Joyce’s novel Essay

The novels Mrs. Dalloway and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, written by Virginia Woolf and James Joyce respectively, are tales of persons who are challenged by the society in which they live. The roles traditionally handed down to men and women become elements of restraint for many of the characters within the stories. While convention dictates the actions that the characters should perform, the readers get the impression that the authors are in opposition to these traditions. Throughout the day spent with Mrs. Dalloway and her friends, situations arise in which characters become critical of others’ choices in a way that depicts the ideas of the narrator or author. Likewise, in the experiences of Stephen Dedalus and the other characters of Joyce’s novel, one finds that they often desire to perform actions alien to the stereotypical roles of their genders. In these novels, therefore, we find that there is no apparent desire within characters for males or females to inherit traditional gendered roles. In fact, we discover a desire to occupy a multi-gendered identity. This is important because it gestures at an identity separate from societal construction of gender. Hermione Lee relates that Virginia Woolf sought a â€Å"combination of sensibility and tenacity† in her work (xvii). This suggests a similar mixing of feminine and masculine qualities with which she imbues several of her characters in Mrs. Dalloway. Clarissa Dalloway has become a woman who ostensibly fits perfectly within the role societally configured for her gender. She is the wife of a statesman and the mother of a beautiful daughter. She throws fine parties and does the traditional female jobs of overseeing the servants, visiting the sick, and other things. Yet, Woolf appears immediately to intimate to the reader the undesirability of all this tradition to Clarissa herself, as she is seen at the outset of the novel going on an errand that should normally have been reserved for her servants. Her desire for independence is asserted in the first sentence, â€Å"Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself (Woolf 1). Though this rebellion is a small one and is buried in the guise of â€Å"womanly† work (going to buy flowers), the commercial aspect of it places her in the position of a business person, just as the errand frees her from the confines of the home. On this walk she thinks of Peter Walsh, a man with whom she once shared her passions for literature and freedom. Her thoughts and desires break through conventions that dictate the subservience of women. She considers marriage in a way that seems alien to its constitution, as she imbues her role in it with the type of independence that one does not usually find in the traditional view of marriage. She explains that her decision against marrying Peter was made because â€Å"In marriage a little licence, a little independence there must be between people living together day in day out in the same house; which Richard gave her, and she him† (Woolf 5). This demonstrates the extent to which she desires not to be subsumed by her husband as women often are in marriages. Continuing, she thinks, â€Å"When it came to that scene in the little garden by the fountain, she had to break with him [Peter] or they would have been destroyed, both of them ruined, she was convinced† (6). This tells what she considers her life would have been like with Peter. She seeks to add a portion of masculinity to her role by keeping something of herself and continuing to show herself to the world—a right that is usually granted without reservation to married men, but tacitly withheld from women of that time. Clarissa continues to demonstrate her inner tendencies to throw off the traditional gender role and to fulfill her political and occupational dreams. During that time in England, women’s occupations were limited to household-related chores. She considers other women who had lived non-traditional lives, and longs to have her life to live again so she could make different choices. The first of those choices would have granted her an occupation that would defy her gender. The narrator assures us that Clarissa Dalloway â€Å"would have been, like Lady Bexborough, slow and stately; rather large; interested in politics like a man; with a country house; very dignified, very sincere† (Woolf 8). The use of the phrase â€Å"like a man† is telling, in that it highlights the extent to which Mrs. Dalloway longs to be released from the confines of her sex. She wants to be endowed with the possibilities that attend a man. Also telling is her desire to be â€Å"very sincere† (8). Sincerity is not a trait that has been traditionally accorded to women, as they were encouraged to keep their thoughts to themselves (or perhaps not to have any at all). Therefore, a woman with any ideas or opinions can be considered to have been somewhat forced into insincerity by their very act of subordination to the will of their husband and in their pretence at never having anything to say beyond remarks about the running of the household. Clarissa’s urge to speak sincerely demonstrates her desire to combine traditionally masculine qualities with her feminine ones.