Hanna Jay - English
5
Hanna Jay
Sevenoaks School
dym346 (000102 -0103)
promise of regeneration generally found in Shakespeare‟s dramas, and in the romance
Cymbeline in particular, are echoed in her own novel in an attempt to provide solace for
the reader.
Fear of Sexuality - “The Heat of the Sun”
Elaine Showalter writes in her introduction to the Penguin edition of Mrs Dalloway:
“Throughout the day Clarissa is haunted by the dirge from Cymbeline: “Fear no more
the heat o‟ the sun / Nor the furious winter‟s rages.” The heat of the sun, Showalter
argues, stands for sexuality: “for a kind of feminine blossoming and ripening which
peaks in the heat waves of the June day and of the reproductive cycle, and ends in the
furious winter of old age.” According to Showalter, Clarissa Dalloway has a troubled
relationship with her own sexuality, a fear, possibly, of what would have happened if she
had given in to her youthful passions.
I will first consider Showalter‟s argument more closely and see how this “fear”
possibly can be traced back to an influence from Shakespeare. While the words “the
heat of the sun” (Cymbeline, Act IV, Scene II) specifically apply to his character Innogen
in Cymbeline, critics have also detected in Shakespeare’s work a notion of sexuality as
disgusting and loathsome. In her article “Sexuality in the reading of Shakespeare:
Hamlet and Measure for Measure”, Jacqueline Rose argues that “Gertrude‟s impropriety
(her „o‟erhasty‟ marriage) and Isabella‟s excessive propriety (her refusal to comply with
Angelo‟s sexual demand) produce an image of sexuality as something unmanageable
which cannot be held in its place.” 3 As such, it comes to represent that which is horrible
in the play, a kind of disorder that causes chaos and death.
Just as Shakespeare‟s different characters express the “horror” of uncontrollable
passion on stage, so does Woolf use the dynamics of a multi-viewpoint perspective in
her novel to emphasize Clarissa‟s own difficult relationship to sexual passion. Peter
Walsh thinks that “there was always something cold in Clarissa” (p. 53) and Sally Seton
wonders how Clarissa - whom she “still saw all in white walking about the house with
her hands full of flowers” (p.207) - could have married Richard Dalloway. Her innocent
flowering somehow did not seem to fit in with the stern, controlled, politician.
3
“Sexuality in the reading of Shakespeare: Hamlet and Measure for Measure”, Jacqueline Rose, from
Alternative Shakespeares, John Drakakis p.97
147