PRIVATE SELF AND THE EXTERNAL WORLD

Private Self And The External World

Private Self And The External World

This report analyses the relationshiop between private self and the external world as depicted in fiction. This paper also discusses the representation of the relationship between the private self and the external world in atleast two novels on the course.

It makes use of the two stories, Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf and Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe. Both of these story are a prime exmaple of relationship between the self and external world.

Virgina Wolfe- Mrs. Dalloway

Woolf possesses the ability to create a work of fiction that evokes a pleasant reading experience for the reader without utilizing a central plot. In, Woolf chooses to explore the narrative possibilities of bringing several characters through one single day in time(Blackstone 1949 pp.32-39). This narrative technique works well in a text that mainly focuses on Mrs. Dalloway's world view, her inner workings, and her exploration and sensory experience of the world surrounding her. The organizational structure of the novel challenges Woolf to create characters that are deep enough to be realistic while dealing with only one day of their lives. Woolf creates within the character of Clarissa Dalloway the inherent sense of heightened awareness of living one day in time. Clarissa "had a perpetual sense, as she watched the taxi cabs, of being out, out, far out to sea and alone; she always had the feeling that it was very, very dangerous to live even one day" (16).

Through Clarissa, Woolf creates a sense of the complexity each day is capable of bringing to individual characters, thus calling her readers to(Abel 1993 pp.89-109)

"look within life.examine for a moment an ordinary mind on an ordinary day. The mind receives a myriad impressions-trivial, fantastic, evanescent, or engraved with the sharpness of steel" (Brower 1951 pp.78). Woolf uses themes that connect reality with the spiritual realm in an attempt to further her thesis in "Modern Fiction," for fiction to be modern and worth reading, it must explore that which is above the material world. Woolf's main concern in the novel seems to be the inner workings of Mrs. Dalloway, her thought processes, and how she engages with the world surrounding her. Woolf juxtaposes Clarissa's internal self with her external world, thus setting up one of the most prevalent, resonant themes within the text, and it is

"against this system that Woolf places a world of private significance whose meaning is wholly irreducible to facts of the external world" (Abel 1993 pp.97)

.

This struggle between the internal and external surrounds not only Clarissa, but her double, Septimus, and thus permeates the novel. Personality, according to Ellen Bayuk Rosenmann, in her article, "The Invisible Presence," seems to be a "private fact," which is far "alienated from public and political culture" (Abel 1993 pp.93). Society at large is able to neither appreciate nor understand the inner workings of the soul, and thus stands at a ...