Шанън Форбс

The article of Shannon Forbes “Equating Performance with Identity: The Failure of Clarissa Dalloway's Victorian “Self” in Virginia Woolf's “Mrs. Dalloway” deals with the critique of Virginia Woolf for the Victorian ideas of the identity and unity of the Ego and the identity and unity of consciousness. The article is about the novel “Mrs. Dalloway”. It examines some of the feminist and psychoanalytic implications of this critique and outlines some important parallels with the essay “A Room of One’s Own” by Woolf. The early feminist writing of Woolf is viewed in the light of the psychoanalytic doctrine of Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan that undermines the claims of the ethics of the 19th century that the subject must be consistent and monolithic and anything else should be considered unhealthy. The article elaborates on the episodes in “Mrs. Dalloway” where Clarissa enjoys the walks in London precisely for the purpose of borrowing from the orderliness of the modern city and putting her own personality in order. Clarissa presents the meetings with Peter and Septimus as overburdening because of their questions is she happy and how does she feel. Judith Butler is quoted revealing the performative meaning of Mrs. Dalloway’s actions and her life as a performance. Luce Irigaray is quoted in feminist perspective. She comments on the mirror-function of female personality in patriarchal society, which keeps the female identity always fragmentary and dependent. Clarissa Dalloway hopes for her party to resolve all that.