"Away and away the aeroplane shot, till it was nothing but a bright spark; an aspiration; a concentration; a symbol (so it seemed to Mr. Bentley, vigorously rolling his strip of turf at Greenwich) of man's soul; of his determination, thought Mr. Bentley, sweeping round the cedar tree, to get outside his body, beyond his house, by means of thought, Einstein, speculation, mathematics, the Mendelian theory-away the aeroplane shot." (Woolf 28)
Virginia Woolf was a very science-oriented thinker. In her book, Mrs. Dalloway, she incorporates this way of thinking by alluding to Einstein, who was an extremely pure thinker. Woolf, through her main character Clarissa, questions the idea of God, and embraces the disembodiment from this idea that Einstein also embraces. As a scientist, Einstein changed the ideas people had of time and space, and composed concepts to support his reasoning. In the passage above, Mr. Bentley seems to be extremely humanized and grounded, simply on his turf at Greenwich, where as Einstein and his ideas seem to soar through the sky like the aeroplane.
Woolf, Virginia. Mrs. Dalloway. New York: Harcourt, Brace and, 1925. Print.
No comments:
Post a Comment