Choose ONE essay question below and write your answer in he space below. You may work offline and cut and paste your work in. I recommend that you make a legible outline first, then write. Do not submit your outline.
Paraphrase the quote. This will be the way that you start the exam, (review Summary as an Introduction strategy in The West Guide from the Introductions chapter.
Your essay must have a thesis statement. That thesis statement will be a reworking of one of the questions I have asked below.
Use a conclusion strategy from the Conclusions chapter in The West Guide.
Show knowledge of the texts we have read so far this term by using concrete examples from the readings. Use several quotes and paraphrases from Mrs. Dalloway. Optional: You may also use examples from A Room of One’s Own and from Virginia Woolf’s life if you wish.
Proofread your work.
No midterms will be accepted after the assignment closes, so please plan ahead.
1. “…Proportion has a sister, less smiling, more formidable. . . .Conversion is her name and she feasts on the wills of the weakly, loving to impress, to impose, adoring her own features stamped on the face of the populace. At Hyde Park corner on a tub she stands preaching; shrouds herself in white and walks penitently disguised as brotherly love through factories and parliaments; offers help, but desires power; smites out of her way roughly the dissentient, or dissatisfied; bestows her blessing on those who, looking upward, catch submissively from her eyes the light of their own.” (100)
Sir William Bradshaw and Miss Doris Killman are characters associated with conversion. Who and what are they trying to convert? How are Clarissa and Septimus affected by them?
2. Woolf writes, “People were beginning to compare her to poplar trees, early dawn, hyacinths, fawns, running water, and garden lilies, and it made her life a burden to her, for she so much preferred being left alone…” Explain this quote as it relates to Elizabeth. Then discuss the flowers and trees and natural world metaphors in the novel and what they reveal about several of the characters. (134).
3. “She parted the curtains; she looked. Oh, but how surprising!—in the room opposite the old lady stared straight at her! She was going to bed. And the sky. It will be a solemn sky, she had thought, it will be a dusky sky, turning away its cheek in beauty. But there it was—ashen pale, raced over quickly by tapering vast clouds. It was new to her. The wind must have risen. She was going to bed, in the room opposite. It was fascinating to watch her, moving about, that old lady, crossing the room, coming to the window. Could she see her? It was fascinating, with people still laughing and shouting in the drawing room, to watch that old woman, quite quietly, going to bed. She pulled the blind now. The clock began striking. The young man had killed himself; but she did not pity him; with the clock striking the hour, one, two, three, she did not pity him, with all this going on. There! The old lady had put out her light! The whole house was dark now with this going on, she repeated, and the words came to her, Fear no more the heat of the sun. She must go back to them. But what an extraordinary night! She felt somehow very like him—the young man who had killed himself. She felt glad that he had done it; thrown it away. The clock was striking. The leaden circles dissolved in the air. He made her feel the beauty; made her feel the fun. But she must go back. She must assemble. She must find Sally and Peter. And she came in from the little room.” (186).
The topic of mortality haunts Clarissa and Septimus throughout the novel. Clarissa reads lines from Shakespeare’s Cymbeline (IV, ii) from an open book in a shop window: “Fear no more the heat o’ the sun/ Nor the furious winter’s rages. / Thou thy worldly task hast done, / Home art gone and ta’en thy wages:/Golden lads and girls all must, /As chimney-sweepers, come to dust.” These lines are alluded to many times. What importance do they have for Clarissa, Septimus, and the novel’s principal themes? What other images/examples does Woolf use to echo the same theme?
Attention: You should not be researching outside sources for this exam. This exam will showcase your close reading skills, and therefore will concentrate on the novel and reading/lecture notes. Please do not add quotes from secondary sources, but you may certainly add quotes from the novel if you choose. As a result, this essay will not require a Works Cited page.
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