". . . providing it is a cheerful lie."

I know a lot of people hate - and I mean  hate  - Lady Brett Ashley. And I can understand why. She seems to have little regard for other people's feelings. She uses Jake for her own personal gain. She's irresponsible and careless. But I think this is a very superficial way to look at her character. Overall, the level of scrutiny leveled at Brett seems unfair to me. Since she is the main female character, she is especially exposed to hard judgement. But this is a book where all of the characters are, in one way or another, terrible people. Jake, Bill, and Mike all display sexist, homophobic, racist, and anti-semitic behavior. (Brett, comparatively, does not.) Cohn's main crime is being tone deaf, but he also displays some nasty sexism throughout the book. But we do not and indeed should not immediately accuse these male characters of being one-dimensional villains. They obviously all have depth. Yet there appears to be a strong sentiment that Brett is nothing more th...

While reading Mrs. Dalloway I found myself wondering about Septimus Smith's agency. Distinguishing how much of a person's life is determined by their environment versus their personal choices can be difficult, but I thought it'd be an interesting question to explore - especially in the context of Mrs. Dalloway , since one of its major themes is how one's surroundings - particularly society's expectations - can drastically affect someone's life. We can see a lot of Septimus's character from the descriptions of him pre-war. He pursues his passions. He writes poetry and reads Shakespeare. He's rather sensitive, and keenly attuned to his surroundings. So why does he fight in the war? Certainly one reason is that he must; society needs him to fight. But perhaps he also wanted to prove himself - we know he was quite proud that he felt nothing after Evans' death. In that case, is it a display of agency, that he pursued his own goal, or is it yet anothe...