The Ethics of Finitude and the Reconciliation of Eros and Thanatos Clarissa s Psychological Transition from Denial to Acceptance of her Instinctive Drives in Virginia Woolf s Mrs. Dalloway

Virginia Woolf has brought the contradictory concepts of life and death together in Mrs. Dalloway (1925). She has demonstrated ‘joy’ in Clarissa’s party and ‘pain’ in Septimus’s shattered life. These characters both challenge the meaning of life and death as well. While Septimus questions the authority of men like Dr. Holmes and Dr. Bradshaw through his suicide in order to be liberated, Clarissa attempts to deny the pain of her loneliness and senility through holding her party. The plots interfere each other as Lady Bradshaw talks about Septimus’s death in the middle of Clarissa’s party. This event helps Clarissa to balance her inner instincts – Eros and Thanatos. Clarissa considers Septimus’s death as an aesthetical beautiful reaction and a way of communication, liberation and salvation. By the concept of finitude, not only she learns to fear no more the difficulties in life as there is no pain is everlasting so, but also she understands she has to seize the day and enjoy because life is short and human beings only live for once. Therefore, as she goes back to her party with balance between her life and death instincts, she denies no more her pains but accepts them and in the meanwhile tires to enjoy practically everything in life. Therefore, at the end of the novel, she feels safe and released. In the other words, through considering Septimus’s death, she feels catharsis.

کلیدواژه ها:

Eros ، Thanatos ، joy ، pain ، Catharsis