Ghosts, Bodies, and Memory in Mrs. Dalloway: Clarissa Dalloway’s Performance of Invisible Femininity
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In Mrs. Dalloway, Woolf’s protagonist disrupts notions of the real and unreal, inverting time through the vehicle of memory. In her narrative, Clarissa breaks traditional structures of masculine time and linear narrative by remembering and invoking. She embodies performances of mother, daughter, sister, wife, and hostess. However, her multitude of performances do not cement an identity that “sticks,” but rather reinforce her incapability, or refusal, to fully occupy any one role that is expected of her. Clarissa’s female body, her memories, and “ghost”bodies trouble the concept of feminine identity. Woolf thus presents a character who performs a plurality of identities in queered time and spaces; within each identity category are gaps that allude to the possibility of nonidentity. These unresolved spaces manifest what supposedly should not, and cannot, exist in the forms of real and unreal bodies. Thus,Clarissa as all‐identities and nonidentity opens up possibilities for the female body, sexuality, and feminine identity. Ultimately, she does not resolve her problematic position in a masculine economic sphere, which ensues in a self‐deconstruction (and reformulating) of identities. In effect,Clarissa Others her body, or bodies, emerging as a true flesh‐and‐blood ghost. Her performances suggest possibilities for a universal feminine figure, or a figure of feminine writing embodied.
Abstract
In Mrs. Dalloway, Woolf’s protagonist disrupts notions of the real and unreal, inverting time through the vehicle of memory. In her narrative, Clarissa breaks traditional structures of masculine time and linear narrative by remembering and invoking. She embodies performances of mother, daughter, sister, wife, and hostess. However, her multitude of performances do not cement an identity that “sticks,” but rather reinforce her incapability, or refusal, to fully occupy any one role that is expected of her. Clarissa’s female body, her memories, and “ghost”bodies trouble the concept of feminine identity. Woolf thus presents a character who performs a plurality of identities in queered time and spaces; within each identity category are gaps that allude to the possibility of nonidentity. These unresolved spaces manifest what supposedly should not, and cannot, exist in the forms of real and unreal bodies. Thus,Clarissa as all‐identities and nonidentity opens up possibilities for the female body, sexuality, and feminine identity. Ultimately, she does not resolve her problematic position in a masculine economic sphere, which ensues in a self‐deconstruction (and reformulating) of identities. In effect,Clarissa Others her body, or bodies, emerging as a true flesh‐and‐blood ghost. Her performances suggest possibilities for a universal feminine figure, or a figure of feminine writing embodied.
참고문헌 (12)
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