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Virginia Woolf in Mrs Dalloway, through Clarissa Dalloway’s and other parallel stories, presents us with the situation of Septimus Warren Smith, a war hero who suffers shell-shock and that due to his apparent madness is victim of constant threats from two physicians who want to put him away because of his mental crises. He, in an attempt to preserve his soul from the terrible embrace of human nature, decides to kill himself before he is arrested. Taking into account this information, the topic of this thesis will be the treatment of madness in Mrs Dalloway, understanding the figure of the mad person as a literary archetype which is repeated with some consistency in English Literature, from classical to contemporary texts. The main focus will be the development of the figure of Septimus as a visionary poet, a modernist figure analogous to William Blake who, with his visionary poetic/pictorial work, drew the paths to the following romantic company. A comparison will be drawn between the two poets taking into account the evolution of the visionary poet from its pre-romantic sphere to the modernist shadow of a mad person, showing that madness suffers transformations from the ancient Greece to modernist times. One of the sub-topics will be the conception of nature in contrast to human nature, and how they seem to be components of a dichotomy that cannot be dissolved. My intention is to work on madness as a literary archetype, along with an examination of the mad person within the context of a modernist novel where it is manifest in the figure of the visionary poet. I will try to see how this has changed from the Platonic perspective of divine madness to the segregation and punishment of the Classic Epoch, and finally to our modern(ist) sensibility. Tentatively, the social apprehension towards the mad person would affect its characterisation in Mrs Dalloway, in which a post-war fragmented society is presented.

The purpose of this thesis is to track Virginia Woolf's enactment of conscious experience over the course of her 3 most consciousness forward novels, To the Lighthouse (1927), The Waves (1931), and Mrs. Dalloway (1925). This thesis aims to examine Woolf's ideas and theories about individual consciousness, collective consciousness, and how gendered consciousness plays a role in both. Set against the consciousness philosophy of Woolf's time, this thesis sets Woolf's ideas apart from the abstractions of philosophy and attempts to trace Woolf's enactment of consciousness throughout three of her most famous novels. In researching this project, I studied the consciousness scholarship that was circulating within scholarly circles during Virginia Woolf's time. I also read about what Virginia Woolf herself had to say about philosophy and its usefulness. Finally, I researched what scholars of Virginia Woolf had to say about her work and the philosophy of consciousness. By using all these avenues for my research, I was able to paint a portrait of Virginia Woolf's involvement with philosophy, her ideas about conscious experience, and how those ideas took shape in her novels. In her novels, Virginia Woolf transcends academic philosophy by creating a way to understand and visualize the phenomenology of consciousness that is unique and entirely her own. In the first chapter of this thesis, I explore Woolf's depiction of gendered consciousness in her novel To the Lighthouse. In this chapter, I argue that Woolf suggests a difference between the way men and women experience the world. She explores the implications of those experiences for the collective consciousness, and the delicate line that balances gendered individual consciousness with the collective experience. In the second chapter, I look at Woolf's theory of group consciousness in The Waves, which explores what it means to be part of a collective experience while also balancing being an individual with one's own inner experience. In this chapter, I argue that Woolf formulates a coming-of-age narrative to enact the development of both the individual and collective consciousnesses. She also splits the coming-of-age narratives into two different groups, based on gender. I argue that Woolf does this to highlight the different ways in which men and women experience, how that experience develops from adolescence to adulthood, and the balance that must be maintained to reach Woolf's idea of enlightenment. Finally, in the last chapter, I discuss Woolf's ideas about inner and outer experience in Mrs. Dalloway, including the novel's implicit assertion that there must be stability, or balance, in both inner and outer conscious experience if one is to function within the collective consciousness of society. I argue that Woolf shows this balance, or lack thereof, in the parallel narratives of Clarissa and Septimus. In doing this she once again asserts that there is a gendered difference in the way men and women experience and shows how the balance of inner and outer experience functions between both men and women. By analyzing these three texts, I hope to show both Woolf's understanding of conscious experience and the ways in which she enacts this understanding in her three most consciousness-forward novels. / Master of Arts / What is consciousness? What does it mean to have an experience? For years scholars have attempted to answer these questions. Consciousness, as an area of study, raises a few questions. These questions include: What does it mean to have an experience? What is it like, both cognitively and physically, to perceive what's happening around you, and why does it matter in the first place? In the early 20th century, consciousness, and the study of it were at the center of scholarly attention. Influential philosophers such as William James and G.E Moore were just beginning to formulate their theories about conscious experience and to bring them into public view. In this thesis I argue that Virginia Woolf provided her own answer to these questions about consciousness during her career. By reading Woolf against consciousness scholarship, I aim to discuss the ways in which Woolf creates a new idea or philosophy of consciousness, one that considers gender, society, and the individual, and depicts how all these things coalesce into what we understand as "experience." Woolf's thoughts and philosophies were no doubt influenced by those who came before her, but she also created a concept or way of enacting consciousness in her novels that was uniquely her own. In the first chapter of this thesis, I explore gendered and collective consciousness in To the Lighthouse (1927) and the balance that must be maintained within both. In the second chapter, I explore collective or group consciousness in The Waves (1931) and explore how Woolf enacts a coming of age of both collective conscious identity and individual conscious identity, Finally, in the last chapter, I explore Woolf's ideas about inner and outer conscious experience in Mrs. Dalloway (1925), and how one must balance these experiences if they are to function in the collective consciousness of society.

With a rising interest in visual media in academia, studies have overlapped at literary and film scholars' interest in adaptation. This interest has mainly focused on the examination of issues regarding adaptation of novel to novel or novel to film. Here I discuss both: Michael Cunningham's novel The Hours, which is an adaptation of Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway, and the 2002 film adaptation of Cunningham's novel. However, my thesis also investigates a different kind of adaptation: the adaptation of a literary and historical figure. By including in The Hours a fictionalization of Virginia Woolf, Cunningham entrenches his adaptation with Virginia Woolf's life and identity. My thesis compares the two adaptations of Virginia Woolf's identity in the novel The Hours and the film The Hours and investigates the ways in which these adaptations funnel Woolf's identity through the perception of three men"”Michael Cunningham, novelist; David Hare, screenwriter; Steven Daldry, director. My reaction to the fictionalization of Virginia Woolf in The Hours mirrors Brenda Silver's sentiment in the introduction to her book Virginia Woolf: Icon: "My distrust of those who would fix [Virginia Woolf] into any single position, either to praise her or to blame her, remains my strongest motivation" (5). The vast discrepancy between the one dimensionality of Mrs. Woolf, The Hours' character, and the complexity in Virginia Woolf's identity that becomes apparent to a reader of her fictional and autobiographical writing reveals the extent to which Cunningham and the filmmakers simplify Virginia Woolf's identity to fit their adaptations. My motivation in writing this thesis is in drawing attention to the ways in which The Hours fixes Virginia Woolf into a single position and the resulting effects The Hours may have on future interpretations of Virginia Woolf.

This project examines the implications of mythologizing women writers, specifically Woolf and Austen, and transforming them into their own famous characters. Using various writings that theorize women's voices, sense of agency, and political autonomy in relationship with the public/private dichotomy, this project argues that women writers are often appropriated and fictionalized in this way because of a patriarchal cultural understanding that women are associated with the private, personal, and domestic spheres. More importantly, it argues that this increasingly frequent treatment aligns with and forwards a neoliberal political and cultural agenda. The politics of the last twenty or thirty years, in short, are shaping interpretations and adaptations of major works of the English canon, specifically Mrs. Dalloway and Pride and Prejudice. Particular examples of such adaptations include The Hours, Vanessa and Her Sister, Becoming Jane, and Longbourn. This project ultimately analyzes these and a select number of other texts in order to show that these contemporary treatments of two of the most famous female writers from the English canon reveal quite a bit about current attitudes within the United States about gender (in)equality, care work/dependency, and sexuality. / Master of Arts

The purpose of this thesis is to track Virginia Woolf's enactment of conscious experience over the course of her 3 most consciousness forward novels, To the Lighthouse (1927), The Waves (1931), and Mrs. Dalloway (1925). This thesis aims to examine Woolf's ideas and theories about individual consciousness, collective consciousness, and how gendered consciousness plays a role in both. Set against the consciousness philosophy of Woolf's time, this thesis sets Woolf's ideas apart from the abstractions of philosophy and attempts to trace Woolf's enactment of consciousness throughout three of her most famous novels. In researching this project, I studied the consciousness scholarship that was circulating within scholarly circles during Virginia Woolf's time. I also read about what Virginia Woolf herself had to say about philosophy and its usefulness. Finally, I researched what scholars of Virginia Woolf had to say about her work and the philosophy of consciousness. By using all these avenues for my research, I was able to paint a portrait of Virginia Woolf's involvement with philosophy, her ideas about conscious experience, and how those ideas took shape in her novels. In her novels, Virginia Woolf transcends academic philosophy by creating a way to understand and visualize the phenomenology of consciousness that is unique and entirely her own. In the first chapter of this thesis, I explore Woolf's depiction of gendered consciousness in her novel To the Lighthouse. In this chapter, I argue that Woolf suggests a difference between the way men and women experience the world. She explores the implications of those experiences for the collective consciousness, and the delicate line that balances gendered individual consciousness with the collective experience. In the second chapter, I look at Woolf's theory of group consciousness in The Waves, which explores what it means to be part of a collective experience while also balancing being an individual with one's own inner experience. In this chapter, I argue that Woolf formulates a coming-of-age narrative to enact the development of both the individual and collective consciousnesses. She also splits the coming-of-age narratives into two different groups, based on gender. I argue that Woolf does this to highlight the different ways in which men and women experience, how that experience develops from adolescence to adulthood, and the balance that must be maintained to reach Woolf's idea of enlightenment. Finally, in the last chapter, I discuss Woolf's ideas about inner and outer experience in Mrs. Dalloway, including the novel's implicit assertion that there must be stability, or balance, in both inner and outer conscious experience if one is to function within the collective consciousness of society. I argue that Woolf shows this balance, or lack thereof, in the parallel narratives of Clarissa and Septimus. In doing this she once again asserts that there is a gendered difference in the way men and women experience and shows how the balance of inner and outer experience functions between both men and women. By analyzing these three texts, I hope to show both Woolf's understanding of conscious experience and the ways in which she enacts this understanding in her three most consciousness-forward novels. / Master of Arts / What is consciousness? What does it mean to have an experience? For years scholars have attempted to answer these questions. Consciousness, as an area of study, raises a few questions. These questions include: What does it mean to have an experience? What is it like, both cognitively and physically, to perceive what's happening around you, and why does it matter in the first place? In the early 20th century, consciousness, and the study of it were at the center of scholarly attention. Influential philosophers such as William James and G.E Moore were just beginning to formulate their theories about conscious experience and to bring them into public view. In this thesis I argue that Virginia Woolf provided her own answer to these questions about consciousness during her career. By reading Woolf against consciousness scholarship, I aim to discuss the ways in which Woolf creates a new idea or philosophy of consciousness, one that considers gender, society, and the individual, and depicts how all these things coalesce into what we understand as "experience." Woolf's thoughts and philosophies were no doubt influenced by those who came before her, but she also created a concept or way of enacting consciousness in her novels that was uniquely her own. In the first chapter of this thesis, I explore gendered and collective consciousness in To the Lighthouse (1927) and the balance that must be maintained within both. In the second chapter, I explore collective or group consciousness in The Waves (1931) and explore how Woolf enacts a coming of age of both collective conscious identity and individual conscious identity, Finally, in the last chapter, I explore Woolf's ideas about inner and outer conscious experience in Mrs. Dalloway (1925), and how one must balance these experiences if they are to function in the collective consciousness of society.

This thesis argues that the popular characterization of high modernist fiction as esoteric, elitist, uncommunicative, and far too difficult for the common reader obscures the democratic principles at the heart of modernist experimentation and its poetics of difficulty. Recent theories of embodied cognition when applied to representative examples of high modernist novels help dispel the myth of inaccessibility and reveal the many ways in which these works actually accommodate the common reader. Once the stigma of inaccessibility is removed from the study of modernist novels, it becomes possible to see how their formal experiments with language as well as the themes and issues they contain operate for readers and writers alike as a means of exploring everyday cognitive activities and responses. To this end, the concept of cognitive dissonance provides a heuristic device for understanding what lies behind the motivations of writers who aestheticise experiences of dissonance in their texts and the responses of readers who confront these texts. This cognitive approach to modern literature challenges assumptions about high modernism's "uncompromising intellectuality" and replaces them with a view of modernism that is more accessible and inclusive without diminishing its radical difficulty. It also paves the way for new readings of highly canonical modernist fiction. For instance, I examine how James Joyce places "inscribed" readers into Ulysses to guide actual readers through some of the difficulties of the novel. I then read William Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury as a novel that both thematises and formally resists the modern threat of behaviouristic human conditioning. Finally, I look at how the theme and form of Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway reinforce the embodied equation of dissonance with illness and incompletion.

This thesis examines different facets of feminine artistry in Virginia Woolf's novels with the purpose of defining her conception of women artists and the role sacrifice plays in it. The project follows characters in "Mrs. Dalloway," "To the Lighthouse," and "Between the Acts" as they attempt to create art despite society's restrictions; it studies the suffering these women experience under regimented institutions and arbitrary gender roles. From Woolf’s earlier texts to her last, she embraces the uncertainty of identity, even as she portrays the artist’s sacrifice in the early-to-mid twentieth century, specifically as the creative female identity fights to adapt to male-dominated spaces. Through a close-reading approach coupled with biographical and historical research, this thesis concludes that although the narratives of Woolf's novels demand the woman artist sacrifice for the sake of pursuing creation, Woolf praises the attempt and considers it a crueler fate to live with unfulfilled potential.

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在晚近的現代城市論述裡，城市常被認為是一抽象、陽剛且具有排外性質的空間；二十世紀初開始成形的概念城市(concept city)即是其例。概念城市將空間轉為清晰可讀，以便於居民生活及加速其政經發展；但相對地來說，這樣的空間也極其霸道。概念城市以其單義、同質的空間性質削弱了、甚至替代了城市裡既存的多元差異；這包含了城市原有的建築、文化及居民生活。 以二十世紀初的英國倫敦為例，當維吉尼亞˙吳爾芙著手撰寫《戴洛維夫人》時，倫敦地鐵(London Underground)已縱行於地底下數十年；地鐵改變了倫敦白天的城市地貌，也影響著外來客的行動、改變了倫敦居民的生活習慣與文化。倫敦地標大鵬鐘(Big Ben)則是另一例的城市指標。鑄造於十九世紀中葉的大鵬鐘，根據格林威治(Greenwich)時間準點報時，迄今已有百餘年；它的報時已成為倫敦人重要的時間指示，它的存在也日復一日地提醒著有關大英帝國過去輝煌的殖民偉業及其驕傲。在《戴洛維夫人》裡，吳爾芙將大鵬鐘的鐘聲與小說人物生命橫向交織；大鵬鐘常在小說人物生命中重要的時刻出現，又或者說，它的每一次報時同時也在小說人物的生命中印下不一樣的記憶。在二十世紀初的倫敦，地鐵已四通八達，而吳爾芙《戴洛維夫人》小說中的人物仍選擇以步行方式體驗城市；這體驗既帶有享受雙腳自由行動的意味，其無可預測的移動性也是對城市既定空間與人為客觀時間規劃的無聲抵抗。十九世紀法國詩人波特萊爾(Charles Baudelaire)在其詩作中，勾勒出了女性行人與男性漫遊者擦身而過下的微妙關係；其中，我們也約略可見現代巴黎城市的初貌。在一次大戰後出版的《戴洛維夫人》裡，書中的主要漫遊者換成了女性；主角克萊麗莎(Clarissa Dalloway)漫步於倫敦市街頭時，她的思緒時而被大鵬鐘的鐘聲所擾，但實際上她又那麼地喜愛它，只因它是大英帝國的驕傲，而身為英國居民的她多年來也深受其惠。相較之下，小說中其他的人物對大鵬鐘的鐘聲也有不同的迴響，但大多數既服從其律、也有抵抗。 因此，本論文第一章將回顧大鵬鐘及其所代表的帝國操控及時間單意化意涵，佐以傅柯(Michel Foucault)空間與權力的論述來強調城市空間權威化與概念化的過程作為中調，最後以近代法國批評家德瑟多(Michel de Certeau)提出的城市使用者的戰術性(tactics)抵抗作為整篇論文概念的啟蒙，來分析吳爾芙《戴洛維夫人》小說人物選擇步行城市的意義。論文第二章以城市漫遊者為主調，再探德瑟多提出的城市步行者的日常生活實踐(practice of everyday life)；德瑟多認為處於弱勢的普羅大眾有能力主動創造屬於自己的空間，而此一能動性(mobility)剛好用以規避、抵抗或者顛覆原有空間中所含附的權力論述。在此架構中，處於弱勢的總是大眾整體，所以德瑟多的城市步行者理論男女兼備。但當回溯十九世紀初成形的現代都市漫遊者(flâneur)時，在性別議題上卻爭議不斷，因為當時只有少數女性可以自由在街上行動而不會被視作招攬性生意者(streetwalkers)。因此在探討波特萊爾及班雅明對其詩作及的理解之外，女性主義者對男性漫遊者的觀看(gaze)及其性別(gender)批判也為此章節必要之回顧。而一次戰後的女權運動，也間接影響著吳爾芙小說中的女性角色及其自主意識的塑造。第二章最後以吳爾芙所寫的二篇文章作為結尾；吳爾芙的二文中皆揭露了女性漫遊者與男性漫遊者的不同，在她的文字中，我們已可以嗅到《戴洛維夫人》克萊麗莎行走倫敦的樂趣及限制所在。第三章及第四章則分別為《戴洛維夫人》小說的文本分析；第三章著重於大鵬鐘對人物角色塑造與其故事中日常生活行動的影響，且依據小說中鐘聲敲響的時間先後來鋪序。第四章則與城市空間相關，先提出小說人物為何選擇行走而不搭地鐵為開頭，再分析城市空間如何直接或間接塑造小說人物特質或心理。第五章則為本論文的終章；總結中先提出德瑟多對城市生活的切入觀點，其實是欲挖掘出城市使用者如何在此一愈趨綿密的城市架構下生存，及如何用他們的能動性走出與這城市性格相異的空間故事。吳爾芙的《戴洛維夫人》也許已為現代城市的步行樂趣及抵抗游擊做出最好的註解。 / This thesis starts with an exploration of the ambivalent role of Big Ben in relation to Clarissa Dalloway and some other characters in Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway. The assumption and focus of the thesis is that they, when walking through London, both succumb to and resist in some ways the imperial symbol and all the others in complicity with it. The urban space that is an abstract, masculine, and exclusionary one which represents a manipulative gaze of city planners is one such example. With that discussion of Big Ben and the urban space that impact a lot upon London residents as a valuable basis, the thesis then proceeds to use Michel de Certeau’s theory on the mobility of city users and their interactions with the urban space as an enlightenment idea. With that, this thesis would be able to present a more positive and encouraging portrayal of the early twentieth century Londoner, particularly female, who has started lately to experience pleasure in urban life that provides both convenience in public transportation as the London Underground and places to shop and stay in as department stores. The main proposition is that women would be the most complicated site of urban pleasure and resistance that deserves detailed analysis in the cityscape of London.