Mrs.

Dalloway

Bloque 1
1. Starting points
[O]n or about December 1910 human character changed. …[From that date, a]ll human
relations have shifted—those between masters and servants, husbands and wives, parents and
children. And when human relations change there is at the same time a change in religion,
conduct, politics, and literature. (Virginia Woolf, “Mr Bennett and Mrs Brown”, 1924)

It was in 1915 the old world ended. In the winter 1915-1916 the spirit of the old London
collapsed; the city, in some way, perished, perished from being a heart of the world, and
became a vortex of broken passions, lusts, hopes, fears, and horrors. (D. H. Lawrence, “The
Nightmare”, 1923)

If I were asked for the starting-point modern literature — and the fact that we still call it
‘modern’ shows that this particular period isn't finished yet — I should put it at 1917, the year
in which T. S. Eliot published his poem ‘Prufrock’. …It is certain that about the end of the last
war the literary climate changed, the typical writer came to be quite a different person, and
the best books of the subsequent period seemed to exist in a different world from the best
books of only four or five years before. (George Orwell, “The Rediscovery of Europe”, 1942)

2. Development of European modernism

“Paleo”-modernism (end of 19th cntury until c.1914-20)

 Symbolism (Charles Baudelaire until W. B. Yeats)

 Expressionism (August Strindberg until Bertold Brecht)
 Futurism (Filippo Marinetti)
 Imagism & vorticism (Ezra Pound y Wyndham Lewis)

“Neo”-modernism (c.1914-20  c.1965)

 Dadaism (Tristan Tzara) & surrealism (André Breton)

 Ultraism (James Joyce, Jorge Luis Borges)
 Existentialism (Samuel Beckett, Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus)

3. Features of Modernism
To varying extents, writing of the Modernist period exhibits these features:

1. experimentation belief that previous writing was stereotyped and inadequate ceaseless
technical innovation, sometimes for its own sake originality: deviation from the norm, or
from usual reader expectations ruthless rejection of the past, even iconoclasm
2. anti-realism sacralisation of art, which must represent itself, not something beyond
preference for allusion (often private) rather than description world seen through the

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 artist's inner feelings and mental states themes and vantage points chosen to question the
conventional view use of myth and unconscious forces rather than motivations of
conventional plot
3. individualism promotion of the artist's viewpoint, at the expense of the communal
cultivation of an individual consciousness, which alone is the final arbiter estrangement
from religion, nature, science, economy or social mechanisms maintenance of a wary
intellectual independence artists and not society should judge the arts: extreme self-
consciousness search for the primary image, devoid of comment: stream of consciousness
exclusiveness, an aristocracy of the avant-garde
4. intellectualism writing more cerebral than emotional work is tentative, analytical and
fragmentary, more posing questions more than answering them cool observation:
viewpoints and characters detached and depersonalized open-ended work, not finished,
nor aiming at formal perfection involuted: the subject is often act of writing itself and not
the ostensible referent

3.1. Poetry

Anti-romanticism:

Imagism:

These principles are not new; they have fallen into desuetude. They are the essentials of all
great poetry, indeed of all great literature.

1. To use the language of common speech, but to employ always the exact word, not the
nearly-exact, nor the merely decorative word.
2. To create new rhythms -as the expression of new moods -- and not to copy old
rhythms, which merely echo old moods. We do not insist upon "free-verse" as the only
method of writing poetry. We fight for it as for a principle of liberty. We believe that
the individuality of a poet may often be better expressed in free-verse than in
conventional forms. In poetry a new cadence means a new idea.
3. To allow absolute freedom in the choice of subject. It is not good art to write badly of
aeroplanes and automobiles, nor is it necessarily bad art to write well about the past.
We believe passionately in the artistic value of modem life, but we wish to point out
that there is nothing so uninspiring nor so old-fashioned as an aeroplane of the year 19
11.
4. To present an image (hence the name: "Imagist"). We are not a school of painters, but
we believe that poetry should render particulars exactly and not deal in vague
generalities, however magnificent and sonorous. It is for this reason that we oppose
the cosmic poet, who seems to us to shirk the real difficulties of his art.
5. To produce poetry that is hard and clear, never blurred nor indefinite.
6. Finally, most of us believe that concentration is of the very essence of poetry.

Defamiliarization:

Impersonality:

Musicality and free verse:

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3.2. Narrative fiction

Anti-realism:

Rejection of realism which was the dominant form of the 30s. Appearance of James Joyce’s
Ulysses. In contrast with materialist (realist authors) it possesses new spirituality. No order in
reality, no structure. Let’s remember situations and experiences as they occur, do not order
them. The novel has no punctuation points.

Point of view:

In the novel what it is important is not the object or the external reality but the internal
individual experience of reality. Perceivers individual who gives their impression. Importance
on the point of view. Philosophers: Kant, idealism of the individual observer. Artistic values of
the narrator. Imagination

Stream of consciousness:

The fundamental fact: William James “the stream of consciousness”, “I think therefore I am “

Four Characters in Consciousness: How does it go on? We notice immediately four important
characters in the process, of which it shall be the duty of the present chapter to treat in a
general way:

1) Every 'state' tends to be part of a personal consciousness.

2) Within each personal consciousness states are always changing. Disconnected and
non-stopping
3) Each personal consciousness is sensibly continuous.
4) It is interested in some parts of its object to the exclusion of others, and welcomes or
rejects -- chooses from among them, in a word -- all the while

The consciousness is an endless flow of thoughts as a river.

Inner life:

The truth is not at there, it comes from materialism to spiritualism. Ulysses: the bed is from
Gibraltar. He is about to leave the house without waking up his wife. Leopold bloom is the
character and the 1st person narrator when he talks about his thoughts. Logic association. (Bed
form Gibraltar and his wife is from Gibraltar) 3 rd person narrative too. (Inner voice in 1st and
external voice in 3rd) he is extremely interested in unimportant things as the flight of a leave.

Rhythm:

New rhythms

Practice lesson

James Joyce. Dubliners (1913)

It is a collection of short stories that are about contemporary life in Dublin. Eveline ,3rd person
narrative. A character is observing. No information about the character is given, except what

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Evelyn looks at. Flashback: nostalgia and melancholia. Thoughts and feelings are more
important than real descriptions or real objects. No information about places, other characters
or even herself. 1930s hates this type of narrative because is too self-centered and they like
communism and grupal-centered, the needs of the majority are more important than the
needs of the individual.

3.3. Drama

Expressionism and ‘epic’ drama

 Dreamlike and nightmarish atmosphere, with the use of shadows, unrealistic lighting
and visual distorsions in the set. Characteristic use of pause and silence.
 Anti-naturalistic settings, starkly simplified images, bizarre shapes and sensational
colours.
 Disjointed plot and structure, broken into episodes, incidents and tableaux.
 Characters lose their individuality, stereotypes and caricatures rather than individual
personalities, often representing social groups.
 Poetical, febrile, rhapsodic dialogues, including either long lyrical monologue or
staccato telegraphese, made up of one or two words or expletives.
 Anti-realist style of acting. Appearance of over-acting, adopting broad, mechanical
movements of a puppet.

Surrealism and theatre of cruelty

Theatre will never be itself again, that is to say will never be able to form truly illusive means,
unless it provides the audience with truthful distillations of dreams where its taste for crime,
its erotic obsessions, its savageness, its fantasies, its utopian sense of life and objects, even its
cannibalism, do not gush out on an illusory make-believe, but on an inner level. (Antonin
Artaud, “The Theatre of Cruelty—First Manifesto”, 1932)

Verse drama (W. B. Yeats, T. S. Eliot, Christopher Fry)

can i neither act nor suffer

without perdition

you know and do not know, what it is to act or suffer.

(T. S. Eliot, Murder in the Cathedral, 1935)

4. Authors
4.1. T. S. Eliot (1885-1965)

Dissociation of sensibility

The poets of the seventeenth century, the successors of the dramatists of the sixteenth,
possessed a mechanism of sensibility which could devour any kind of experience. They are
simple, artificial, difficult, or fantastic, as their predecessors were. In the seventeenth century a
dissociation of sensibility set in, from which we have never recovered; and this dissociation, as

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is natural, was aggravated by the influence of the two most powerful poets of the century,
Milton and Dryden. The language went on and in some respects improved…. But while the
language became more refined, the feeling became more crude. […]

Objective correlative

The only way of expressing emotion in the form of art is by finding an “objective correlative”;
in other words, a set of objects, a situation, a chain of events which shall be the formula of that
particular emotion; such that when the external facts, which must terminate in sensory
experience, are given, the emotion is immediately evoked

Tradition…

conformity between the old and the new.

…and the Individual Talent

The business of the poet is not to find new emotions, but to use the ordinary ones and, in
working them up into poetry, to express feelings which are not in actual emotions at all. And
emotions which he has never experienced will serve his turn as well as those familiar to him.

Bloque 2
Time-line: Georgian and early Elizabethan England

1936 - George VI accedes to the throne upon the abdication of his brother, Edward VIII

1937 - Frank Whittle invents the jet engine

1938 - Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain signs agreement with Adolf Hitler at Munich in an
attempt to stop outbreak of war in Europe

1938 - Nazi Germany annexes Austria

1939 - Germany invades Poland. Outbreak of World War II.

1940 - Retreating British troops evacuated from beaches of Dunkirk as Germans advance.

1940 - Winston Churchill becomes Prime Minister.

1940 - Battle of Britain fought in the skies over England between the RAF and German
Luftwaffe.

1940 - German bombers blitz London, Coventry and other major cities

1941 - Hitler invades the Soviet Union

1941 - America enters the War after Japanese air raid on US fleet at Pearl Harbour.

1942 - Fall of Singapore to the Japanese

1942 - British victory at El Alamein.

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1944 - D-Day landings in Normandy as the Allies begin to push the German forces back across
Europe.

1944 - Battle of Arnhem airborne landings

1945 - The defeat of Germany marks the end of World War II in Europe.

1945 - Japan surrenders, after US drops atomic bombs on two cities.

1946 - Start of the 'Cold War'. Churchill speaks of the 'Iron Curtain' separating Western Europe
from the Communist Eastern block

1947 - India granted independence. Pakistan declared a separate nation.

1947 - Princess Elizabeth (later Queen Elizabeth II) marries Philip Mountbatten

1948 - National Health Service establishes free medical treatment.

1948 - Mahatma Gandhi is assassinated.

1949 - Berlin Airlift relieves the Soviet blockade of Berlin

1950 - -1953 Korean War

1951 - Winston Churchill becomes British Prime Minister again.

1952 - George VI dies.

1952 - Elizabeth accedes to the throne on the death of her father, George VI.

1952 - World's first jet airliner passenger service inaugurated by BOAC in Comet I aircraft

1953 - Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay climb Mount Everest just before Coronation Day

1953 - Francis Crick and James Watson unravel the mystery of DNA

1953 - - 1954 Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip embark on a 6 month world tour including
Australia and New Zealand

1955 - Winston Churchill resigns as Prime Minister and is succeeded by Anthony Eden.

1955 - Laws restricting the burning of coal and establishing smokeless zones bring an end to
London's notorious fogs

1956 - Anglo-French forces invade Egypt after the nationalization of the Suez Canal.

1957 - Harold Macmillan becomes Prime Minister

1957 - The Gold Coast becomes independent as Ghana, the first British colony in Africa to
receive its independence.

1957 - Queen Elizabeth addresses the United Nations and opens the 23rd Canadian Parliament

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1959 - Oil is discovered in the North Sea.

1959 - Queen Elizabeth tours Canada and the United States

1960 - Harold Macmillan becomes Prime Minister makes 'winds of change' speech in South
Africa.

1960 - Union of South Africa withdraws from the Commonwealth. 1962 - Jamaica gains
independence

1963 - Alec Douglas-Hume replaces Harold Macmillan as the Prime Minister.

1963 - The Beatles release their first LP.

1964 - Labour government of Harold Wilson takes office

1966 - Aberfan disaster leaves 116 children dead

1969 - Prince Charles is invested as Prince of Wales.

1969 - Troubles break out in the North of Ireland

Virginia woolf (1882-1941)

Women’s writing

‘A room of one’s own’, ‘women’ world is represented through male writers. She introduces the
idea that women writings are perhaps different from men’s ones. Experiential, different
experiences that depend on if you are a man or a woman. What you consider important is
different and the way of experimenting things is also different.

Miss Dalloway was written during or at the end of the WW1. It was written when she was
declared mad because she suffered depression.

Madness:

She defends madness as a creative resource. Madness can actually have a shape while sanity
has fragmentation. Reason tends to divide world, analysis. Madness is a unity; it enables us to
see the connection between things. Synthesis vs. analysis.

Epiphany:

Manifestation, revelation, premonition… people can have epiphanies tin their everyday life as
beauty. A kind of religious experience that reveals something new to the character or an inner
thought that the character has not realize yet.

Social critique:

Life &death, sanity & insanity, critique to social system. English class system.

Importance in form:

Formal form. Formal writing

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Mss. Dalloway

It is a descripting narrative written in 3rd person narrator. It has a biographical setting, London.
Indirect speech. Mrs. Dalloway lives in Webminster, a very distinguish place. She raise up the
fact that when woman get married they lose their identity, their surname, that is why she is
Mss. Dalloway, the miss of Dalloway. She is going to buy flowers (a woman of her social class
would not do it) it represents that she is not aware of this fact or if she is aware she does not
care about it. She has got servants. She describe peter as someone sarcastic and funny, and
very intelligent.

Communication vs. privacy:

Clarissa celebrates the old woman’s independence but understand that it comes with
inevitable loneliness. The war has changed people’s ideals of what English society should be.
After the war people was tired of rituals and they only care to life as happy as possible. Clarissa
sees Septimus’ death as a desperate, but legitimate, act of communication.

Disillusionment with British empire:

For first time in a century, the English empire was vulnerable on their land. There was
Devastation in England during the war. Victory in name but not in feeling. Many people died
and the lands were massacred.

The fear of death:

Clarissa has experienced the deaths of her father, mother, sister, the calamity of war… death is
naturally in our thoughts. Septimus’ suicide helps her to peace with her own mortality.

The threat of oppression:

Septimus died in order to escape what he perceives to be an oppressive social pressure to

conform.

It is a symbolic narrative; the big Ben symbolizes the passing of time, England, power. It is a
thematic point of view. Lucrezia has left Italy only for Septimus who in fact is mad, a great
sacrifice.

Irony, the writer makes fun with Lucretia, who is excited for the queen, superficial and
snobbery demonstration. Reaction of ordinary people to greatness

1. Septimus is a kind of a mirror in which Clarissa sees herself, although they have never
met (they visit the same doctor). They are counter pairs. They complement each other.
2. Stream of consciousness: a series of unconnected thoughts. It tends to be continuous
but incoherent as human mind.
3. Madness: psycho, pathological mind of Septimus. It is also an epiphany, a revelation in
this passage: Septimus sitting on the park bench “ men must not cut down trees”

In the page 26 we can see the first stage in madness, peaceful, harmonious mind, harmony life
after death. Septimus’ role in the novel is to evoke the 1 st WW. No crime and no death. There
are brief moments of revelation in Septimus’ mind. Beauty of the nature is a medicine to the

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horrors of the world. Septimus is like an oracle, he stands in the middle of two worlds, and he
is an interpreter of the destiny. He sees himself as an oracle but he is not one.

Clarissa condemned herself to a socially successful but emotionally dead marriage. The most
important revelation is that peter Walsh is in love to a girl in India. She is jealous, he has
something that she has not, love. From envy to jealous. She still thinks that there could be
something between them. He was in love but not with her but with a young woman. There is a
division inside Clarisse, there is Mrs. Dalloway who cares about society and money and class
and Clarisse who does not care about that.

The angry generation

Post-war Britain: rebellion & disillusionment

1. Aftermath of war
Politics and society

1945-51. First majority Labour government (Clement Attlee):

 National Health Service

 national insurance scheme
 huge programme of nationalisation (including the Bank of England and most heavy
industries)
 massive building programme
 Britain becomes a nuclear-armed power

1951-57. Successive Conservative governments (Sir Winston Churchill, Sir Anthony Eden):

 more traditional idea of society (“Housing and red meat”)

 diplomatic approach to Cold War (“special relationship” with US)
 anti-immigration (“Keep Britain white”)
 Suez crisis

Post-war literature

Poetry and fiction: The Movement (Philip Larkin, Kingsley Amis, etc.)

 Anti-modernist, and anti-experimental concern with clarity

 Honesty and realism about the self and outer reality
 Exposure of English class system and social hypocrisy
 Pessimism about progress

Home is so sad (poem)

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Loneliness, absence of family, returning to a place in where there used to be people and now
there are not (maybe they died) memory, nostalgia, sense of lost.

Drama :
Social(ist) realism (John Osborne, Arnold Wesker, John Arden, etc.)

 The English Stage Company (1955) & use of The Royal Court Theatre
 Lower middle-class and working-class, provincial origins of authors
 Rejection of drawing-room and poetic drama (“We want to build a vital, living, popular
theatre”)
 Themes: varied, but dealing often with contemporary issues (“kitchen-sink” or
“dustbin” drama)
 Characters: different ages/classes, but stress on the youth
 Language: colloquial, everyday
 Form: traditional ‘well-made’ structure vs Brechtian ‘alienation’ effects

Themes that horrified critiques, which led critiques to call it “dust bin drama” some of the
themes are quite shocking, “saved” about child abuse. There were censorship in theatres until
1969, social and political issues. They are angry because they are rebels but without a cause.
Anger, frustration, angry generation.

John Osborne (1929-1994) Look back in Anger

(1) Looking back (nostalgia for the past?) vs (2) Anger (dissatisfaction/frustration with the
present?)

1. Recent past: Madeline (“Her curiosity about things, and about people was staggering”,
p.13), Hugh (rebelliousness, iconoclasm) .Previous generation: Jimmy’s father, Hugh’s
mum, Colonel Redfern

"I suppose people of our generation aren't able to die for good causes any longer. We had all that
done for us, in the thirties and the forties, when we were still kids. ...There aren't any good, brave
causes left." (p. )

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2. Lack of “enthusiasm”: “Nobody thinks, nobody cares. No beliefs, no convictions and
no enthusiasm. Just another Sunday evening.” (p.10)
3. cold war mentality:
“Somebody said…we get our cooking from Paris…, our politics from Moscow, and our morals
from Port Said. Something like that, anyway. […] I must be getting sentimental. But I must say
it’s pretty dreary living in the American Age—unless you’re an American of course.” (p.11)
4. Setting One room flat in a large Midland town. Provincialism, claustrophobia,
déclassement.
5. Character:
a. Jimmy : “Porter is the completest young pup in our literature since Hamlet,
Prince of Denmark." (Kenneth Tynan, The Observer) “Self-flagellating solitary
in self-inflicted exile from his own misery” (J. Russell Taylor)
i. “disconcerting mixture of sincerity and cheerful malice, of tenderness
and freebooting cruelty” (p.1)
ii. Rebelliousness (“spiritual barbarian”) vs respect for Alison’s father and
friend Webster
iii. Fear of women
iv. misogyny & puritanism
v. Attachment to father  anger (p.59)
vi. Nietzschean Übermensch (“Was I wrong to believe there’s—a kind of
—burning virility of mind and spirit that looks for something as
powerful as itself?” p.101)
vii. playacting with Alison
b. Alison
i. “Turned in a different key” to Jimmy and Cliff
ii. “Pusillanimous” but with the courage to leave her family to marry
Jimmy
iii. Victim – “hostage from those sections of society [Jimmy and Hugh]
had declared war on”, p.42
iv. “poor squirrel” who needs Jimmy’s protection
v. Spirituality (lives in a “lovely little cottage of the soul, cut right off from
the ugly problems of the twentieth century”, p.57)
c. Cliff
i. “Soothing, natural counterpoint to Jimmy”
ii. Ignorant “peasant” vs loyalty to Jimmy and Alison (“I love these two
people very much”, p.62)
iii. Welshness gives him a different perspective on other characters?
d. Helena
i. Matriarchal authority, representative of “royalty of middle-class
womanhood”
ii. Assumes Alison’s role in Act III
e. Coronel Redfern
i. “Old plant left over from the Edwardian wilderness”, p.70
ii. Decency and respectability in a changing world
6. Dramatic form

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 Described by author as a rather “formal, old-fashioned play” Naturalist character
description, stage-directions, fourth-wall effect BUT Anti-naturalist lack of
development and circularity

Social realism:

Plays which interpreted four walls (the audience) and had clear introduction, middle and
conclusion. Effect: audience feels like a privilege position that spied other people’s life. We
shared their feelings.

Drama:

John Osborne (1958) ‘they call it criquet’ To get people feel, after war people has lost the
ability to feel. People are like machines that do not reaction due to the many horrors they have
seen. Wide audience as possible, youthful audience, accessible language. Most representative
play: Look Back in Anger (1956)

The critical reaction to the play, reaction against tradition, destroys everything created until
then. However, the majority of the reactions are positive. The people suffer the war, maybe
they went to WWII or they suffered it at home. The war has its consequences in one way or
another.

Themes

1. Nostalgia: remembering the time with affection.

2. Dissatisfaction and frustration with the present. Past equals the previous generation, it
is not available for now; we don’t want to be like people in the past or in the present,
look to the future. Jimi’s father, youth living in 1930s, people were plenty of good
causes to die for, but then nobody have any more good causes which are good enough
to die for
3. Sense of impotence. . There is no longer destiny, our destiny is not in our hands but in
politicians. There is anger and at the same time, indifference, conformism. Conformism
kills good people.
4. Lack of enthusiasm, Loss of national entity
5. Cold war mentality. Jimi is compared to hamlet: sincere, malevoulous, cruelty. He is a
rebel without a cause, barbarian and misogyny (he is cruel with his own wife, fear of
sex)
6. Nieztschean Übernech
7. Comparation to the beats in America, but they pretended more escapism (drugs).

Practice 2 Miss Dalloway

Pages: 10-11. Mrs. Dalloway is not judgmental; she takes people as they are, impartial person.
She is not the person she used to be, she changes her personality and lost her identity in the
moment she decides to marry. She feels very young, full of life (Contradictory, she is very old,
50s) she does not care about things but at the same time, she cares about everything. She sees
herself as an outsider, not a part from all these pompous society. Mrs. Dalloway has received a
very basic education through a private tutor.

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Importance of the past/memory and scared mixed with fascination towards London. Passion
for life, for living: there is a strong relationship between life and death. She sees a better life
beyond the grave. She wants to reconciliate with Peter Walsh. Peter represents youth,
instinctive life, Clarissa on their own not Mrs. Dalloway (miss of someone). The Great War
affects her and everybody. Many people died and the people who still live have to continue
living without them.

Bloque 3

Waiting for Godot

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Theatre of the Absurd, (in the US)
Being and Time (1927) Martin Heidegger Question= Why do we exist? Answer= Sartre: Being
and Nothingness. Man is condemned to be free, existence has no sense, but we have a duty,
the duty to exist, to continue. “Man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the
world, he is responsible for everything he does.”

Martin Esslin, theatre of the absurd, 1960. Living can be reduced and integrated in a system of
values as for example, religion. Meaningless of existence

Politically motivated theatre: To give a meaning to the life, one way to give meaning is through
politics. Commitment theatre, theatre of non-communication: Anti-humor pessimism, no
identity. Nothing to be done, Waiting for Godot.

Antinaturalist impulse in:

1. Motivation and Character: no satisfactional ending.

2. Structure: in look back in Anger it has a traditional structure with progression. Nut it
usually is with no development, the play ends as it starts, the character does not move
to the scene. Circular structure
3. Language: they explaining themselves and are eloquent and with sense. Loss of
communication. Impenetrable language, words are accessible but we cannot connect
them with references, lack of context.

Waiting for Godot (1955)

1. Structure/ Design

It is a translation from French, esperando a Dios.

What is it about?- Becket- Ido not know

Biblical allusions to stories or paraboles of the

bible. They are waiting for salvation, when Godot
comes, all have meaning.

Faith, desire of seeing god. Man & Universe.

Human condition and medieval idea of sins and
salvation. If it so clear that Godot is God, why call
does not call it Waiting for God? Because it is an
error, a diminutive, esperando al diosito,
familiarity, lack of respect.

There is no salvation, the play is incomplete, it ends exactly the same that it starts. They are in
the same place and talking about the same. The tile of the play reveals all the play, what do
they do? Waiting.

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The play does not end in salvation. God does not come and save the characters. The play is
therefore incomplete from that expected conclusion. Its end where it began, nothing has
happened.

No reference or allusion. It is a kind of allegory of man and universe seen under a Christian
framework.

Traditional design (Christian morality) vs incompleteness (expressionism) and circularity

No reference of time

Think in terms of oppositions, in binary contradictions, one obvious opposition is that who are
in waiting and coming (the act of the arrival). If they are waiting for nothing, what is the point
of waiting? The characters try to occupy the time through games (game of hat) (verbal games)
these are also ways to do not feel the time, they do not feel the existence and distract
themselves to the idea that Godot never comes.

Vladimir and estragon have no feeling of time. They seem to forget that yesterday they were in
the same place waiting. Timelessness

Pozzo goes blind from one act to another. This act is a development; idea of truth will give a
meaning to our lives. Physiological realities. The character seems obsessionate with physical
immediate realities as the stone in estragon’s boot.

2. Characters:

Background relationships:

1. Mutual dependency
2. Informal, a social (tramps) vs. orthodox social relationships (master, pozzo- slave
Lucky)
3. Warmth vs. coldness/cruelty

Vladimir (Didi) + estragon (gogo)= Godot

They are waiting for themselves (how sad!)

Vladimir is rusian while Estragon is possibly mediterranian. They were probably trmps. They all
come from different places but they are all human beigns.

Lucky is compared to Vladimir (intelligent) and Pozzo to Estragon.

3. Speech

Fusion: ordinary+ poetic +trivial and momentous

They have a clairvoyant madness (lucky/ Poor Tom)

Music- hall patterns / mime as a ritual

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Phatic function of language, to maintain communication. Lyrical nature of language,
paralinguistic language (hats, gestures…)

The text was created to be performed, not to be read. They are in France (Eiffel Toower).
Maybe to show that it is crisis in France? They weee tied to Godot, they cannot move on. Tied
down, lack of freedom, absence of liberty, a kind of slavery and enslavement.

Theatricality: to convey the metaphors in literal truth. Pozzo is leading lLucky almost like a dog
with a rope in his neck. Military overcoat (his clothes) relation of master and slave while.
Estragon and Vladimir has a relation as an old marriage, always arguing but inseparable.

Estragon first think was that pozzo was godot and in this way they star a naming game,. There
is clearly a problem with identity. They have mistaken pozzo’s name at purpose to make him
sound similar to Godot (Gozzo ~Godot) Godot is just a name and a name is totally arbitrary.
Names are conventions, they are completely arbitrary. Godot is an invention we have made.
They have not organic relation with theSauthings they designate.
ssu
Arbitrary signifier
re
Relation signified

Vladimir and Estragon look scandalized for Lucky’s treatment. Does Lucky have to be a slave?
Vladimir and Estragon are going nowhere but where are Pozzo and Lucky going? Pozzo wants
to sell Lucky in the market as any other useful animal. Lucky assumes his condition. In act 2
when Pozzo losses his sight, lucky has the opportunity to run away, however he decides to stay
and serve him. Obligation, slavement, a vision of man as unnaturally cruel with other men.
Man condition’s is to mistreat other human beings. Antihuman pessimism. However, he shows
up all human action scenarios. We need others as Vladimir needs Estragon, life is meaningless,
we are waiting for something which does not exist and we need other people support and
company.

Themes
Time

It has a theatrical treatment in the play. The day gradually gets darker. Time is obeying the
desires and hopes of the characters. The characters’ obsession with the oass of the time.
Feeling the time and in this way it pass more rapidly. Pozzo’s pass of time is much more close
to objective. Why is time so important for pozzo? Pozzo needs time, he is pretending to be
busy, to have things to do. (look how important am i).

Language (speech)

Vladimir often interrupted normal speech with lyrical, philosophical speech. But the most
lyrical character is Pozzo. Phatic language: maintain conversation. No matter about what

Poetic function of language: aim to focus the attention to himself.

Lucky’s speech (quaquaquaqua) meaningless. (gibberish: speaking for the sake of speak)
speaking to say nothing. Very sophisticate use of language but in the form of a parody. Latinate

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form of English. Discourse, academic church, lucky is not saying anything, he cannot think
without his hat. How language is degenerated to only entertain the other.

Act 1 ending as it began. Absolute dependence of each other, they are unable to separate.

Practice of Waiting for Godot

This dialog belongs to act 1 of waiting for Godot. Vladimir and Estragon are waiting just before
Pozzo and Lucky enter in scene. They are talking about a canot and the fact that they are tied
down to Godot.

Drama is about people’s relations. They are maintaining a phatic conversation. Vladimir is the
thinker. Estragon is primarly concerned with material things, filling the belly, eating, survive.
Vladimir tries to be the philosopher, the thinker and have all the answers but in fact he does
not have it. Estragon offers his carrot to Vladimir, this shows his bond, the necessity of their
relation.

They are repeating all the wuestions again and again but they are always in the same
conclusion, as Vladimir said, nothing to be done.

They are so close that they end other’s questions and sentences. They complement each
other. Total complicity, slapstick(visual physical humour). Tragicomedy: the content is
extremely pessimistic, however, there is no tragedy and there is a lot of humour.

The presence of hope is also important. The first act points out some philosophy, some ideas,
Vladimir is the one who appears to understand things while Estragon doesnto

Understand anything. If Godot didn’t come to justify their waithing, what keep them alive?
“We are magicians, we are always finding something to give a reaon for our existence”
existencialist drama.

Godot is dead don’t rely on god or in any other supernatural event because it aint gonna help
you. In second act, pozzo is blind. A blind man ruled by a fool. . he is blind and lucky is dumb.
He has lost his capacity of speak. Depressing image of existence, life is giving birth strike a
grave. Life is 4 seconds. They spent the days exactly the same way as the day before. One day
after the next, identical. Angst (despair), post romantic notion, there is nothing at the end. The
habit is the antidote to the angst. A consolation. Thought he might came and maintain a
routine is a consolation. Why they not commit suicide? Why they not come by their side? Why
they dont separate? Nihilistic thinking. Existence does not worth it. Existentialism is the idea of
responsibility. Now we are here we have the responsibility to continue, no matter Godot
comes or not. Godot may not come, but we have to assume our responsibility of waiting him.

Conclusion of act2: the same that act1: let’s go, yes, let go. They do not move.

History’s end?
“The end is in the beginning and yet you go on.” (Samuel Beckett, Endgame, 1958)

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Francis Fukuyama: history has a purpose (teleology), it is developing a particular and universal
freedom. Things are always getting better. Utopia no differences of class, freedom, were
thinkers of the left and right expired…), or discrimination (race,class,gender)

But, what if it doesn’t happen?

-Pesimistic point of view. What is history under a pessimistic point of view? What if it isn’t a
metanarrative and history is just chaos? What if Godot doesnt come? What if Godot even
doesn’t exist?

- The end is in the beginning and yet you go on. (Vladimir) even after we assume or suspect
that Godot is a product of our imagination, we survive, we are still here. We are natural
survivors even if we know things are not getting better. We continue making life more
acceptable.

Postmodern condition
1. We, most of us do not believe that history is taking us somewhere else, history is just
chaos. Utopia doesn’t exist. Certainly that godot is not gonna come.
2. If we reject the possibility of salvation or absolute freedom. We must also reject the
autonomy of individuo, the idea we can decide our destiny, that we had a choice. We
are all parts of this chaotic hop that we call experience. W find collage(diversity), not
individuals. Anarchy: what best characterizes post-modernism.
3. Differences disappear, distinction: this is an effect of globalization. We have all the
same. We eat the same, have the same interests. The human subjectivity doesnt exist.
Global subjectivity. Jim jar music: originally does not exist because it already is tough
for written. Stealing ideas is inevitable.
4. Umberto Eco (in the name of the Rose) , postmodernism, irony, the enjoyable. The
past is like a stone in your feet, you know it is there and you can not ignore it, look
back (not with anger) but with irony.
Making visible that you borrow someone’s else ideas is better than use them simply.

Modernism vs. Postmodernism

 Roots:
o Md: Spiritual malaise after WW1
o Loss of belief in ‘metanarratives’ after W2 globalization and the rise of popular
culture.
 Concept of art:
o Md: Antidote to 1, high cultural activity reserved for a priviledged few, but
capable of ‘civilizing’ the masses. Rejection or creative absorption of past (the
tradition) importance of technique(avant garde, how you write is more
important than what you write) work of art complete in itself. Critical attitude
to do justice to what is happening relating the truth. Parody of classic
literature (homero) ‘ulyses’ james joyce impossibility to avoi the past.

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 o Pdm: another form of cultural practice with no special characteristics. Ironic
attitude towards past. No respect to past. Intertextualituy the main features.
Make allusions to other texts.
 Concept of the artist.
o Md: superior from the re of humanity. Importance of mask and impersonality.
The author hardly ever appears. Borges introduces the authors as another
character in the novel. ‘the well-wrought urn’ by john done. Definition of
modernist art beautiful designed full of context. Modernist concept of art is
complete by itself.
o Pmd: integrated in text, often as another character. A borrower, takes material
from other authors. Bricolage: inclusion of the author in the text.
 Subject matter.
o Mod: isolation of the individual in modern society. The dark places of
psychology. Myth nostalgia to old system of belief.
o Pmd: any subject matter valid, but with special attention to act of writing itself.
Everything is worth writing about.
 Character (narrative and drama)
o Md: self questioning, tortured individual, often bordering on madness.
Difficulties in establishing meaningful relations with others(Clarissa). Often a
slave to convention(Clarissa).
o Pmd: Non-self analytical, a mere “actor” or player of roles. Contrradictory and
frangmented narrative (WFG). Identity often confused. (they do not know
where they are going, or why are they waiting).
 Point of view (narrative)
o Md: No estable viewpoint, but a tendency to priviledge certain characters’
perspectives over others. (Showing, not telling). Narrator thends to judge his
characters. Defamiliarization often leading to revelation. (ephiphany).
o Pmd: Parodies conventional viewpoints. Author frequently “intervenes” as
another character in the narrative (as an active part) is there possibility of
omniscient anarrator if the author is a character? No.
 Language and Speech
o Md: serious and often poetic, though does not exclude colloquialism. Often
citations from other authors, but not in a parodic manner (respect). Free
indirect style or stream of consciousness. Communicative but usually by
indirect means (poetic)
o Pmd: mixed genres of discourse (high and low) in a haphazard way. Cites of
other authors usually for parodic purposes. Challenges of communicativeness.
Dialoges means nothing (WFG)

John Fowles, The French Lieutenant’s Woman (1969)—Outline

1. Modern reproduction of the Victorian novel

2. Enquiry into madness and female “hysteria”

3. Reflection on the art of storytelling and representation

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1. Specificity of time and place(s): 1867

 Lyme Regis, London, America “Victoriana”

 plot, upstairs/downstairs scenario, mannerisms, style of speech. Characters:
Charles/Ernestina (prototypical Victorian couple), Sam/Mary (Victorian underclass),
Sarah (Victorian “fallen woman”) A woman who has extra maritals relations,
condemned by the rest of society.
 Themes: rationality & science (Darwinism, Freud, Marx) vs evangelism; determinism
Vs free will; charity & chastity vs sexual repression (258-9)

2. Sarah

 “Tragedy” or the French Lieutenant’s Woman/Whore.

 Despair a “disease” (Grogan) “hysteria”
 Victim of circumstances (Ch 20) who uses her intuitive intelligence and independence
to claw her way back (“What has kept me alive is my shame”, 171)
 Symbolic castrator who takes her revenge on Charles and the class to which he
belongs (433)

3. The art of the storyteller (Ch 13)

the dual (triple?) ending, “Fowles” as character (389, 440)Past vs present: “presentism” and
the struggle against history (78, 95, 285-6)

Characteristics of Noveau novel and Flaubert’s Parrot

1) Death of thehero(individuality, consciousness, identity, etc.)

Sometimes there is No hero, none to admire, none to symphatise. Most oof the characters iare
no specially individualized. None of the characters look better than the other. We . we never
really get to know the character. It is a seem of lack of identity. They even don’t have a name
sometimes. Why do modern novelist deny the access to the character? We really don’t know
people, no matter how much you know a person, you never know them totally.

2) Abolition of the classic plot (time, coherence, etc.)

Borges said that all the great novels of the twentieth century were detective novels and

several of Robbe. The main difference is that they donot show the solution, nonsense no plot.
No chronological order, unconnected and discontinuous. Simply, one events happens after
another without order. Reason: epistemologivcal real life order, life has no order, it is a
continuous meaningless floe of knowledge. No sense. They show the process not the solution.
Discovering with of the different parrots belongs to Flauber. Conclusion: We don’t know.

‘The difference is that in the traditional detective novel there must be a solution, whereas in ours there is
just the principle of investigation. Detective novels are consumer products, sold by millions, and are made
in the following way: there are clues to an event, say a murder, and someone comes along and puts the
pieces together in order that truth may be revealed. Then it all makes sense. In our novels what is missing
is ‘sense’. There is a constant appeal to sense, but it remains unfulfilled, because the pieces keep moving

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 and shifting and when ‘sense’ appears it is transitory. Therefore, what is important is not to discover the
truth at the end of the investigation, but the process itself.’ (Alain Robbe Grillet)

3) Rejection of commitment(‘engagement’, e.g. Sartre) rejection of the idea that a novel can
change the world. It is just a game. Opposed to all kinds of physical descriptions.

4) Rejectionof conventions such as description

There cannot be true realism unless one makes room for the imagination, unless one
understands that the imaginary is in the real and one it is only through the imaginary that one
perceives the real. They perceive the real, but it is attained to subjectivity. While imagination is
a construction of the mind. I would describe the type of literature I write as a subjective type
of writing, but geared to the idea of“projected towards the object”. (Alain Robbe Grillet)

5) Readerly/ Writerly

Readerly
A term used by literary scholar Roland Barthes (1915-1980)

 -Refers to those types of texts that encourage us to remain (and enjoy) being readers
that is, to find pleasure in devouring a well-crafted to story
 -The emotions we are supposed to feel, the experiences we are supposed to go
through, the secrets we are supposed to find, have all been designed and crafted by
masterful hand of the author.we do not have to do anything but enjoy
 -Like a roller-coaster, we are encouraged to sit back and enjoy the ride that has been
designed for us
 –also, like a roller-coaster, the text is pretty much the same for each person who reads
it
 -The text is fully complete by the time it reaches us –to use the words of Edward
Brunner:

the work of integrating all of the different pieces has already been done by the author, and the
reader can proceed confidently, knowing the way has been prepared. So carefully has the work
been assembled, so elaborately yet professionally, that reading will only deepen appreciation.

 -We take in the text passively, we remain consumers, we stay in our seat, we enjoy
what has been created for us

Writerly
Readerly: later realism, modernism

Writerly: Postmodernism, eg. Rayuela

 -Refers to those types of texts in which we are actively encouraged to take part in the
creation of the text –not just what it means, but the actual production –we are
encouraged to become writers, an active participant, co-producers-The text is not fully
complete by the time it gets to us –it is kind of a pre-text you might say, it needs us to
complete it

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  -Meanings are not placed by the author for us to find –there is pleasure to be found in
taking different routes through the text (particularly if the text encourages us to take
different routes) or to wrestle with ideas without consideration of what the author
meant by it –we are encouraged to notice, to pay attention, to find connections that
are of our own design
 -The Readerly text is designed to make sense to us, it gives us everything we need, it
provides us with it
 –In the writerly text, the way has not been prepared, it is not a narrative to be read in
the traditional sense, it is a work in which the reader is required to acknowledge and
participate in the writing process
 -When you encounter a writerly text, you are not immediately sure what to do with it
It requires you to change your perspective, to reconsider how you are going to read,
what you are going to do with the thing in front of you
 -If the Readerly text is a well prepared meal at a nice restaurant, the writerly text is a
salad bar, a buffet
 -If the Readerly movie is a summer blockbuster like Spiderman, the writerly text is a
thinking movie the most important thing is that we go out to eat sometimes for
different reasons sometimes you want a meal prepared for you, sometimes you want
to make it yourself sometimes you want a challenge, sometimes you dont

Julian Barnes, Flaubert’s Parrot (1984)—Outline

1. Reflection on writers and writing

2. Elusiveness of the past and the unreliability of historical reportage

3. The readerly and thewriterly (explicado antes)

4. Genres ofdiscourse

1. Reflection on writers and writing

Why does the writing make us chase the writer? Why can't we leave well alone? Why aren't
the books enough? Flaubert wanted them to be: few writers believed more in the objectivity
of the written text and the insignificance of the writer's personality; yet still we disobediently
pursue.(Flaubert’s Parrot, Chap. 1)

Most of the works are mentioned in Barnes’s novel, but it’s clearly Madame Bovary which has
had the biggest impact on the narrator. Why?

o -Emma is married to provincial doctor Charles Bovary, whom she despises and to
whom she is unfaithful on numerous occasions, before finally committing suicide.
o -The novel can be seen as a critique of ‘bourgeois’ French provincial life and was a
‘cause de
o scandale’ as soon as it was published.
o -In the novel Flaubert the author appears to identify so completely with his heroine
that he would later declare “Madame Bovary, c’est moi”.
o -Together with Sentimental Education, Madame Bovary was considered an

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example of ‘free indirect style’

 Parallels with Flaubert’s Parrot

o -Julian Barnes abandons a career in law to pursue literary endeavours
o -Gustave Flaubert abandons a career in law to pursue literary endeavours
o -Gustave Flaubert fails his professional examinations
o -Charles Bovary fails his professional examinations
o -Charles Bovary’s wife Emma does not love him and commits suicide
o -Geoffrey Braithwaite’s wife Elaine does not love him and commits suicide
o -Geoffrey Braithwaite is the fictional narrator of Flaubert’s Parrot
o -Julian Barnes is the nonfictional author of Flaubert’s Parrot

2. Elussiveness of the Past.

The story of an adultery, for instance -any adultery -will affect us differently according to
whether it is presented primarily from the point of view of the unfaithful person, or the injured
spouse, or the lover, or as observed by some fourth party. Madame Bovary narrated mainly
from the point of view of Charles Bovary would be a very different book from the one we
know.(David Lodge, The Art of Fiction,1992)

Interviewer ‘SoFlaubert’s Parrotin a sense is Madame Bovary from Charles’s point of view.’

Barnes:’Yes, though I think my character, Geoffrey, is smarter than Charles Bovary...’(Interview

with Julian Barnes)

Unreliable Narrators are invariably invented characters who are part of the stories they tell...
Even a character-narrator cannot be a hundred per cent unreliable. If everything he or she
says is palpably false, that only tells us what we know already, namely that a novel is a work of
fiction. There must be some possibility of discriminating between truth and falsehood within
the imagined world of the novel, as there is in the real world, for the story to engage our
interest. The point of using an unreliable narrator is indeed to reveal in an interesting way the
gap between appearance and reality, and to show how human beings distort or conceal the
latter.

Elusiveness of the past

How imposible it is to reconstruct the past, it always escaped. Writing about the past
“objectively” image of the past is unrealiable. They are not the same as the original thruth.

History isn’t what happened, history is just what the historians tell us to happen. Intentionalist
fallacy: text are like letters but we can never know exactly the intentions of the author. History
is not exactly a recod of what happened, but a record of what happened to someone. An
interpretation. A memory always is lacked of details. We remembered things that are
important to us.

Anecdota of Flauberts parrot: Geoffrey remembers the time he was studying medicine. He had
a party with all medicians. They were extremely drunk and covered a pglet with grease. The

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game was cathed the piglet: we can never catch the past (as the piglet) it always escaped from
our hands and if we tried we probably looks ridiculous.

What we usually do is transforming the past. Distorsion it.

Unreliability
history is modified by author (narrator’s subjectivity) Flaubert’s parrot project this
idea. Geoffrey is a very rigourous biographer. However there are things that cannot be
explained. Gaps such as her wife’s suicide. Any truth is relative. It does not matter
flaubert’s history, what really matters is Geoffrey failure to stop his wife suicide. So in
some case, Geoffrey is the husband of madamme bovary. He is a man of science, a
retired doctor that recollects data about Flaubert. However there is an element of
subjectivity. His wife was not happy in the marriage with a boring doctor obsessed
with French literature. She probably cheats on him. The blame of the cheating and the
suicide (Emma bovary and geoffrey’s wife) is because their husbands do nto
understand them and are boring.

3. Readerly and writerly

Explicado arriba

4. Genres ofdiscourse
It is a collage of genres: biography, autobiography, literary criticism and fiction intermingle.
Language game, experimentation with different uses of language and registers.

--------
Práctica-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Pg 11.

Gesture of one of the players in statuesque, like a statue.

A statue: 1st description of it in the novel, facultive by observation of 6 North Africans playing
bolecrard. 2st person narrator. Why do not start with the statue? Why the detail? What’s the
matter? It does not start with it but with 6 north Africans, racism?

Descriptive narration, historical witing.

Ironic distance between what Flaubert has become (statue) & real Flaubert. 1 st paragraph:
sense of ignoring the statue as if it was invisible. Flaubert hates the city, most the people don’t
know who was him and the 25% hated hm. Racism stereotype, they are playing a very French
game in front of flaubert’s statue.

Statue: biographical Flaubert, how the man look like. Real Flaubert, typical 90 century clother,
moustache. But it’s the real Flaubert wear a moustache? No, it is not the original one so it is
not Flaubert(germans took the original and melted it).

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We can never get to the original Flaubert. All are repliques, copies and copies. Its original value
is deteriorated. The product is to reconstruct Flaubert. It is warning us that a novel/poem is
not a communicative action. It is not a resource to communicate directly with the author. The
author is not important but the novel. Who is the narrator of this story? Who is Geofrey
Braithwaite? Who is gustav Flaubert and why is he the subject of the novel?

He is a 19th century French realist author. Chapter 2: Biography/Chronology of Flaubert. 3

parts: 1st part: basic facts about Flaubert. 2 nd part: his family expected him to die early. Not a
celebration of Flaubert (as the first is) but on the contrary, pointing out all the miseries of his
life. The second biography conditioned the first. 3 rd part: series of quotations.

Flaubert was accused of obscenity. He is taken to court.

Snap: Game of cards: the chapter is called snap because it is about coincidences both (author
and Flaubert) studies law and both abandon it. Geoffrey Braithwaite, is the fictional character
of F. Parrot and his wife commits suicide as the narrator of madame bovarie.
Braitwait&Bovarie: B Emma& Ellein: E

Commentary of the very end of the novel, the last 2 pages. Author seems to offer a solution in
the chapter: …And the parrot…? Bu at the end, the novel ends without saying which one is the
parrot.

Summary of the last chapter: what’s going on? He is at the museum of natural history. He
come back to the place the novel starts. Looking for the original parrot n’un Coeur sample’ end
of the novel.

Different statues of Flaubert in 3 different towns. Maybe to say goodbye to them or to see the
differences among them. The pasing of time affects diffently (discoloration of the jacket) the
best one is the one lacked in roven. The time and the weather have break the statue (oxid)
what this suggests about Flaubert, about critical literators? None last forever, nothing is
permanent. The passing of time affects everything even the statues and literature figures as
novels provoking that they are forget. Everyone ages differently.

There are three different statues of Flaubert, there are 3 parrrots at the end of the novel.
Identity!: there are 3 different candidates to be the flaubert’s parrot. Description of the parrot,
the expression of their faces, there is a conection to the author, cynical, superserious. Paradox.

Cafeterias and videogames, it is a commentary about the museum. Going to the mussum must
be fun, pleasurable, interactive, childish, everything focused on making learning easy. Why?
Commentary on narrating itself, accuseing readerly, all have to be easy. In order to show a
certain problems, opinions, personality with ones he could or could not symphatise.
Conservative attitude to modern society, to the past. Impression that the narrator laments the
degradation of culture and literature, society and narration. Old fashion narration. He expects
his readers to react.

Rhetorical fiction always persuading the reader to accept or not the values of the narrator.

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*description of the room: it is a kind of pantheon that people admired. An example of realistic
description. Why it is compared with a tomb and described as ambibalent? It has a purpose, it
sggest something. It could be that the parrots are like tools the narrator use to construct the
story. Death is always present but not explicitly present. Braithwaite: very English, a source to
talk about death(taboo) they don’t celebrate death as we are (tanatorio) they just stop talking
about the person.

Purpose: renegociating the fact that his wife is dead.

He compares it with purgatory. He wait for judgement. Hell or heaven. Maybe he kills his wife,
maybe not directly but he could be responsible. He could kill her of boring and she decides to
put an end in her life, he feels guilty.

The parrots are dead but they are not dead. They are in the middle of life and death, they are
just stopped. It seems to be about Flaubert but it is about Braithwaite and his wife and his
desire to fix or rexture it . in this passages we hear that there are 3 of the original 50.

The parrots are quizzical. Irritating, these parrots look at you. Describing flaubert’s life. Parrot:
author’s personality, dishonourable, old bird. Geoffrey feels judged by the parrots. Fear of
beign judged. Maybe Flaubert feels the same. In a detective fiction the main purposes is to
know who is the killer and it is the end of the story. But knowing which one is the parrot would
provoke a pleasure that he thinks he doesn’t worth. The end of the story will mean assume
that his wife is dead and he is still not prepared.

The story of the parrot symbolizes the postmodernism approach to the truth, to the past.

It is a comment about his process of writing. The book is about ellen’s story but it is covered by
flaubert’s story. We have three stories: Flaubert, ellen and Geoffrey.

Geoffrey’s wife is dead but her presence is implicit in the story. He tries to distract the reader
to the real story. He makes the link of the suicide of ellen by negating Flaubert’s suicide, we
can make the relation. Flaubert is an excuse to the the real story, he tells us that the book is
something else. Narrating the story for others is a way of obtaining company. The entire book
is an attempt to deal with loss. Geoffrey’s inability to understand his loss. He fails many times
to understand it. Loss as an ongoing process. He uses other distracting figures to avoid thinking
of loss. A way to deal with pain.

Everything could be resolved at the end , critique of conventional text. This novel has not a
satisfactory ending. Life us unconcerned, dissatisfactional. That what’s postmoderninsm
literature does.

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