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Major Themes- Jude de Obscure

Marriage
It could be argued that the rejection of marriage is the central didactic point of this novel. Hardy
repeatedly emphasizes that marriage involves making a commitment that many people are emotionally
unequipped to fulfill - this sentiment comes from the narrator, but it is also expressed by Sue, Jude,
Phillotson, and Widow Edlin at various points in the novel. Whether the institution of marriage can be
saved is open to interpretation. Jude and Sue are clearly a good match for each other, so Jude wants to
get married. Sue, however, feels that marriage will poison the relationship. The narrator does not seem
to favor either side; it is left up to readers to decide how the problems with marriage might be solved.
Education
Hardy highlights many kinds of education in Jude the Obscure. Most obviously, we have Jude's desire to
get a university degree and become an academic. However, Hardy also emphasizes the importance of
experiential education. Because Jude is inexperienced with women and with social situations more
generally, he is especially susceptible to Arabella's seduction. In the novel, the level of traditional
education one reaches is closely tied to the class system, and if someone from Jude's class wants to
learn, they must teach themselves. Although the narrator seems to admire Jude's willingness to teach
himself, he also points out the limits of autodidacticism, noting that despite Jude's near-constant
studies, he cannot hope to compete on the university entrance exam against richer men who have hired
tutors.
Social class
In addition to his points about education, Hardy also criticizes the rigidity of social class more generally.
Jude is limited in his career options because as a working-class man, he cannot hope to be promoted
beyond a certain level, even in fields like the clergy that are supposed to be open to all. However, Jude
and Sue also benefit from their low social class in that their respective divorces are processed quickly
and without inquiry and they can get away with living together unmarried for quite some time. Even this
is a mixed blessing - they are caught eventually, and the reason they weren't caught sooner is that they
are unimportant to the people around them.
Religion
As Jude the Obscure can be interpreted as critical of the institution of marriage, Hardy is equally as
possessed with the church. Throughout their relationship, Jude and Sue have many conversations
concerning religion, the former being initially more devout than his intellectually curious cousin. At a
diorama depicting Jerusalem, the major characters' feelings on religion crystalize. Sue wonders why
Jerusalem rather than Rome or Athens is deemed important, Phillotson counters that the city is
important to the English as a Christian people, and Jude is utterly absorbed by the work - though he also
strains to agree with Sue. Later, Sue mentions a friend who was the most irreligious but also the most
moral. Hardy points out that these concepts are not mutually exclusive.
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Jude's faith is tested by Sue. He realizes his sexual attraction to her makes him a hypocrite. Rather than
suppress his natural physical desire, he burns his books, marking his break with Christianity. This makes
Sue's reversal later in the novel all the more shocking. Jude likens her conversion in the wake of her
children's death to his partaking in alcohol during difficult times. Here Hardy calls into question the
motivations behind faith. Through Sue's self-punishing adherence to her Christian duties despite her
true nature, Hardy suggests those motivations are not always pure.
Women's rights
Sue Bridehead is a strikingly modern heroine in many ways - she lives with men without marrying them;
she has a rich intellectual life; she works alongside Jude. Hardy criticizes the social conventions that
prevent her from fulfilling her potential as an intellectual and as a worker. However, he also reinforces
some of those social conventions unintentionally; by portraying Sue as anxious and hysterical, Hardy
perpetuates a common Victorian stereotype about women being especially emotional. Also, we are
expected to accept Sue having lived with the Christminster undergraduate because they were not
having sex; despite his professed liberalism, Hardy upholds traditional values by offering this piece of
information and (apparently) expecting it to color our judgment of the character.
Old versus new
The narrator of Jude the Obscure often laments the ways that old things are replaced by the new,
especially when it comes to urban architecture. Likewise, the Widow Edlin suggests that older, more
laid-back attitudes toward marriage are better than prudish Victorian norms. Nineteenth-century British
society was, in many ways, more conservative than the historical periods that preceded it, so Hardy's
admiration for the older aspects of English culture ties in to his social liberalism and his reverence for
intellectual inquiry.
Disappointment
Disappointment crops up over and over again in this novel: Jude is disappointed by his career; he is
disappointed in his marriage to Arabella and then his cohabitation with Sue; he is disappointed by Mr.
Phillotson, who never achieved his dream of getting a university degree. Even Time's assertions that he
never asked to be born suggest a certain disappointment with life. Since most of the novel's tragedies
come as lost opportunities, the ways that the characters deal with disappointment contribute to their
characterization. For example, Phillotson takes a relatively mature perspective when he is disappointed
in his marriage to Sue, and allows her to be with Jude. Arabella, in contrast, deals with her
disappointment in Cartlett by spying on Jude and scheming to get back together with him.
Itinerancy.Jude the Obscure features many kinds of nomads. Some of these are minor characters, like
the traveling laborers in Shaston. However, Jude himself is a kind of nomad, and the novel's structure
reflects this. It is not divided into arbitrary chapters or thematic groupings, but rather is divided into
sections based on the characters' location. This geographical mobility speaks to the new freedom - but
also rootlessness - that came with the advent of rail travel, which revolutionized the lives of working
people like Jude, who could now travel long distances affordably.
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About Jude the Obscure
Thomas Hardy published his fourteenth novel, Jude the Obscure, as a magazine serial in 1895. It was
released in book form in November of that year. Hardy's previous novels and short stories had been
extremely popular, with the exception of Tess of the d'Urbervilles, which caused some mild controversy
due to its relatively explicit sexual content. Similarly, Jude the Obscure scandalized critics and readers
with its sexual content and scathing critiques of Christianity and marriage. The Bishop of Wakefield
publicly burned copies of the book, and several circulating libraries pulled the novel from their shelves -
a move that severely limited the book's readership, since many at this time procured their reading
material from libraries. Hardy received hate mail from all over the world, and was so devastated by the
novel's reception that he gave up prose fiction entirely, writing only poetry and drama for the rest of his
life.In the years following the book's 1895 release, it became very difficult to obtain uncensored copies
of the novel, especially outside of Great Britain. When Jude was published in America in Harper's
Magazine, most of the controversial elements were removed, and through the 1920s, copies of the
unbowdlerized text were extremely hard to find in the United States; furthermore, complete texts were
expensive. In 1912, Macmillan published the definitive Wessex editions of Hardy's novels, and this
edition of Jude the Obscure is the one that is usually read today. (Slack)
About Wuthering Heights
Wuthering Heights was Emily Bront's only novel, and it is considered the fullest expression of her highly
individual poetic vision. It contains many Romantic influences: Heathcliff is a very Byronic character,
though he lacks the self pity that mars many Byronic characters, and he is deeply attached to the natural
world. When the novel was written, the peak of the Romantic age had passed: Emily Bront lived a very
isolated life, and was in some sense behind the times. Wuthering Heights expresses criticisms of social
conventions, particularly those surrounding issues of gender: notice that the author distributes
"feminine" and "masculine" characteristics without regard to sex. Bront had difficulties living in society
while remaining true to the things she considered important: the ideal of women as delicate beings who
avoid physical or mental activity and pursue fashions and flirtations was repugnant to her. Class issues
are also important: we are bound to respect Ellen, who is educated but of low class, more than
Lockwood.
Any reader of Wuthering Heights should recognize immediately that it is not the sort of novel that a
gently-bred Victorian lady would be expected to write. Emily Bront sent it to publishers under the
masculine name of Ellis Bell, but even so it took many tries and many months before it was finally
accepted. Its reviews were almost entirely negative: reviewers implied that the author of such a novel
must be insane, obsessed with cruelty, barbaric. Emily's sister Charlotte's novel Jane Eyre was much
more successful. Emily was always eager to maintain the secrecy under which the novel was published,
understandably. She died soon after the publication, and Charlotte felt obliged -- now that secrecy was
no longer necessary -- to write a preface for the novel defending her sister's character. The preface also
made it clear that Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell were, in fact, different people: some readers had
speculated that Wuthering Heights was an early work by the author of Jane Eyre. It appears that
Charlotte herself was uncomfortable with the more disturbing aspects of her sister's masterpiece. She
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said that if Emily had lived, "her mind would of itself have grown like a strong tree; loftier, straighter,
wider-spreading, and its matured fruits would have attained a mellower ripeness and sunnier bloom."
Her apology for Emily's work should be read with the realization that Charlotte's character was quite
different from Emily's: her interpretation of Wuthering Heights should not necessarily be taken at face
value.
Wuthering Heights does not belong to any obvious prose genre, nor did it begin an important literary
lineage. None of its imitations can approach its sincerity and poetic power. However, it has still been an
important influence on English literature. With the passing of time, an immense amount of interest has
grown up about the Bront sisters, Charlotte, Emily, and Anne, and they have achieved the status of the
centers of a literary cult.
Major Themes
Literacy
Throughout the novel, reading and literacy are shown to be sources of both power and pleasure.
Heathcliff purposely keeps Hareton uneducated as a way to control the young man and to get revenge
on Hareton's father, Hindley. Likewise, Cathy gives books to her servant, Michael, to convince him to
deliver her love letters to Linton. The graffiti at Wuthering Heights at the beginning of the novel also
serves as a kind of dominion; by carving their names into the wall, Catherine Earnshaw and her daughter
ensure that their spirits will always preside over the crumbling house. However, the characters also
derive significant pleasure from reading; it is one of Cathy's few solaces during her miserable first
months at Wuthering Heights, and it eventually serves as a pretext for her to bond with Hareton.
Solitude
For a novel that draws its plot from the vicissitudes of interpersonal relationships, it is notable how
many of the characters seem to enjoy solitude. Heathcliff and Hindley both state their preference for
isolation early in the novel, and Lockwood explains that solitude is one of the reasons he chose to move
to the remote Thrushcross Grange. Each of these characters believes that solitude will help them get
over romantic disappointments: Heathcliff becomes increasingly withdrawn after Catherine's death;
Hindley becomes crueler than ever to others after he loses his wife, Frances; and Lockwood's move to
the Grange was precipitated by a briefly mentioned romantic disappointment of his own. However,
Bront ultimately casts doubt on solitude's ability to heal psychic wounds. Heathcliff's yearning for
Catherine causes him to behave like a monster to people around him; Hindley dies alone as an
impoverished alcoholic; and Lockwood quickly gives up on the Grange's restorative potential and moves
to London.
Doubles
Given the symmetrical structure of Wuthering Heights, it follows naturally that Bront should thematize
doubles and doubleness. Catherine Earnshaw notes her own "double character" (66) when she tries to
explain her attraction to both Edgar and Heathcliff, and their shared name suggests that Cathy Linton is,
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in some ways, a double for her mother. There are also many parallel pairings throughout the novel that
suggests that certain characters are doubles of each other: Heathcliff and Catherine, Edgar and Isabella,
Hareton and Cathy, and even Hindley and Ellen (consider the latter's deep grief when Hindley dies, and
that they are 'milk siblings'). Catherine's famous insistence that "I am Heathcliff" (82) reinforces the
concept that individuals can share an identity.
Self-knowledge
Bront frequently dissociates the self from the consciousnessthat is, characters have to get to know
themselves just as they would another person. This becomes a major concern when Catherine Earnshaw
decides against her better judgment to marry Edgar Linton; she is self-aware enough to acknowledge
that she has a 'double character' and that Heathcliff may be a better match for her, but she lacks the
confidence to act on this intuition. Self-knowledge also affects how characters get to know others;
Isabella knows how violent Heathcliff is, but is unable to acknowledge this because she believes herself
capable of controlling him.
Disease and contagion
Disease and contagionspecifically consumption, or as it's known today, tuberculosisare inescapable
presences in Wuthering Heights. Isabella becomes sick after meeting Heathcliff, and Catherine Earnshaw
indirectly kills Mr. and Mrs. Linton by giving them her fever. Even emotional troubles are pathologized
much like physical illnesses; consider how Catherine's unhappy marriage and Heathcliff's return
contribute to the 'brain fever' that leads to her death. Perhaps most importantly, Lockwood falling ill is
what motivates Ellen to tell the story in the first place. The prominence of disease in the novel is a
physical indicator of the outsize influence that individuals have on each other in Bront's worldgetting
too close to the wrong person can literally lead to death.
Sibling relationships
Sibling relationships are unusually strong in the Earnshaw and Linton families. Indeed, the novel's most
prominent relationshipthe love between Catherine and Heathcliffbegins when the two are raised as
siblings at Wuthering Heights. It is never entirely clear whether their love for each other is romantic or
the love of extremely close siblings; although Catherine expresses a desire to marry Heathcliff, they are
never shown having sex and their union seems more spiritual than physical. After Catherine's death,
Heathcliff gets revenge on Edgar for marrying Catherine by encouraging Isabella to marry him and then
mistreating her. Given that Emily Bront is thought to have had no friends outside of her own family
(although she was very close to her brother Branwell and her sisters Anne and Charlotte), it is perhaps
unsurprising that close sibling relationships are a driving force in her only novel.
Humanity versus nature
Bront is preoccupied with the opposition between human civilization and nature. This is represented
figuratively in her descriptions of the moors, but she also ties this conflict to specific characters. For
example, Catherine and Heathcliff resolve to grow up "as rude as savages" (46) in response to Hindley's
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abuse, and Ellen likens Hindley to a "wild-beast" (73). The natural world is frequently associated with
evil and reckless passion; when Bront describes a character as 'wild,' that character is usually cruel and
inconsideratetake for example Heathcliff, Catherine Earnshaw, and Hindley. However, Bront also
expresses a certain appreciation for the natural world; Linton and Cathy Linton's ideas of heaven both
involve peaceful afternoons in the grass and among the trees. Likewise, Hareton is actually a very noble
and gentle spirit, despite his outward lack of civilization and his description as a "rustic" (299).
About The Turn of the Screw
The Turn of the Screw was originally published as a serialized novel in Collier's Weekly. Robert J. Collier,
whose father had founded the magazine, had just become editor. At the time, James was already a well-
known author, having already published The Europeans, Daisy Miller, Washington Square, and The
Bostonians. Collier was hoping to increase his magazine's circulation and revenue and to improve its
reputation by publishing the works of a serious, well-known author like James. James himself had just
signed a long-term lease on a house in Sussex and needed the extra income to facilitate moving from his
residence in London. Thus, James agreed to Collier's proposal that he write a twelve-part ghost story in
1897.
James finished The Turn of the Screw in November 1897, and the story was published in Collier's
between January and April of 1898. The text of the story consisted of a prologue and twelve chapters in
both the serialized publication and later book versions. In Collier's, the story was further divided into five
"parts" and published in twelve installments.
James's agreement to publish his story in Collier's was done with the understanding that he would
publish a book version as well. Heinemann in England and Macmillan in New York both published book
versions of The Turn of the Screw, the text identical except that they lacked the five "parts" markings, in
the fall of 1898. In 1908, James published his complete works in what is now known as "The New York
Edition." The Turn of the Screw appeared in Volume 16, along with another novella, The Aspern Papers,
and two short stories, "The Liar" and "The Two Faces."
The Turn of the Screw is a novella, which means that it is long story, shorter than a traditional novel but
focusing on actions of greater scope than the short story. In James's 1908 publication of The Turn of the
Screw, he made a very few emendations to his text - most of which are minor semantic and punctuation
changes. One noteworthy thing that James changed in this edition is Flora's age. In the 1898 publication,
Flora is six-years-old; in 1908, she becomes eight. This may simply have resulted from James's
realization, after the first publication, that Flora speaks and acts as if she is older than six.
James wrote The Turn of the Screw at a time during which belief in ghosts and spirituality was very
prevalent in England and America. The spirituality craze had begun in 1848 when the two young Fox
sisters in New York heard unexplained rappings in their bedroom. They were able to ask questions and
receive answers in raps from what they - and the many people who became aware of their case -
believed was a dead person. That same year, a book about the "science" of ghosts, The Night Side of
Nature; or, Ghosts and Ghost Seers, by Catherine Crowe was published and became very popular.
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The Society for Psychical Research, of which James's brother and father were members, was founded in
1882. It was an offshoot of the Cambridge Ghost Club, founded in 1851 at Trinity College at Cambridge
University - where the prologue's Douglas was a student. Reading The Turn of the Screw, it is important
to remember that despite twentieth-century skepticism towards ghosts and the paranormal, many
educated nineteenth-century readers did believe in ghosts and spirituality.
On significant reason for the rise in spirituality's popularity in nineteenth-century is widespread
disillusionment with traditional religion. Unable to believe in the all-powerful and benevolent Deity
preached by the Christian church, many intellectuals of the day turned away from Christianity. James
himself was acquainted with the Concord school of transcendentalists, including Ralph Waldo Emerson.
Because of the loss of Christian faith, traditionally a comfort to those who had lost loved ones or who
faced death themselves, many people searched for a new way of understanding and accepting death.
Spirituality was not limited to the scholarly studies of William James; many of its adherents sought
solace in the possibility of communicating with dead family members and loved ones at seances - in
reassuring themselves that there was an Other Side.
James, however, emphasizes in the Preface to his 1908 edition that Peter Quint and Miss Jessel are not
ghosts as that term had come to be understood by the turn of the century. These ghosts, he says, now
the subjects of laboratory study, cannot stir "the dear old sacred terror" as old-time ghost stories could.
Modern ghosts make "poor subjects," and his ghosts, therefore, would be agents of evil - "goblins, elves,
imps, demons as loosely constructed as those of the old trials for witchcraft."
The content of James book comes from "real-life" ghostly encounters about which he had heard. In the
preface, James speaks of being one of a group on a winter afternoon in an old country house - very
much like the narrator of his prologue - when his host recalled the fragment of a tale told to him as a
young man by a lady. She did not have the whole story but could only tell him that it dealt with "a
couple of small children in an out-of-the-way place, to whom the spirits of certain bad' servants, dead
in the employ of the house, were believed to have appeared with the design of getting hold' of them."
James said he remembered the story as a worthwhile subject to be built upon when the proposal from
Collier's came.
In addition to the ghost stories of which James himself wrote and spoke of being aware, a number of
critics have proposed additional literary and real-life influences on the subject matter in The Turn of the
Screw. These include works of nineteenth-century English fiction, including Dickens's Oliver Twist,
Charlotte Bront's Jane Eyre, and Mrs. Gaskell's "The Old Nurse's Story," as well as other literature,
including Henry Fielding's Amelia and Goethe's "Erlknig." Other influences include a nineteenth-
century medical text which discusses governesses, suggested by critic William J. Scheick, Freud's patient
"Miss Lucy R.," suggested by Oscar Cargill, and a medical book about temporal lobe epilepsy, suggested
by J. Purdon Martin.
In his 1908 preface, James also speaks of complaints that his governess is not "sufficiently
characterised.'" He argues that no good writing comes of tackling all difficulties but that good writing
instead results from focusing on a limited number of elements - in his case, the ghosts and the
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implication of evil. It seems surprising, then, that so much of the criticism and discussion surrounding
the book since its publication centered around the governess and her consciousness.
Before James's time, most fiction was written from the author's point-of-view. S/he described the
characters' actions and told the reader their significance and meaning. The fiction of Dickens and of the
Bronts, for example, follows this model. James's contribution to fiction included his work on point-of-
view. Many of James's works are characterized by a central intelligence - that is, a character through
whose eyes the reader sees the story. The reader, therefore, responds not as an objective viewer but as
a participant in the story. Reading The Turn of the Screw from the point-of-view of the governess, the
reader has a limited knowledge and perception of the events occurring at Bly and must trust - perhaps
to his or her peril - the judgment of the governess.
Another significant aspect of James's novel is his use of the confidant character. The use of the confidant
precedes far back into literature. In a novel in which we have limited access to the main character's
mind - as we will until the establishment of stream-of-consciousness technique in the twentieth-century
- the confidant character gives us an extra chance to see what the main character is thinking. Thus, we
learn about the governess's thoughts and assumptions through her conversations with her confidant,
Mrs. Grose. Here, as with point-of-view, James challenges the reader. We cannot be certain that the
governess tells the truth to her confidant, nor can we be sure that Mrs. Grose does not have her own
agenda in listening to the governess's thoughts.
In the decades following the publication of The Turn of the Screw, it was generally accepted that the
governess was a benevolent character, fighting against evil ghosts to protect Flora and Miles. In 1919,
Henry Beers mentioned that he had always thought the governess to be mad but little thought was
given to the comment. Swarthmore English professor Harold Goddard wrote an essay arguing the same
point around 1920, but it was not published until his daughter found it after his death in 1957. The true
originator of the theory, therefore, is Edna Kenton, who published an essay in 1924, suggesting the story
is more about the governess's troubled mind than about the ghosts and children. However, Edmund
Wilson's 1934 essay "The Ambiguity of Henry James" has been the most influential of all. Drawing
heavily on Freudian theory, Wilson argues that the governess's sexual repression leads her to
neurotically imagine and interpret the ghosts.
In nearly all writing since Wilson's landmark essay, critics have been forced to decide whether the
governess is mad or if there are ghosts. Those arguing for the ghosts emphasize that James, in his 1908
preface, called the book a "fairy-tale pure and simple" and that none of his other ghost stories are
considered hallucinations. Feminist critics have recently picked up this thread, suggesting that the
assumption the governess is a sexual hysteric, imagining the ghosts, would not have been made were
the narrator a man. Such readings see the framing of the story by what is presumably - though not
explicitly - a male narrator, and by the definitely male Douglas, who undercut the governess's authority
but emphasizing his inexperience and youth as expressing distrust in the female narrator.
More recently, postmodernism has led critics toward a less combatant approach toward The Turn of the
Screw. Many critics have taken to accepting the ambiguity in James's writing and acknowledging that
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nearly every incident can be interpreted to prove the governess is mad and to prove that there are
ghosts. In making this statement, critics draw attention away from this irresolvable controversy and
towards the language James uses to create this much-read and much-interpreted text.

About Heart of Darkness
A novella, Heart of Darkness is Joseph Conrads most famous work and a foundational text on the
subject of colonialism. Heart of Darkness is based in part on a trip that Conrad took through modern-day
Congo during his years as a sailor. He captained a ship that sailed down the Congo River. Conrad gave up
this mission because an illness forced him to return to England, where he worked on his novella almost a
decade later.
The presence of ill characters in the novella illustrates the fact that Heart of Darkness is, at least in part,
autobiographical. Many speculations have been made about the identity of various characters, such as
the Manager, or Kurtz, most recently and perhaps most accurately in Adam Hochschilds King Leopolds
Ghost. But the geographical, as well as biographical, vagueness of the novel--which is one of its most
artistic, haunting characteristics--make it almost impossible to pin down these details for sure.
Heart of Darkness first appeared in a three-part series in Blackwood Magazine in 1899. It was published
as a complete novella in 1904. It has since been referred to by many authors and poets. Its most famous
lines are both from Kurtz: exterminate the brutes, and Kurtz's deathbed utterance, the horror! The
horror!
Francis Ford Coppola directed the film version, Apocalypse Now, in which the action occurs in Vietnam
in 1979.
Major Themes
Groupthink and Stock Characters
This novella is unusual in that the author does not name most of the characters in his book, other than
assigning them titles that describe their larger organizational goals. It is not quite an allegory, while he
does allow them some individual characteristics of speech and dress, but they are for the most part
stand-ins for larger groups. The obvious exception is Marlow, and his reaction against the colonial
structures supported by people with names like the Manager and the Lawyer place him slightly
outside this system. Groupthink is evident in named groups like the pilgrims and the natives. These
groups have a few outstanding members, such as the native woman of arresting beauty or the red-
haired pilgrim drunk with bloodthirstiness, but they mostly move together, make the same decisions,
and have the same intentions. Conrad critiques such patterns, in which individual in a society think like
other members of their group without stopping to think for themselves. Although Marlow is by no
means a heroic character, Conrad does illustrate the need for individual thought by singling him out.

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Primitivism
As the crew make their way up the river, they are traveling into the heart of darkness. The
contradiction, however, is that Marlow also feels as if he were traveling back in time. When Conrad
wrote this story, scientists were learning that Africa is the seat of human civilization, and this knowledge
is reflected in the fact that the trees are (almost prehistorically) enormous on the route down the river.
The paradox of the novel, however, is that by traveling backwards in time, the crew do not move closer
to the innocence and purity of the "noble savage" but farther away from it. Words like pestilent and
sordid are used again and again to describe the natives and their land. Conrad seems to claim that the
Christian belief that prehistory was untouched by obscurity or evil is a fallacy. Instead, there is the
horror. In contrast, it seems, is the more advanced civilization of the colonizers and visitors.
Uncertainty
Nothing in this novella is described in very concrete terms. Shores are hazy. Land looks like a spine
sticking out from a mans back but is not described in topographical terms. Marlow is obsessed with
Kurtz before he even meets him, without a clear idea why. A sense of danger pervades the entire trip,
and it is mostly dictated by uncertainty. The natives do not seem inherently threatening. On one
occasion, they let fly a series of arrows, but these even look ineffectual to Marlow. They are threatening
because they might be poisoned. Similarly, Marlow has no clear idea of what the natives might do to
him if Kurtz gave them free rein, and it is possible that this uncertainty increases his fear. Kurtz himself is
an uncertain figure, ruled as he is by two separate impulses, the noble and the destructive. At the
beginning of the novella, the reader perceives that the former is his dominant (or only) characteristic.
But with vicious scrawlings on his manuscript and his ruthlessness in extracting ivory from the land,
Kurtz proves himself the latter. Marlows adherence to Kurtz until the end confuses the matter; one
could judge him one way or the other. The idea of "darkness" expresses the theme of uncertainty in the
novella.
Imperial Authority
Whatever the conditions in Africa may be, all of the characters agree that they are different from those
of Europe. There is a feeling of anything-goes vigilantism that shifts the balance of power from the
stewards in a civilized state (police, doctors, bureaucrats) to whoever is most threatening. Kurtz is
physically quite a weak man, but he maintains enormous sway over the native population through his
understanding of their language and his cultural and communication skills. He exploits their appreciation
of him as an Other. Marlows men use a much more simple means of gaining authority, namely,
firearms. This is the tragedy of imperialism in that the arrival of the white man heralds a new order, but
in the creation of that order, they retain the tools and the authority. Black men in this book first appear
as members of a chain gang, and they gain little power after that scene.
Religion
Although there is controversy over whether Conrad is critiquing colonialism or not, it is clear that he is
critiquing religion. The two groups in the novel, the pilgrims and the natives, are linked by having
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religious beliefs, and the pilgrims seem at least as bloodthirsty as the natives. The rite in the woods that
Marlow describes seems alien but certainly no more dangerous than the ambush. One of the seemingly
admirable characteristics of Kurtz, as presented by Conrad, is that he seems just as compelled by African
religion as by Christianity but seems beholden to neither. Marlow genuinely admires his ability to
independently critique religions. He may not agree with Kurtzs evaluation, but he respects Kurtz's ability
to have his own opinions in the face of the various religious traditions he encounters.
Jewelry
Jewelry is a major presence in Heart of Darkeness. To begin with, it is the main reason for the presence
of the colonists in Africa: they are there to strip the country of its ivory. There is a play on colors
between the black people and this white valuable good. The most prestigious member of the African
community and one of the only characters to be afforded individual characteristics by Conrad is the
woman who is presumably Kurtzs mistress. Her first appearance is impressive; she is covered in bangles
and other barbarous ornaments. Her aspect has both attractiveness and ferocity, and she is the only
character in the novella who wears jewelry. Despite it being the raison dtre of the novella, the other
characters have little interest in jewelry, showing an almost Marxist detachment from the good they
harvest.
Illness
Illness is a major factor in this novella. It appears in physical and mental forms. Marlow is hired to
replace a man who committed suicide, and another instance of suicide is announced by a somber
Swedish man. The first thing that Marlow does upon being hired is go to the doctor, who checks both his
mental and physical health and provides a very gloomy prognosis. The specter of ill health, or of ones
body not standing up to the conditions, is a constant specter in the novella. The mental health issue is
particular to Heart of Darkness, while the issue of wider health continues in the tradition of Victorian
novels, in which men often travel to Africa only to come down with exotic diseases. In the end, it seems
that Marlow is more mentally than physically taxed, while Kurtz is clearly both.
About Mrs. Dalloway
In Jacob's Room, the novel preceding Mrs. Dalloway, Virginia Woolf works with many of the same
themes she later expands upon in Mrs. Dalloway. To Mrs. Dalloway, she added the theme of insanity. As
Woolf stated, "I adumbrate here a study of insanity and suicide; the world seen by the sane and the
insane side by side." However, even the theme that would lead Woolf to create a double for Clarissa
Dalloway can be viewed as a progression of other similar ideas cultivated in Jacob's Room. Woolf's next
novel, then, was a natural development from Jacob's Room, as well as an expansion of the short stories
she wrote before deciding to make Mrs. Dalloway into a full novel.
The Dalloways had been introduced in the novel, The Voyage Out, but Woolf presented the couple in a
harsher light than she did in later years. Richard is domineering and pompous. Clarissa is dependent and
superficial. Some of these qualities remain in the characters of Mrs. Dalloway but the two generally
appear much more reasonable and likeable. Clarissa was modeled after a friend of Woolf's named Kitty
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Maxse, whom Woolf thought to be a superficial socialite. Though she wanted to comment upon the
displeasing social system, Woolf found it difficult at times to respond to a character like Clarissa. She
discovered a greater amount of depth to the character of Clarissa Dalloway in a series of short stories,
the first of which was titled, "Mrs. Dalloway in Bond Street," published in 1923. The story would serve as
an experimental first chapter to Mrs. Dalloway. A great number of similar short stories followed and
soon the novel became inevitable. As critic Hermione Lee details, "On 14 October 1922 [Woolf] recorded
that 'Mrs. Dalloway has branched into a book,' but it was sometime before [Woolf] could find the
necessary balance between 'design and substance.'"
Within the next couple years, Woolf became inspired by a 'tunneling' writing process, allowing her to dig
'caves' behind her characters and explore their souls. As Woolf wrote to painter Jacques Raverat, it is
"precisely the task of the writer to go beyond the 'formal railway line of sentence' and to show how
people 'feel or think or dream...all over the place.'" In order to give Clarissa more substance, Woolf
created Clarissa's memories. Woolf used characters from her own past in addition to Kitty Maxse, such
as Madge Symonds, on whom she based Sally Seton. Woolf held a similar type of affectionate devotion
for Madge at the age of fifteen as a young Clarissa held for Sally.
The theme of insanity was close to Woolf's past and present. She originally planned to have Clarissa die
or commit suicide at the end of the novel but finally decided that she did want this manner of closure
for Clarissa. As critic Manly Johnson elaborates, "The original intention to have Clarissa kill herself 'in the
pattern of Woolf's own intermittent despair' was rejected in favor of a 'dark double' who would take
that act upon himself. Creating Septimus Smith led directly to Clarissa's mystical theory of vicarious
death and shared existence, saving the novel from a damaging balance on the side of darkness." Still,
the disassociation of crippling insanity from the character of Clarissa Dalloway did not completely save
Woolf from the pain of recollection. Woolf's husband and close friends compared her periods of insanity
to a manic depression quite similar to the episodes experienced by Septimus. Woolf also included
frustratingly impersonal doctor types in Bradshaw and Holmes that reflected doctors she had visited
throughout the years.
As the novel focused mainly on the character of Clarissa Dalloway, Woolf changed the name of the novel
to Mrs. Dalloway from its more abstract working title, The Hours, before publishing it. Woolf struggled
to combine many elements that impinged on her sensibility as she wrote the novel. The title, Mrs.
Dalloway, best suited her attempts to join them together. As Woolf commented, "In this book I have
almost too many ideas. I want to give life and death, sanity and insanity; I want to criticize the social
system, and to show it at work, at its most intense." Furthermore, she hoped to respond to the stagnant
state of the novel, with a consciously 'modern' novel. Many critics believe she succeeded. The novel was
published in 1925, and received much acclaim.



13

Major Themes
The sea as symbolic of life
The ebb and flow of life. When the image is portrayed as being harmonized, the sea represents a great
confidence and comfort. Yet, when the image is presented as disjointed or uncomfortable, it symbolizes
disassociation, loneliness, and fear.
Doubling
Many critics describe Septimus as Clarissa's doppelganger, the alternate persona, the darker, more
internal personality compared to Clarissa's very social and singular outlook. Woolf's use of the
doppelganger, Septimus, portrays a side to Clarissa's personality that becomes absorbed by fear and
broken down by society and a side of society that has failed to survive the War. The doubling portrays
the polarity of the self and exposes the positive-negative relationship inherent in humanity. It also
illustrates the opposite phases of the idea of life.
The intersection of time and timelessness
Woolf creates a new novelistic structure in Mrs. Dalloway wherein her prose has blurred the distinction
between dream and reality, between the past and present. An authentic human being functions in this
manner, simultaneously flowing from the conscious to the unconscious, from the fantastic to the real,
and from memory to the moment.
Social commentary
Woolf also strived to illustrate the vain artificiality of Clarissa's life and her involvement in it. The detail
given and thought provoked in one day of a woman's preparation for a party, a simple social event,
exposes the flimsy lifestyle of England's upper classes at the time of the novel. Even though Clarissa is
effected by Septimus' death and is bombarded by profound thoughts throughout the novel, she is also a
woman for whom a party is her greatest offering to society. The thread of the Prime Minister
throughout, the near fulfilling of Peter's prophecy concerning Clarissa's role, and the characters of the
doctors, Hugh Whitbread, and Lady Bruton as compared to the tragically mishandled plight of Septimus,
throw a critical light upon the social circle examined by Woolf.
The world of the sane and the insane side by side
Woolf portrays the sane grasping for significant and substantial connections to life, living among those
who have been cut off from such connections and who suffer because of the improper treatment they,
henceforth, receive. The critic, Ruotolo, excellently develops the idea behind the theme: "Estranged
from the sanity of others, rooted to the pavement,' the veteran [Septimus] asks for what purpose' he
is present. Virginia Woolf's novel honors and extends his question. He perceives a beauty in existence
that his age has almost totally disregarded; his vision of new life... is a source of joy as well as madness.
Unfortunately, the glimpse of beauty that makes Septimus less forlorn is anathema to an age that
14

worships like Septimus' inhuman doctor, Sir William Bradshaw, the twin goddesses Proportion' and
Conversion.'"
About Ulysses
Ulysses, a Modernist reconstruction of Homer's epic The Odyssey, was James Joyce's first epic-length
novel. The Irish writer had already published a collection of short stories entitled Dubliners, as well as A
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, the semi-autobiographical novella, whose protagonist, Stephen
Dedalus, reappears in Ulysses. Immediately hailed as a work of genius, Ulysses is still considered to be
the greatest of Joyce's literary accomplishments and his first two works anticipated what was to come in
Ulysses. The novel was written over the span of several years, during which Joyce continued to live in
self-imposed exile from his native Ireland. Ulysses was published in Paris in the year of 1922--the same
year in which T. S. Eliot published his widely regarded poem, "The Waste Land."
Within English literature, the "Modernist" tradition includes most of the British and American literary
figures writing between the two world wars, and James Joyce is considered among the likes of T. S. Eliot
and Virginia Woolf: standard-bearers who initiated the Modernist "revolution" against the Victorian
"excesses of civilization." Even today, Ulysses is widely regarded as the most "revolutionary" literary
efforts of the twentieth century if only for Joyce's "stream of consciousness" technique. In his efforts to
create a modern hero, Joyce returned to classical myth only to deconstruct a Greek warrior into a
parody of the "Wandering Jew." Joyce's hero, Leopold Bloom, must suffer the emotional traumas of
betrayal and loss, while combating the anti-Semitism of 1904 Dublin. In place of Greek stoicism and
power, Joyce set a flawed and endearing human being. And while Homer's The Odyssey only touched
upon "epic," dignified themes, Joyce devoted considerably detailed passages to the most banal and
taboo human activities: gluttony, defecation, urination, dementia, masturbation, voyeurism, alcoholism,
sado-masochism and coprophilia-and most of these depictions included the hero, Bloom.
Joyce saw Ulysses as the confluence of his two previous works. From Dubliners, Joyce borrowed the
fatalistic and naturalistic depictions of a gritty, urban center. Ulysses is impressive for its geography
alone, charting almost twenty hours of Dublin's street wandering, "bar-hopping" and marine commerce.
Even though Joyce took alternate residences in Switzerland, Italy and France, he was able to paint
Dublin from his almost perfect memory. While Leopold Bloom is the major character of the work, Joyce
spends considerable time focusing on Stephen Dedalus, the protagonist of his first work. It is through
Stephen, that Joyce is able to debate the contentious religious and political issues that dominated the
novella. Unsurprisingly, Joyce's portrays Dublin as the semi-complicit victim of Britain's aggression and
the Roman Catholic Church's oppression. Joyce continues his argument as a non-conformist, that the
Roman Catholic Church's structure facilitated corruption and more generally contributed to the
alienation and rot of the human soul as opposed to its uplift.
At the same time, the Irish population was governed by the British and kept under close watch. The
British occupying force humiliated Irish patriots, and this permanent military presence was one of the
principal obstacles on the path towards Irish "Home Rule." Despite Joyce's resentment towards Britain's
colonial outlook, his most dramatic political evolution since Portrait, is his rejection of Ireland's nascent
15

nationalist fervor. The patriots and zealots of Ulysses are invariably buffoons or villains. Frequently they
are drunk, and their national agendas usually feature misogynist and anti-Semitic corollaries. Most
notably, Joyce satirizes the campaigned "Renaissance" of the Irish language and we should remember
that Ulysses accomplished the double act of establishing Joyce as the premier stylist of the English
language while giving Ireland a national bard and epic.
But Ulysses' ascension into the literary canon was not a simple one even though the novel sold well in
Paris. Critics heralded Joyce's genius and wit, though the book's incredible opacity, numerous
deceptions and tedious allusions were a source of contention. In Ulysses, Joyce attempted to replicate
the thoughts and activities of genuine human beings, but Joyce's "outhouse humor" even drew criticism
from literary familiars like Virginia Woolf. The allegedly "pornographic" novel was immediately banned
in the United Kingdom as well as the United States. The frank sexuality of the "Penelope" episode and
Bloom's sado-masochistic "hallucinations" in the "Circe" chapter elicited the strongest reactions. Despite
the moral indignation, Ulysses was a smuggled commodity and Joyce's literary stature rose considerably
among literary communities on both sides of the Atlantic. Nonetheless, it was well over a decade before
a Random House court victory initiated the first American publications of the novel, which became
available in Britain two years later.