The Importance of the Ordinary. Moments of Being in Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway

• Authors: Emilia Flis
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

“A Sketch of the Past” is an essay in which Virginia Woolf recollects her childhood memories and reflects upon certain events, while trying to understand why she remembers them and forgets others. She mentions the concept “moments of being”, though without providing the reader with a clear definition. The idea refers to the bits of our lives in which we experience something beyond the ordinary daily routine – the intense feeling of being alive. The author describes it as “a sudden violent shock; something happened so violently that I have remembered it all my life” (Woolf, A Sketch of the Past 71) and contrasts such intense revelatory moments with “the cotton wool” (70) of non-being that defines most of our living. The concept “moments of being” is of great importance to the writer, as she herself states: ”And so I go on to suppose that the shock-receiving capacity is what makes me a writer” (72). The present article discusses the concept “moments of being” and attempts to capture its meaning by analysing selected passages from one of Virginia Woolf’s most famous novels, Mrs Dalloway.

Keywords

EN

modernism, time, the ordinary, stream of consciousness, identity, sexuality

• Publisher: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Marii Curie-Skłodowskiej
• Journal: New Horizons in English Studies
• Year: 2016
• Issue: 1

Dates

published

2016

online

2017-03-07

Contributors

author

Emilia Flis

• University of Warsaw

editor

Aneta Okuń-Jaśkowiak

editor

Adam Głaz

editor

Lidia Kniaź-Hunek

editor

Anna Bendrat

editor

Ewelina Prażmo

editor

Przemysław Terejko

editor

Piotr Szczypa

editor

Grzegorz Czemiel

editor

Ewa Antoszek

editor

Justyna Galant

editor

Marta Komsta

editor

Edyta Frelik

editor

Agata Waszkiewicz

editor

Anna Oleszczuk

editor

Agata Waszkiewicz

other

Aneta Okuń-Jaśkowiak

References

• Cohn, Dorrit. 1978. Transparent Minds: Narrative Modes for Presenting Consciousness in Fiction. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
• Dick, Susan. 1989. Virginia Woolf; Building it around one: Mrs Dalloway. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
• Hill Rigney, Barbara. 1978. Madness and Sexual Politics in the Feminist Novel: Studies in Bronte, Woolf, Lessing, and Atwood. Madison, WI: The University of Wisconsin Press.
• Meyer, Michael J. 2000. Literature and Homosexuality. Amsterdam, Atlanta GA: Editions Rodopi B.V.
• Palls, Terry L. 1984. “The Miracle of the Ordinary: Literary Epiphany in Virginia Woolf and Clarice Lispector.” Luso-Brazilian Review 21 (Summer):64.
• Spender, Stephen. 1995. “A Rare Mind and Personality.” In Virginia Woolf: Interviews and Recollections, ed. J.H. Stape, 184–186. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press.
• Teske, Joanna. 2008. Philosophy in Fiction, Lublin: Maria Curie-Skłodowska University Press.
• Woolf, Virginia. 1919a (n.d.) Night and Day. https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/w/woolf/virginia/
• – 1925b (1981) Mrs Dalloway, A Harvest Book.
• – 1928c (n.d.) Orlando… https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/w/woolf/virginia/
• – 1931d (2000) The Waves, Wordsworth Classics
• – 1939e (1985) A Sketch of the Past, A Harvest Book.

Identifiers

DOI

10.17951/nh.2016.1.43