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Pentru concluzii

Dalloways identity is not essential to her nature, but is produced through contingent social
Identity is a continuous creative practice, and is shaped not through language alone, but through
a set of other factors like gender, ideology and body. For instance, the interactions between
language and gender on the one hand, and feminist theory on the other, are of tremendous
significance in this study. Earlier varieties of feminism reduced the question ofidentity to an
ontological first principle by taking an essential difference between women and men as
axiomatic.
But more recent scholarships like that of Judith Butler's view identity as construct. And when it
comes to the social construction of identity, language is of first significance; all women are
oppressed by the overriding force of language; therefore, language is responsible for male
dominance in society. Clarissas identity needs to be constructed socially through language, but
this very language is patriarchal; although Clarissa attempts to resist it, she is unable to fit into its
predetermined structures Clarissa Dalloways lesbian attraction towards Sally proves this anti-
categorical nature of identity. She is resisting against patriarchal society, but at the same time,
her feminine resistance, which is the kind of act she is performing to define a clear-cut feminine
identity for herself, gets nowhere; because patriarchal society imposes compulsory
heterosexuality and Clarissa succumbs to this melancholic heterosexuality, she also consequently
gives in to patriarchal language and discourse. The present study challenges the essentialist
notion that identities in general, and gender identities in particular, are inevitable, natural and
fixed. This study also elaborates upon the idea that identities, far from being given in advance for
individuals to step into, emerge over time through discursive and other social practices.
Furthermore, identity construction is also an exclusively individual act; instead, social selves are
produced interaction, through processes of contestation and collaboration.
Edwards, Lee R., War and Roses: The Politics of Mrs. Dalloway,
in The Authority of Experience: Essays in Feminist
Criticism, edited by Arlyn Diamond and Lee R. Edwards,
University of Massachusetts Press, 1977, pp. 16177.
This essay provides an important and informative aspect
on the politics of Mrs. Dalloway.
Fussell, Paul, The Great War and Modern Memory, Oxford
University Press, 1975.
Fussels text is a definitive book on WWIits life
in the popular imagination, the way soldiers experienced
it, and the poetry of its soldiers.
Lee, Hermione, Virginia Woolf, Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1996.
Lee presents a recent and highly readable biography
of the author.
Thomas, Sue, Virginia Woolfs Septimus Smith and Contemporary
Perceptions of Shellshock, in English Language
Notes, Vol. 25, No. 2, December 1987, pp. 4957.
Thomas offers an examination of the literature and
attitudes about shell shock in Woolfs time.
Zwerdling, Alex, Virginia Woolf and the Real World, University
of California Press, 1986.
Zwerdlings book discusses the social and political
contexts and arguments of Woolfs novels
Forster, E. M., Aspects of the Novel, Harcourt, Brace & Co.,
1927.
, Virginia Woolf, Cambridge University Press, 1942.
Hawthorn, Jeremy, Virginia Woolfs Mrs. Dalloway: A
Study in Alienation, Sussex University Press, 1975.
Henke, Suzette A., Mrs. Dalloway: the Communion of
Saints, in New Feminist Essays on Virginia Woolf, edited
by Jane Marcus, University of Nebraska Press, 1981, pp.
12547.
Jensen, Emily, Clarissa Dalloways Respectable Suicide,
in Virginia Woolf: A Feminist Slant, edited by Jane Marcus,
University of Nebraska Press, 1983, pp. 16279.
Page, Alex, A Dangerous Day: Mrs. Dalloway and Her
Double, in Modern Fiction Studies, Vol. VII, No. 2, Summer
1961, pp. 11524.

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