English class test (14^th February 2013)

Option A

When Virginia Woolf’s novel Mrs Dalloway was published, it boosted a great literary debate for its new, innovative writing style, which appeared as a complete break from the old, classic Victorian novel. However, still nowadays, to the eyes of a common reader, the novel is something mysterious and rather odd, thus showing that the great “wave of change” Mrs Dalloway prompted is till important and revolutionary.

The core of this great change was the so called “stream of consciousness”, which was an important step forward in the analysis of the mind. The Victorian novel, with its perfect and regular structure, was detached from reality and from the true nature of perception, as V. Woolf states in her essay The Common Reader.

The new importance psychoanalysis gained at the beginning of the century had shown all the limits of a rational view of the world, and thus no rational intervention of the narrator on the story could be endured: the characters had to speak for themselves, and their flux of thoughts was set free to invade the pages of the novel, as if the narrator had voluntarily abandoned his story-telling function.

The extract from the first pages of Mrs Dalloway, when she wanders around the shops in Bond Street, is particularly representing, as the distinction between the events which happen in the reality and what just happens in her mind, gradually vanishes, as her considerations about her daughter and another woman come to the forefront. It is not just the fusion between reality and the psychological sphere; it is a way to put into discussion the entire world around us, which indeed exists only as our perception in our brain. If you consider that, it becomes obvious that the external world and Mrs Dalloway’s memories can coexist without eliminating each other.

However, someone may argue that the mind is a flux of continuous thoughts which cannot be grasped and set on a sheet of paper without losing some of their content. To prevent that, V. Woolf clearly avoids focusing on “great”, “important” thoughts, but she allows even the most insignificant idea and reasoning to come to the surface. Probably, a 19^th century writer would have felt shocked reading that the same importance is given to gloves and Mrs Dalloway’s daughter’s psychological crisis.

However, it is true that this contamination of thoughts is what everyone experiences every day, when trivial and elevated ideas sometimes coexist in the same moment. The fact people are still surprised nowadays by this way of writing shows that we hardly come to term with our nature, and we prefer not to consider ourselves as weak, instable creatures who cannot focus on a single thought, but rather strong, self-confident beings, which is exactly the opposite of what we are.

Maybe, when everyone accepts his real, weak nature, then V. Woolf’s novel will no longer be so “revolutionary” and “groundbreaking” to our eyes, but just the acceptance of our true identity.