Themes/Similarities in Mrs Dalloway and Tess of the D'Urbervilles

TESS: Rural Isolation

Hardy shows how isolated people are in rural communities when Tess has to walk miles and miles to get to places. The milk train is indicative of the city, highlighting the gulf of difference between the rural and the urban

TESS: Marriage/Isolation

- Marriage literally isolates her, as she is abandoned and left alone by Angel, unable to reach out to any friends or family due to her pride/shame

- "As in a funeral procession",

-Marriage is essentially her death sentence - it is what leads to her hanging

REZIA: Marriage/Isolation

- Wants children but Septimus refuses

- "To love makes one solitary"

- "she was very lonely, she was very unhappy"

- By marrying Septimus, she left her country and family; she feels alone in England

CLARISSA: Marriage/Isolation

- Sometimes wishes (?) she'd married Peter. Life would've been more exciting.

- Slightly bored/unhappy. Her and Richard aren't very affectionate.

- Regrets her loss of identity: "Not even Clarissa anymore, this being Mrs Richard Dalloway"

- she feels "like a nun"

TESS: Faith

- Tess criticises creation (blighted star)

- Tess doesn't believe in God because of things that have happened to her (much like Clarissa)

- After Sorrow's death and burial Tess insists she'll never go to church again. Her baptism + burial of Sorrow show her rejection of the Church.

HOWEVER, DESP personal rejection of church, the nature of the society being incredibly religious still means it dictates her everyday life (fallen woman)

HARDY: Faith

- He criticises the divine order:

"No meaning, even anger or body vengeance can be reclaimed to explain Tess' fate"

- Hardy makes the point that religion is shallow: Alec converts, but renounces his faith upon seeing Tess again.

-Biblical quotes painted round countryside to scare the public

CLARISSA: Faith

- An atheist: "not for a moment did she believe in God" after what happened to her sister. (like Tess)

- She has almost religious 'moments of being'.

- "On the ebb and flow of things, here, there she survived"

- Her sense of afterlife involves memories and moments which are scattered.

- Quite non-trad for the 'perfect hostess'

Religion comp conclusion

Md: women are less contextualised by pre-disposed religious traits/ assumptions than in tess.

TESS AND ALEC: Love

- Unnatural. Bad. Built on manipulation and lust.

- Alec's house is "spurious" (not genuine, authentic, true. counterfeit)

- There are reminders of artificial nature about them, i.e. the strawberries in the greenhouse.

- "In slight distress she parted her lips and took it in" - this shows his force, foreshadows her rape

ANGEL AND TESS: Love

- "innocent and natural"

- overpowering emotion shown by synaesthesia: "waves of colour mixed with the waves of sound"

- innocence and purity shown by natural images shown around them at Talbothay's

- "Tall blooming weeds and weed flowers glowed": even the beauty in the weeds is natural, but connotes their relationship's ugliness later on.

Contrast between Alec & Angels love

- Alec's is forced, unnatural- house is 'spurious', and has strawberries in a greenhouse. (Artificial', while Angel's is 'innocent & natural' as emph by natural imagery

= complete opposites emphasises the attributes in the other.

CLARISSA AND RICHARD: Love

- Forced (?)

- Struggle to express their love for each other - "he never gave Clarissa presents"

- "Walking across London to tell Clarissa in so many words that he loved her. Which one never does say."

- Trad. British upper class attitude

- Their relationship is almost formal - they don't even share a bed: "narrower and narrower would her bed be"

FAMILY: Mother/Daughter relationships

- Tess has no agency, just does what her mother says: "do what you like with me, Mother"

- Clarissa feels she has a lack of influence over Elizabeth because of Miss Kilman. She's jealous: "This woman had taken her daughter from her!"

- Clarissa speaks possessively: 'My' Elizabeth

FAMILY NAMES

- Clarissa known by her married name. Feels 'unseen, unknown'. Criticism of patriarchal standards.

- Tess' fate defined by her ancestral name.

"pedigree, ancestral skeletons, monumental record, the D'Urberville lineaments did not help Tess in her life's battle.

TESS: Influence of Family

- Tess is annoyed at her mother for having so many children : "passengers on the Durbeyfield ship"

- Hardy introduces this idea that children are completely dependent on their parents.

- Tess feels betrayed for the lack of life-lessons 'Why didn't you tell me there was danger in men-folk?'

CLARISSA: Influence of Family

- Clarissa feels as if she's been entrusted with her life by her parents, "and what had she made of it?"

- the terror - of one's parents giving it into one's hands"

TESS: Historical capacity to defend the male

Tess's father is described as a 'poor man' as a result of his alcoholism

Narrative similarities

Tess: 'immense sad soul, conterminous with the universe'

- Transposes Tess's reverie & sadness into the narrator's voice through pathetic fallacy

Md: 'the clock was striking' (repeated) - time changing is synonymous to Md's revelation of a change in mindset to 'Fear no more the heat of the sun.'

MD: paratactical& free indirect speech: microcosm of people & how fluid society is.

TESS: 3rd person narrative (omniscient & overview of society for what it is.

= though different aPproaches- both aren't biased towards a specific characters perception of the world.

Feminine sphere

Tess: "Why, you be quite a posy!" -

Md: 'Mrs Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself'

Patriarchal society

Md: A lot of the novel has a lack of speech- internalised- inherent patriarchal society where women should internalise their voice

Lady Bruton: adopted a male stance/ appearance 'ramrod straight' as she wants to be successful so can only do this through doing it by appearance, not in body- needs the help for writing a letter to be taken seriously

'This isle of men' : lb's patriotism 'this dear, dear land' desp. society's rejection of her shows she is fervently attatched to a concept which actively harms her.

Patriarchal society

Md: 'Lady bruton often suspended judgement upon men in deference to the mysterious accord in which they, but no woman, stood to the laws of the universe; knew how to put things; knew what was said; so that I'd Richard advised her, and Hugh wrote for her, she was sure of being somehow right.'

Purity

Tess: 'a picture of honest beauty flanked by innocence, and backed by simple-souled vainty' get quote for white dressesPurity

her paleness = passivity and absence of emotions, which juxtaposes with the red colour imagery when she is sexualised, while snake imagery threatens her purity.- becomes 'fallen' through her rape.

Clarissa - 'virginity preserved through childbirth' = she is pure, yet lacks a sexual identity in her menopausal state- doesn't interact with Richard- lonely?

flower imagery in 'Dalloway' - both Rezia and Elizabeth are 'like a lily' = no sex, even though Rezia is married - her marriage has not been consummated by Septimus)

Othello- 'are you honest' - honesty = purity

Md: 'But girls when they came out didn't wear white as they used'- Ellie Henderson (older character)

Purity context

Tess: The idea of a 'fallen woman' dictates lit: 'An admirably economic term employed to categorise & castigate all of those female 'guilty' of having a sexual identity, whether a hardened street walker or pregnant teenager.'

In Contrast to md written post-war, & the new lease on life and expressing sexuality: Ellie is rep of Tess's Victorian period, while the girls with their 'naked shoulders' are representative of the modern society.

Critical interp. of md's sexuality

Christine Froula: 'depicts a social system in which sexual desire and practice often diverge from law and publicity.

Thing behind Fallen woman literary context

George Eliot's Adam Bede (1859) involves the character Arthur Donnithorne who precipitated the fall of Getty through seducing and impregnating her, then casting her aside. = Hardy has represented this idea through the character of Alec D'Urberville.

Choosing to replicate this idea to the same generation shows that Hardy is making a point of condemning not just the idea of rape, but the consistent class who do it: rich, socially irresponsible and bullying young men.

Status

Characteristic of the Victorian era that a persons traits/ beauty are less superior to an environment in terms of defining the agency of the person

Tess: despite Tess's 'ample beauty' before finding out, it is 'her trump card! Of 'Her D'Urberville blood' that gets her status

Md: Clarissa enjoys a life of status form being a politicians husbands:

-Clarissa struggles to fill her time whilst Lucrezia has a variety of tasks which alter every hour

contrast between the working woman and lady of leisure. This is because TIME WAS MONEY

Rape/ seduction

- Alec & Mrs Kilman: spoiler/ seducer.

- Tess & Elizabeth: both victims of unwarranted ideas/ events thrust on them.

Pastoralism

Tess: rep of the dying trend through her affiliation with the natural landscape & prevalent innocence

Md: rep of the 'urban novel' in its setting and circadian structure- abnormal & new

CONTEXT: pastoralism in lit= Arcadia (1581) by Sir Philip Sidney : popular pastoral romance

- As you like it (1590) & A Winter's Tale (1610): explored the contrast between the idealised pastoral idyll and the sense of the real countryside.

Eclipse of past: dickens & gaitskill's 'urban novel'.

Fear No More the Heat o' the Sun

Cymbeline- Shakespeare

Said by both S & C: connects them

Clarissa appears to find happiness in her identity when Septimus kills himself - 'there was an embrace in death'; by taking his own life, Septimus destroys the dual narrative between himself and Clarissa, which allows C to live her life without fear (link to 'fear no more the heat of the sun')

Critical view on marriage: Austen

- Educational and employment opportunities for women were extremely limited. Marriage was almost a necessity.

In a letter to Fanny Knight, Austen commented that, "Single women have a dreadful propensity for being poor—which is one very strong argument in favour of Matrimony" (13 March 1817).

Context on lesbianism

- The deliberate silencing of sex between women was overtly articulated in 1921 parliamentary debates on creating an offence of 'gross indecency between females' in the criminal Law Amendment Bill: rejected due to the fear that a law would encourage women to explore homosexuality .

MD: Giving up through her marriage to Richard

'It was over for her. The sheet was stretched and the bed narrow. She had gone up into the tower alone and left them blackberrying in the sun'.

Q: Clarissa's Independence: MD

- 'she would buy the flowers herself.'

- 'away in the attic'

= utilises the little freedom she has the wife of an upper class politician to possess her own freedom.

- (ability to do so is facilitated by Richard's wealth and social standing)

Lack of freedom:

Is "Mrs Richard Dalloway" & "not even Clarissa anymore",

BUT:

' a little freedom in marriage which Richard have to her, and she to him". -

Bell jar Q of the priorities of a man and women & how this dictates their marriage choices

"what a man wants is a mate and what a woman wants is infinite security'

GROOVER: Quote justifying Clarissa's desire for freedom

"Clarissa's private retreat is a form of self-preservation, a way of exercising freedom and power in the face of constraining circumstances."

Clarissa's female fantasy's

- Romanticises her experience with sally at 'Bourton' wearing "pink gauze" and "smoking a cigar". This culminates in a "kiss", referred to as "precious" and "a gift, suggesting their female "companionship" is

inherently valuable.

Context: Woolf's own sexual awakening

In her husband, Leonard, Woolf felt a closeness, however she did not feel a sexual attraction.

"I feel no more attracted to you than a rock."

= had a very close 'friend': vita sackville

GROOVER: The crossover between Clarissa's true sexual identity & seeking privacy

"Clarissa has chosen this life not only for its privileges and protections, but for the deep sense of privacy it affords her."

ZWERDLING: corroborates this ^

"Like Peter and Sally she has both a conformist and rebellious side, a public and private self."

Tess: independence

Despite relying on her parents for the ways of the world, lacking independence this has caused the cons

'I was a child when I left this house for months ago' the seduction of Alec D'Urberville precipitates Tess gaining her first sense independence of independence through how, to carry on she must

Tess: dependence

But she was more 'pliable' under his hands than a mere companionship would have made her, owing to 'her inevitable dependence' upon his mother, and through 'comparitive helplessness, upon him'

After being forced to mature through the suffering and society's shunning she gains independence '

'A child's child'

Tess: corroborating the dependence on men in marriage

"I'll always be ugly now because Angel is not here, and I have no one to take care of me."

Tess: lack of female friendship/ isolation

'All the women but Tess fell into small talk'

Nature who respects not the civil law

Little prisoner of the flesh

'Living as a stranger and an alien'

Rejection from church

Despite her isolation in society being dictated by her status as a 'fallen women', stemming from the Christian sentiment of marriage being the option for a woman's sexual activity, Tess is rejected from the church in the hope of her burial of 'Sorrow the Unwanted'. This is ncnchd as we are all gods children

Rejection of the church in Oranges are not the only fruit

George Elliot's Arthur donnithrone- same as Alec- occurs in the same time period- hardy making a point of the power of the rich, socially irresponsible and bullying young men.

'These children of God have... fallen under satans spell.'

Isolated

Clarissa seems rather isolated during the novel's present time, perhaps especially when it comes to female companionship; she is not close to her daughter, and the woman closest to her age views her with great coney,or 'rich with a smattering of culture.' IN CONTRAST to visceral bourton memories; her closeness to Sally Seton when looking for examples of female companionship;

friendship between the Dalloways' daughter, Elizabeth, and Miss Kilman.

Ladies know what to guard against because they read novels that tell the. Of these tricks

1869 girton college is founded in

Predatory Males in MD

Hugh Whitbread: 'she accused Hugh Whitbread. .. of kissing her in the smoking room to punish her for saying that women should have votes'

Peter: 'She's extraordinarily attractive ... stealthily fingering his pocket-knife he started after her to follow this woman' = phallic symbol?

CRITIC: Feminist Minoko Minow-Pokey: 'Hugh Whitbread's kiss is an act of violence, a rape on a miniature scale"

Predatory Males in Tess

Alec:

- 'Well, my big beauty

- 'Let me put one little kiss on those holmberry lips, Tess; or even on that warmed cheek, and I'll stop - on my honour I will!'

- 'The sudden vision of his passion for herself as a factor in this result so distressed her that, beginning with one slow tear, and then following with another, she wept outright'.

- 'Remember, my lady, I was your master once! I will be your master again. If you are any man's wife you are mine!

Link between vic sex context & Tess

Alec's 'seduction':

- by modern standards, this would certainly count as rape, however in the victorian event this idea was non existent given the scientifically allocated role of the sexes.

Victorian theories of evolution: gender roles of sex context (dya

Herbert Spencer & Patrick Geddes:

- Men: considered the active agents, who expended energy: katabolic nature.

Women: sedentary, storing and conserving energy: anabolic = nurturing nature.

= Victorian theories of evolution believed that these feminine and masculine attributes traced back to the

lowest forms of life.

Victorian theories of evolution: consequences in everyday life

= The separation of spheres for men and women:

- Since men only concerned themselves with fertilisation- could also spend energies in other arenas.

- Woman's heavy role in pregnancy, menstruation (considered a time of illness, debilitation, and temporary insanity), & child-rearing = left very little energy left for other pursuits.

= A woman's position in society came from biological evolution -- she had to stay at home in order to conserve her energy, while the man could and needed to go out and hunt or forage.

ACTON (CONTEMP: 1865) corroboration of these spheres & the lack of sexual appetite in women

"The best mothers, wives, and managers of households, know little or nothing of sexual indulgences. Love of home, children, and domestic duties are the only passions they feel."

GRUDIN: Women's lack of sexual appetite

"Sexual license in a woman is unforgivable, irreversible, and literally unspeakable."

Jane eyre Q disp the diff capabilities of the genders

'Women feel just as men feel'

How did the perceptions of men and women shift during the vic period.

Bipolar model:

Earlier on in the century:

- Women were considered the weaker, more innocent sex= she had little to no sexual appetite (anabolic)- aqquired the sympathy and none of the blame over indiscretions.

Men represented the fallen, sinful, and lustful creatures, wrongfully taking advantage of the fragility of women.

Later on in the century:

- Women we're to be held accountable.

- Men we're seen as slaves to their katabolic purposes & sexual appetites = couldn't be blamed.

= women were portrayed either FRIGID or else INSATIABLE.

Effect of this sexual definition of a man or woman

Changing societal attitudes towards sexual morality between 1891 and 1925 help explain the two novels' differing representations of sexual desire, especially regarding women:

- MD: explores the possibility of female desire (in some cases a woman's desire for another woman),

- Tess: presents its protagonist as an object to be desired rather than a desiring subject in her own right

Female resistance in MD

To predatory males: 'She [Sally] accused Hugh Whitbread ... of kissing her in the smoking-room to punish her'

To patriarchal society: 'Sally ... was completely reckless; did the most idiotic things out of bravado' = to patriarchal society AND male dominance: continued: 'for saying women should have votes

Female resistance in Tess

To predatory males: "Never!" said Tess independently' (when Alec tells her to wrap her arms around his waist).

To patriarchal society: 'How you can dare to use those words! ... My God! I could knock you out of the gig!' (when Alec says that all women don't realise until it's too late).

Angel's condemnation of women and hypocrisy (an example of patriarchal society): Tess' rape is an issue but the fact that Angel had 'plunged into eight-and-forty hours dissipation with a stranger' is not.

Tess's passivity

- Strawberry: "No-no!' she said quickly ... [but] in distress she parted her lips'

- Bottle: 'He .. took a druggist's bottle ... and held it to her mouth unawares. Tess sputtered and coughed, and gasping 'It will go on my pretty frock!' swallowed as he poured, to prevent the catastrophe she feared'.

- Rape: 'His movements ... died away ... Tess became invisible as she fell into reverie upton the leaves where he had left her ... she was sleeping soundly.

Role of the mother literary context

Austen's Pride and Prejudice when Elizabeth Bennett expresses how "the business of [a mother's] life was to get her daughters married, its solace was visiting and news." This is due to Mrs Bennett aiming to marry off Elizabeth and her other daughters, so that Mr Collins wouldn't inherit the family house and wealth.

SHOWALTER: Reasoning as to why women are so pressured on their daughters (supports Joan's pov)

'While women relive their lives vicariously through their daughters. Men have the chance to renew their lives through action'

= supports both jean's pressuring nature and Tess's fathers' negligence.

Q: The consequence of Joan durbeyfield's lack of warning

'Why didn't you warn me of the ways of men-folk'

MD: c's lack of connection with e

- 'she did not spend much time at all with her daughter'

- Elizabeth wanted to 'be more like Richard'

- jealousy of Miss Kilman: upon 'seeing them' together is 'overwhelmed' with a 'violent anguish, for this women was taking her daughter from her.'

Feminine Mystique

(Coined by) Betty Freiden: the societal assumption that women could only find fulfillment through housework, marriage, sexual passivity and child rearing.

Feminine mystique in MD

'Except for Elizabeth, her food was all that she lived for.'

Literary context rejecting the feminine mystique

Jeanette Winterson's Oranges are not the Only Fruit: Jeanette's mother refuses to let her individuality be suppressed when she "arranged for a foundling."

Virginia Woolf's experience with her own mother

- Lost her mother at the age of 13, triggering the first of many episodes of poor mental health, which would eventually become her demise.

- Critic Ana Cristina feels this matter is particularly relevant in To the Lighthouse, as Mrs Ramsay represents Woolf's mother, giving her the control over her mother's history.

- Woolf stated: "we think back through our mothers if we are women", epitomises the importance of motherhood and the integral role it plays in literature and in real life.

CHANGE OF WOMEN'S JOBS IN SOC:Women's employment after WW1

40%

CHANGE OF WOMEN'S JOBS IN SOC: Sex discrimination Removal Act

Allowed women to enter the legal profession and accountancy

Difference in property acts

Tess: 1866: A married woman and all she owns belongs to her husband

Md: 1925: The Law of Property Act in 1925: allowed both husband and wife to inherit property equally

What Woolf felt on the subject of fiction & how she acted on it

'discrepancy between what she has to say and the form provided by the tradition for her to say it in.'

= experimental narrative style: moves freely between different characters' consciousness & follows the logic of memory RATHER than a plot.

COMP:

Tess:

- Narrative realism, which adopts a detached third-person omniscient style.

= affects readers' understanding of the viewpoints of the two novels' titular c's.

Modern fundamental literary movements: post Tess

The New Woman: term used at the end of the 19th century to describe women who were pushing against the limits which society imposed on women.

Modern equivalent: called a liberated woman/ feminist

KIRBY: Disputing the validity of the 'madness' of women

"The 'madness' of women is indicative of something greater than individual instability - they point to the lack of stories that have been available to women, to a world of literature dominated by patriarchal discourse."

FULTON: What Miss Kilman represents

"Woolf's depiction of Miss Kilman, a single woman displaced by the war, may be read as a figure of the lesbian with no place in 1920s London.

Context: how were women coached to woo men?

'accomplishments'

BUT: weren't allowed to speak to men without a married woman there as a chaperone.

First sig educational change for women

Cambridge and Oxford let women enrol in 1869

How was the 1st change for women in edu not sig

Many refused to let their daughters attend in case it would make them unmarriageable as intelligence was not a desirable trait.

Q: pride and prejudice: lists the skills of a woman which would woo a man= not education

Caroline Bingley: 'music, singing, drawing, dancing... besides all this, she must possess a certain something in her air and manner of walking

'The Angel of the House': influential across both books

= A popular Victorian image of the ideal wife/woman who were expected to be devoted and submissive to her husband:

= powerless, meek, charming, graceful, sympathetic, self-sacrificing, pious, and above all - pure

Background of the Angel of the House

- Queen Victoria's devoted herself to her husband Prince Albert & to a domestic life encouraged the ideal to spread throughout 19th century society

- BOOK: 'The Angel in the House': Coventry Patmore 1854

Septimus: CONTEXT