the evening and recollects some past episode while thinking about the day going on and enjoying the sunny day.

Narrator: third-person, omniscient narrator. He sounds eclipsed because of the reader’s feeling to be in the character’s mind but he is revealed by some clues.

Time: non-linear, psychological time: past events (it had always seemed to hear now when, with a little sqeak of the hinges…/ was that it?), present feelings (What a lark! What a plunge!/ life; London; this moment of June) and future expectations (she would buy the flowers herself/he would be back from India one of these days, June or July) coexist in the character’s mind

Space:  London, Clarissa’s present house; Bourton, Clarissas’ past place of living; Westminster (Big Ben)

Narrative techniques: free indirect speech (Mrs Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself); recollection of the past (when, with a little sqeak of the hinges…), stream of thought (For so it had … about cabbage); shift of the point of view (She stiffened a little on the kerb…a charming woman, Scrope Purvis thought her (knowing her as one does know people eho live next door to one in Westminster)…)

Language: poetic prose: repetitions (What a lark! What a plunge!/the flap of a wave;the kiss of a wave), similes (like the flap of a wave;the kiss of a wave), imagery (a touch of the bird about her), lists (making it up, building it round one, trumbling it, creating it), alliterations (lark, plunge/ tramp, trudge/sandwich, shuffling, swinging/ brass bands, barrel/ loved, life, London)

Characters: Mrs Dalloway, Lucy, Rumpelmayer’s men, Peter Walsh, Scrope Purvis

Characters’ characterization:

• Actions planned: Lucy, Rumpelmayer’s men
• Social background: Mrs Dalloway, Rumpelmayer’s men
• Physical appearance and age: Scrope Purvis
• Dialogue: Mrs Dalloway, Peter Walsh
• Statements by the narrator: Mrs Dalloway, Scrope Purvis
• Behaviour: Clarissa Dalloway

Text 2: M. Cunningham’s The Hours  

The text is a mixture between Modernist elements and Postmodernist techniques. There are the previously analyzed criteria of both Modernist and Postmodernist texts (Look “Unveiled Novel”).

The Content: Clarissa is awake, ready to start a new day, enjoying a nice day of June

Narrator: third-person narrator adopting Clarissa’s point of view, intrusive narrator

Time: the end of the twentieth century, present feelings and thoughts

Space: New York city, Clarissa’s house, streets

Narrative techniques: free indirect style (There are still the flowers to buy/What a thrill, what a shock),the narrator adopts Clarissa’s point of view (There are still the flowers to buy)

Language: symbolic language with use of similes (as she would at the edge of a pool), metaphors (liquid net of sun)

Characters: Clarissa, Sally, the old woman next door

Characters’ characterization:

• Actions planned: Sally
• Statements by the narrator: Mrs Dalloway, the old woman next door
• Behaviour: Clarissa Dalloway

(Work to be continued)