{"id":150,"date":"2017-09-20T19:07:46","date_gmt":"2017-09-21T01:07:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dh.danewhitaker.com\/?p=6"},"modified":"2017-09-20T19:07:46","modified_gmt":"2017-09-21T01:07:46","slug":"clarissa-dalloway-chases-immortality","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/briancroxall.net\/f17dh\/student-posts\/clarissa-dalloway-chases-immortality\/","title":{"rendered":"Clarissa Dalloway Chases Immortality"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.wikiart.org\/en\/john-william-godward\/the-jewel-casket-1900\"><img class=\"alignnone size-large wp-image-7\" src=\"http:\/\/dh.danewhitaker.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/09\/the-jewel-casket-1900-759x1024.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"640\" height=\"863\" srcset=\"http:\/\/dh.danewhitaker.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/09\/the-jewel-casket-1900-759x1024.jpg 759w, http:\/\/dh.danewhitaker.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/09\/the-jewel-casket-1900-222x300.jpg 222w, http:\/\/dh.danewhitaker.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/09\/the-jewel-casket-1900-768x1036.jpg 768w, http:\/\/dh.danewhitaker.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/09\/the-jewel-casket-1900-200x270.jpg 200w, http:\/\/dh.danewhitaker.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/09\/the-jewel-casket-1900.jpg 1319w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\" \/><\/a>Image: Godward, John William. <em>The Jewel Casket.<\/em> 1900. <em>WikiArt.org.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Clarissa, Mrs. Richard Dalloway, is not like other heroes from classical Greece. For starters, she\u2019s not Greek but English, and she lives in 1923. Still, her life follows a common pattern of that tradition. The first scene opens in medias res, dumping us on the street next to Clarissa as she pursues flowers for the night\u2019s engagement. She has a recurring encounter with Fate\u2014\u201cthe hour, irrevocable\u2026leaden circles dissolved in the air\u201d (Woolf 2157). Rather than sacrifice to fickle and fallible gods, she caters to the ancient rituals of proper English society. Homemaking and hospitality are her idols, the ones that stave off her obsession with death.<\/p>\n<p>And death slinks through every page of her story, like the myths of gods and mortals. It whispers that life is dwindling, towers in the long shadow of the War, startles her with the sound of a gunshot. It appears to every character in images of Marie Antoinette at the guillotine, a bed narrow and stark as a coffin, a restless pocketknife, uniformed boys marching to a tomb. Despite a flurry of airy thoughts and London bustle, the presence of mortality lurks everywhere.<\/p>\n<p>Like every ancient Greek, Clarissa believes the only path to immortality runs through social memory. Balancing the ordinary folk is the godlike royal family, \u201cthe majesty of England\u2026the enduring symbol\u201d (Woolf 2164). When the car passes with its hidden aristocrat, Clarissa inhales dignity with all the rest on the street. Her deepest desire is to be known as a noble member of society, one of the immortals. That\u2019s why she marries Richard instead of Peter. That\u2019s why she hosts a party for the elite. That\u2019s why she constantly fusses over her memories. She is the classical archetype in a modern world.<\/p>\n<p>Sources:<\/p>\n<p>Woolf, Virginia.\u00a0<em>Mrs. Dalloway.<\/em> <em>The Norton Anthology of English Literature,<\/em> 9th ed., W.W. Norton &amp; Company, 2012, pp. 2156-2264.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Image: Godward, John William. The Jewel Casket. 1900. WikiArt.org. Clarissa, Mrs. Richard Dalloway, is not like other heroes from classical Greece. For starters, she&rsquo;s not Greek but English, and she lives in 1923. Still, her life follows a common pattern of that tradition. The first scene opens in medias res, dumping us on the street &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_hide_featured_image":false,"_jetpack_featured_image_duplicate_dismissed":0,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-150","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-student-posts"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9aQyB-2q","jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/briancroxall.net\/f17dh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/briancroxall.net\/f17dh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/briancroxall.net\/f17dh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/briancroxall.net\/f17dh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/briancroxall.net\/f17dh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=150"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/briancroxall.net\/f17dh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1258,"href":"https:\/\/briancroxall.net\/f17dh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150\/revisions\/1258"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/briancroxall.net\/f17dh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=150"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/briancroxall.net\/f17dh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=150"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/briancroxall.net\/f17dh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=150"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}