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  • Essay / The Public and Private Sphere in Mrs. Dalloway and The Color Purple

    The “public” and “private” spheres are often seen as two separate entities, both representing opposing positions of freedom or social restraint. While the public realm is the more conforming and socially hegemonic of the two, the private is associated with an invisible process of identification, allowing private thoughts to remain free. Despite this, the authors of Mrs. Dalloway and The Color Purple attempt to reconcile the two spheres, developing initially private thoughts into the public domain in their texts by completely removing private life. Although the public promotion of restricted figures demonstrates the authors' success in shifting focus from the private to the public, some concerns arise about whether reconciliation is truly achieved or whether it can even be achieved. While both authors view the move to a public society as a path to liberation, the violation of privacy exposes the personal views of the authors and characters to public criticism. The complete destruction of the private sphere – and of what it represents – then appears to be the only way to progress in the public space, since the characters of Walker and Woolf adhere to the conventions of the public sphere to free themselves from the alienation of the private. sphere.Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”?Get the original essay In an attempt to reconcile the public and private realms, Woolf violates the mental and personal privacy of her protagonists to integrate her characters into a public society that depends on sociability and union. The free indirect speech of the narrative removes the intimacy of thought, as it provides no separation between individual thoughts and vocalized speech, instead portraying the narrative as a shared voice. When an important car passed people in the street, “no one [in the crowd] knew whose face had been seen”; the use of “nobody” aligns the group as sharing a common perception and integrates its protagonist, Clarissa Dalloway, into the voice of society when she “comes to the window.” This causes her to lose her individual character as she enters into a shared narrative. The previous question asks which car the group saw – “Was it that of the Prince of Wales, the Queen, the Prime Minister?” – is then constructed as a community interrogation, which removes the intimacy of individual thought to place Clarissa immediately in the public sphere of thought. A mental violation is created, displacing all private matters – as the ultimate expression of Septimus' mentality, it is said. to share with Clarissa – to public affairs, which reflects Woolf's feeling at this time. While private thoughts regarding her depression were hidden in her journal, where she wrote, “My depression is a feeling of harassment,” this illustrates how much she felt attacked. by society, as reflected in Septimus' publicized mental illness. Therefore, an indication of Woolf's ability to reconcile the public and private spheres may begin to be seen as being hampered by her own alienation from public society. mental intimacy in The Color Purple initially appears as a positive means of transferring the otherwise hidden voice of its main character into the public sphere as part of Celie's mental healing. However, like Woolf, concerns arise that the violation of privacy is the only way to allow her protagonist's voice to exist within society. The use of an epistolary narrative allows Célie's voiceto be transferred through another mode of communication, since she addresses "no one other than God" due to the threat her father made to her before the story begins to remain isolated from the Company. As readers of Celie's private letters, it is we who force Celie's voice into the media, thus reconciling her with the public sphere, which is reflected in the plot progression, where Celie begins to "write to [Nettie ] instead of God,” which could be seen as Celie finding harmony with a public society. However, this simultaneously implies that the reader violates their mental privacy in order to achieve public unification. Additionally, Celie's private letters were not meant to be seen, as demonstrated by the confessional tone Walker uses when Celie expresses opinions, such as "I never got used to it, although Walker said than “If”. the knowledge of my condition is all the freedom I receive from a “freedom movement”, it is better than ignorance”, defending the black female voice in America, her approach to reconciling this unheard voice with the public domain leads to a violation of privacy. , who, like Woolf, fails to achieve reconciliation. Throughout Mrs. Dalloway, the protagonist's movement into the public realm demonstrates the way in which social emancipation, not just the abolition of mental and personal privacy, is used to reconcile the private with the public. Woolf depicts Clarissa's liberation through her use of empowering language during her presentation. Clarissa is written as "an indescribable pause" and "a suspense (...) before Big Ben strikes", the importance of her position reflected through the anticipation emphasized in the words "pause" and "suspense", which are seen figuratively pausing "Big Ben" time. As the central point of the story, Clarissa's social position is important in the narrative to illustrate the reconciliation of women's previously private role with the post-war public position they rise to. Her importance as a woman in the face of societal pressures was important to Woolf, who knew how important it was for women to enter the public world. Post-war society of the 1920s saw many women attempting to remain in a work process that no longer needed them after the war ended. Woolf constructs a society that pushes Clarissa into the private realm, at odds with her protagonist's public social position, as opposed to her professional position. Social emancipation fails to liberate women into a business-based public realm, from which women have once again been alienated. It therefore suggests that the public and the private are always antagonistic and not completely reconciled. Walker's establishment of a public position for his wife's protagonist seems more emancipatory than Woolf's, as the liberation of the novel's oppressive male figure, Mr.___, allows Celie to reconcile her private ambitions with the public realm . The fate of female characters is generally presented in opposition to man and society, predetermining their lives to be contained within a suppressed private sphere. Célie’s speech: “I am pore, I am black, (…) a voice says to everyone who listens. But I'm Here,” depicts a diversion from this restricted private category as a shift to public activism, with “I'm Here” asserting the supremacy of speech and a voice opposing the pattern of suppression of women in society . Walker's attempt to reconcile the private with the public can therefore be seen as a consequence of the emancipation of women. However, Walker's efforts cannotcan still only be defined as an attempt at reconciliation, insofar as Celie's new assertiveness places her individual voice within a patriarchal public society at the expense of her independent femininity. If her release is a response to the men, Mr.___'s actions being the origin of her speech, Walker's activist voice that appears in the character of Célie does not appear to reconcile private thoughts with the public. Instead, his voice, still hidden in his letter, remains opposed to the patriarchal public society. The two authors also move the private towards the public in an attempt at reconciliation by diffusing the private sphere of the family home into society. In Mrs. Dalloway, Woolf exploits family life as a public and social affair, removing the intimacy attached to family life and once again suggesting that the destruction of intimacy goes beyond reconciliation. The character of Miss Kilman is important in the novel in recognizing the decadence of the family unit, as the absence of parental figures leaves Clarissa's daughter in the hands of a "prehistoric monster". The vague description of his "collapsed" appearance emphasizes the bad state that social reconciliation has brought to the family and implies that the dragging of the two kingdoms toward reconciliation has led to this consequence. Additionally, due to the demands of Clarissa's social position, Miss Kilman adopts the role of mother figure to Clarissa's daughter Elizabeth, transforming her into a pawn in their struggle for social dominance. The way Clarissa speaks of the party to her daughter “with violent anguish” shows how the destruction of family intimacy leads to competition and violent tendencies, which fail to reconcile the public and the private. Snaith notes how Woolf struggled to harmonize her own public and private lives as separate entities. Woolf's selfless nature in order to obtain publication at Bloomsbury denied her freedom within her private family endeavors, which is reflected in Clarissa's establishment of her social position compromising her relationship with Elizabeth. Therefore, while the shift from family position to the public sphere is presented as an attempt to reconcile the two spheres, the opposite effect occurs and private life diminishes. Walker explores how family life is essential to the public establishment, unlike Woolf, as Celie's private information about children led to the family's non-existence, but the family was re-established after the fate of his family was made public. Celie's discovery of Nettie's letters and the knowledge they gave her about children containing a "resemblance" to her, emphasizing a physical connection, provides a reconciliation between private information and knowledge public. The movement of the family into the public sphere can then be suggested as a successful reconciliation in The Color Purple. However, the novel's archetypal family unit seems disjointed, perhaps due to the mayor's public position, implying that a reconciliation between private family life and the public sphere has not been achieved. Similar to Elizabeth in Woolf's novel, Eleanor Jane turns to a stranger, Sofia, who has gained access to the family through their public establishment, for emotional maternal support, because she "felt something" for her and not for her own mother. This suggests that reconciling private family life with the public domain ultimately destroys the foundations of a good family unit due to the public connection with society. Walker herself describes this as a shift in social culture over time...