Virginia Woolf vs. Ernest Hemingway

In class lately we have been talking a lot about the differences between the writing styles of Virginia Woolf and Ernest Hemmingway. Some people might think that, because these two authors are from similar time periods, their styles of writing must be similar. However, it is quite the contrary. Woolf and Hemingway’s styles could not be more different.

Virginia Woolf loves to use lots of description and make the reader be right next to the person they are describing or in the room that that person is in. Her amazing attention to detail is what made Mrs. Dalloway the book that it was. She fills sometimes an entire page with description, from the red velvet curtains to sound that the car makes when it. Another one of Woolf’s traits is the way she likes to get inside peoples’ heads. A majority of the novel is spent in one of the characters heads, usually Clarissa, Richard, or Septimus’s.   Sometimes it’s not a lot, but it’s important. For example, when Richard is buying the flowers for Clarissa, the only way we know that they are to tell her he loves her is because we get inside his head and know exactly what he’s thinking.

Ernest Hemingway is very different. His pages are full of four or five word sentences. He has hardly any detail and is not descriptive about almost anything. He also has continuous back and forth dialogue that often causes the reader to get confused about who is talking. I also found that a lot of Hemingway’s comments were very politically incorrect and/or racist whereas, even if Virginia Woolf is implying some of the same things, it is much more subtle. Hemingway, on the other hand, is very blunt.

Another difference is that Woolf seems to write about more feminine topics, like flowers and parties. Hemingway tries to be very macho and his entire novel is filled with people who are very often crude and drink constantly.

Although they come from the same time period, Virginia Woolf and Ernest Hemingway have very different styles of writing, but the way they each write makes their novels all the more fascinating.

Mrs. Dalloway-the Movie

Over the weekend, I watched the movie version of Mrs. Dalloway to see how it compared to the novel. Overall I thought it followed the novel very closely as far as plotline and dialogue. However the main, very big, difference was the loss of the characters’ thoughts. This was what, I thought, made the book unique. While we are able to hear some of Clarissa’s thoughts through Vanessa Redgrave’s narration, much is lost. For example, a big portion of the novel discusses Clarissa’s hatred towards Miss Killman, but in the movie we don’t get any sense of how Clarissa feels. Another example is when Richard is getting the flowers for Clarissa; we don’t know that he is getting them to show her that he loves her, because we don’t hear what he’s thinking. One clever way of replacing the loss of thoughts was by showing it through flashbacks. In the movie, Clarissa hardly narrates about Sally. Instead, we learn everything we know about Sally through flashbacks of a young Sally and Clarissa.

Some of the younger versions of the characters were sometimes distractingly different looking from the older versions and some of the casting, I thought, was completely wrong. What I got from the novel was that Peter Walsh was supposed to be very handsome and charming, but in the movie, neither the younger Peter nor the old Peter was either of these. I think Clarissa, played by Vanessa Redgrave, was too old for this role and she didn’t have enough energy or show enough enthusiasm for this character. One character that I thought was perfectly cast was Septimus . Although we couldn’t hear what he was thinking, there were many references to Evans and anytime Septimus was thinking about the war, we could hear the sound of bombs exploding and people shouting, as if we were in the midst of a battle. However, he also did a great job of showing what a wonderful man he used to be before the war. The woman who played Rezia was also very well cast. She very accurately portrayed Lucrezia’s innocence and the way she was shut out from society.

These are just a few of my thoughts comparing the two and if I had to choose, I definitely like the book better!

Septimus vs. Richard

After watching The Hours in class, I found myself comparing it to Mrs. Dalloway. I was surprised at a few things, like the fact that Richard’s suicide in the movie affected me emotionally a lot more than Septimus’s suicide in the novel. I don’t think it was necessarily from actually seeing it happen, but more because I felt that in the movie, I got to know Richard more and actually understand what he was feeling. In the novel, there is a good deal more of Septimus (than of Richard in the movie), however almost anything about him was coming from inside his head, things he was thinking and these are things that weren’t very emotional. They were strange thoughts, almost hallucinations. The only time we got a glimpse of what Septimus was like before the war was when he and Lucrezia were making the hat and laughing and having a good time; she recollects that that was how she remembered him. In all of Richard’s scenes in the movie, I felt a deep sympathy for what he was feeling simply because we weren’t hearing what he was thinking, we were hearing what he was saying. I think that if Virginia Woolf had given the reader more of an idea of how people saw Septimus from the outside, I would have been able to have a deeper connection with Septimus.

Another Clarissa

Even though Clarissa Dalloway lives in the 1902s and has many restrictions of that time period, I think there are other Clarissas in more modern times. The movie The Hours shows us this. The more I think about it, the more I think my aunt was a lot like Clarissa. She wasn't extremely wealthy, but she had a very comfortable life. She used to like to act in plays and was very outgoing, but after she got married, she had a very quiet life. Like Clarissa, she liked to make everything perfect and beautiful. My mother used to say that when her sister wrapped a present, it was a work of art. Even though she could have gone to college or had a career, she didn't. She stayed at home and didn't have much to do, but she liked to have special dinners and make the house look perfect. She had mental health problems like Virginia Woolf/Septimus. She was often sick, similar to Clarissa, and her husband would take care of her. I think that my aunt had more choices than Clarissa Dalloway, but they both could have had many more adventures and much more excitement if they had married different people.

The Hours

So far, I have found the movie "The Hours" to be really interesting! I love seeing how the three different time periods are linked together through things that are more subtle and others that are very obvious. The very first one that I noticed, which was a pretty obvious one, was the way that the movie started out; Virginia Woolf writing Mrs. Dalloway, the single mom reading the novel, and Clarissa Dalloway saying the first line of the novel in her own context. I thought that was a really cool way to start the movie!

 I also like how there are certain symbols that they keep referring back to, like the cake that the single mom and her son make for the dad, which I think symbolizes how trapped she feels and how unhappy she feels living with her husband.

One other thing that I really like are how we get to see how the three women deal with their personal issues, due to the time period that the live in. It is clear that the more modern the times are, the more open they can be about their feelings, although there is still a huge difference between the 2001 setting and the 1950s setting.

Overall, I have really enjoyed this movie so far and I can’t wait to see how it ends!

A Modern-Day Septimus

 Last week, we spent a lot of time in class discussing Septimus and the affect that the war had on his life. There was a lot of debate about whether or not he was simply suffering from severe depression or something closer to insanity. I think that some argue that it’s closer to insanity, because, unlike normal depression, Septimus is hearing voices in his head, a sign of a medical condition much closer to insanity. I think that his medical condition is somewhere in between the two. Today, Shellshock is called PTSD or Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, which is clinically closer to depressions than insanity.

In Urbana, there is a homeless man named Bill that wanders the streets. The story is that he went to Vietnam and when he came back, he chose to live on the streets to live a life of simplicity. Since we read Mrs. Dalloway, every time I see him, it’s hard for me not to think of Septimus and what is going through Bill’s head and how the war affected his life. In a way, Bill is like a modern-day Septimus.