IB Prized Writing Sevenoaks School IB Prized Writing 2014 | Page 151

Hanna Jay - English 8 Hanna Jay Sevenoaks School dym346 (000102 -0103) might be a summary of the action of the play.” King Lear may be also be used as an example again: Gloucester is tricked by his son Edgar into thinking he has jumped off a cliff and yet miraculously survived, and this causes him to reconsider suicide. So, like Lear, who is humbled by nature and the storm which provokes his remorse, Gloucester “has been humbled by his circumstances and now sees his life in a different light.” 6 Gary Ettari argues that “because of the play‟s tragic undertone, there can be neither rebirth nor renewal without loss. Many critics have argued that this recognition of loss‟s necessity is one of the chief features of Shakespeare‟s late plays, and Lear is no exception.” 7 Ettari therefore confirms a link between the two writers as Woolf uses this tragic element of regeneration in Mrs Dalloway - it is not until Septimus‟s death that Clarissa recognizes the importance of life. However tragic, Clarissa sees his suicide as a heroic act of defiance, and death becomes strangely aesthetic. In her introduction to the novel, Showalter convincingly defines Septimus as a double to Clarissa, a double who could function in the novel to both widen and deepen all that is significant about the main character and her time. The two characters are not linked solely by their fear of reproduction, but also by their “anguish about mortality and immorality” and their “acute sensitivities to (their) surroundings”. 8 Similarly, Shakespeare‟s use of doubles is also indisputable and equally “related to a concern with questions of identity, sameness, and the union of separate selves – joined opposites”. 9 In Hamlet, the use of doubles is very obvious and almost seems unnatural, but the intensified use of the device works to emphasise the concerns of the characters, as in Mrs Dalloway. There are obvious pairings between characters: Cornelius and Voltemand, two ambassadors who speak (together) only ten words: Rosencrantz and Guildernstern. The players who perform the „mousetrap‟ create a double to Hamlet‟s dilemma, and the role of the revenger is doubled by Laertes and Fortinbras, and though these doubles lack subtlety and may delay the action in the play, they raise an awareness of human nature and the concerns of the writer. In an explicit way, Virginia Woolf also lets her characters define themselves according to whether or not they appreciate Shakespeare. This technique creates yet another link between Clarissa and Septimus. Both these characters live with a spouse 6 “Rebirth and Renewal in Shakespeare‟s King Lear” by Gary Ettari, Rebirth and Renewal, Harold Bloom “Rebirth and Renewal in Shakespeare‟s King Lear” by Gary Ettari, Rebirth and Renewal, Harold Bloom 8 Introduction to Mrs Dalloway, xxxvi, Elaine Showalter 9 Shakespeare‟s Language, Frank Kermode, p.101 7 150