modern women.
II. Comparative Reading Wielded Intertextuality In this part, these two books will be comparative read utilized the intertextuality theory and the intertextual parts will be distinct. The analysis will refer to the images, symbols, plots, speeches, characters and themes. The intertextual reading will also relate to the authors themselves, both Wolf and Cunningham, the behind stories of these two novels. Processes of analyses will firstly focus on intertextuality in narrow sense then in wild sense, which incarnate the steps of intertextual dialogue—from text, subject to culture.
2.1 Intertextual Reinterpretations in Symbols 2.1.1 Flower
Flowers and floral images play an important role in both Mrs. Dalloway and The Hours. They are described for several times, and are associated with different events and moods. Flowers have long been regarded as symbols of vigor and vitality.
[9] P1
“Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself.”This is
the first line of Mrs. Dalloway of Virginia Wolf. Clarissa Dalloway starts her day on the journey for buying flowers. Arriving at the Mulberry’s the florists, she finds “There were flowers: delphiniums, sweet peas, bunches of lilac; and carnations, masses of carnations. There were roses;
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there were irises. Ah yes—so she breathed in the earthy garden sweet smell as she stood talking to Miss Pym?”[9] P8 She is brisk and energetic surrounding by flowers. And Sally Seton, the old friend of Clarissa Dalloway, depicts Elizabeth Dalloway, the daughter of Mrs. Dalloway, as “a lily by the side of a pool” [9] P158. Sally Seton also looks for peaceful and harmonious atmosphere in flowers as “she often went into her garden and got from her flowers a peace which men and women never give her.”[9] P158
“There are still the flowers to buy.”[10] P9 And this is the first line in the first episode of The Hours: Mrs. Dalloway who refers to the heroine in this episode—Clarissa Vaughan. She begins her day with setting out to buy flowers, too. When gets the flowers shop, she greets and kisses the woman who works in the florist’s shop. “‘Hello,’ Clarissa says. Her lips touch Barbara’s skin and the moment is, suddenly, unexpectedly perfect. She stands in dim, deliciously cool little shop that is like a temple, solemn in its abundance, its bunches of dried flowers hanging from the ceiling and its rack of ribbons trailing against the back
[10] P24wall.” She cannot help recalling her child hood, the earlier days. She
is , psychologically, transcending the time and space, and “Now she is here, in the flower shop, where poppies drift white and apricot on long, hairy stems”.[10] P25 Here, the flourishing flower has its fragile characteristic, just like the past Golden Days, the youth hood, there are all beautiful
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short, like words written in water.
When Clarissa Vaughan pushes open the florist’s door, “which always sticks slightly, and walks in, a tall woman, broad-shouldered amid the bunches of roses and hyacinths, the mossy flats of paperwhites, the orchids trembling on their stalks”,[10] P24 she is enveloped by a sense of freshness and familiarity. Ross are the flowers that Richard buys for Clarissa in Wolf’s Mrs. Dalloway and hyacinths（风信子） are also repeatedly compared to there daughter Elizabeth in the story. In this way Cunningham creates an intertextual tie with Wolf’s work. Flowers, to some extents, are indication of passions of life and motivation for survival. Even after Richard’s death, Clarissa enters the apartment with Laura, “the flowers, of course, remain—brilliant and innocent, exploding from vases in lavish, random profusion”[10] P214. Despite the death people of some people life for the majority is still continuing. It is also the reason responsible for Virginia Wolf’s frequent attempt to escape from Richmond, which is a peaceful place of flowers and hedges. Peacefulness kills creative artist.
Flowers, when being mentioned today, will easily remind us of something as beautiful as peace, like love. People shy or reserved, then they buy flowers to show their deep and silent love. As Richard Dalloway buys roses for his wife because he is too shy to declare his feelings, so Dan buys flowers for Laura and Sally buys flowers for Clarissa Vaughan.
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Maybe Dan and Sally have some differences with Richard, they are not difficult in telling“I love you” to their spouse, instead, saying is “easy enough” and even become “almost ordinary, being said not on anniversaries and birthdays but spontaneously, in bed or at the kitchen sink or even in cabs within hearing of foreign drivers who believe women should walk three paces behind their husbands”[10] P182 . When Sally, a modern lesbian who is never stingy with her affection, wants to “say something more”, the flower stand bumps into her sights. She quickly buys these roses “just beginning to open”. After entering the apartment Sally hands the flowers to her and for a moment they are both simply and entirely happy. Dan is treated unfairly in his love, but he still feel happy, to love a people who can not cherish his love is such a hard job, and in order to let Laura Brown to see, and feel and to be touched by his love, he buys those flowers.
Besides of those,“flower‖ is an important symbol in Wolf’s work, and its function of decoration reminds readers that, just like flowers, in a society in which men hold the domination, women are the accessory of men and are located in marginalized places. While the heroine says ―she would buy the flowers herself‖, this line embodies the self-awareness of women: they are not satisfied in being marginalized and they are energetically searching their own values. ―Flower‖ in Cunningham’s texts inherits and strengthens the symbolic meaning of it in its pre-text or
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background-text—The Hours.
Briefly speaking, the analysis of the symbol“flower”can utilize the following ways of intertextual reading in narrow sense: quotation (e.g. the quotation of “Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself” in second episode Mrs. Brown, the quotation of plot “buying flowers”); the pastiche (e.g. the sentence mentioned above turns out being rewritten as “There are still the flowers to buy”). In addition, the parodies, which belongs to a category of intertextuality in wide sense, of symbol “flower” are more shinning than what mentioned above.
Both Clarissa Vaughan and Clarissa Dalloway like flowers, and the former herself is like flowers in full bloom, her association with people, her strong vitality for life shine bright; the later, though weak in physical states and lives a ordinary life, she has great interest in passional life (e.g. her admiration of Lady Bexborough who holds a charity bazaar), just like flowers make great efforts to bloom, though fade and fall in a short time. While Mrs. Wolf in The Hours who is writing Mrs. Dalloway, the flowers is her inspiration, then she writes the sentence “Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself”; also the rose “deathbed for the thrush”
[10] P118
appears as a symbol of an imprisonment for Mrs. Wolf. The flimsy
flower is the representation of Richard’s frail physical and mental state and also an analogy of death. The same “Sally”, as what mentioned above, Sally Seton searches for peace in flowers and Sally in The Hours
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