I've enjoyed your Three Reasons immensely. They are to a person discerning, imaginatiave, and clearly reflective of close and thoughtful reading. We don't have to love Woolf, just take her seriously and grapple with all the ways she changed the face and shape of the novel. You have been both stout of heart and intelligent. And then add persistent. Here's what Woolf's newest biographer, Julia Brigg's writes: THE HOURS and makes a fascinating film; yet to turn back from to MRS DALLOWAY is to recognize how easy and uncontrived, but at the same time how inward, experimental and still startingly modern is this novel, written more than three quarters of a century ago.." (Virginia Woolf: An Inner Life. Julia Briggs, 2005, 158)
My three reasons changed about fifty times as I wrote my second paper. I think I have four or five reasons in there, and they're sort of intertwined (something Virginia Woolf would appreciate). I think I decided on the following:
ReplyDelete-The term that I coined "multiple consciousnesses" and how this style reflects reality and believable characters. As a writer, I can appreciate that!
-The idea that it's okay to be puzzled when reading. It helps one be able to enter the literary conversation with others.
-The woman's sentence, which I hadn't planned to discuss at all, and it just sort of slipped in there.
-And, of course, intertextuality...I would not have appreciated "The Hours" had I not read "Mrs. Dalloway," plain and simple.
'Twas a fun paper to write, actually. I didn't stress out about it as much as usual. :)