Stefania's blog :)

Brett is a particularily interesting character in The Sun Also Rises  because of the way that she challenges our existing assumptions and gut reactions to non-monogamy.  Most of us were raised to limit "good" relationships to monogomous (undoubtedly linked to religious values in America). This is not too surprising in itself - relationships that are not monogomous are often tied to cheating, dishonesty, unhappy marriages, etc. But here we have Brett, a character very comfortable, content, and open with her relationship preferences. As we see in her and Jakes conversations, she has no problem acknowledging that she has close relationships with men other than Jake and her fiance, and her fiance seems to have no problem with it either. He is shown to be just as comfortable with her behavior when he lightheartedly acknowledges a hat another man gave to Brett. He, like Brett, appears to also have unconventional standards and needs in a relationship, but as they are both informed a...

  Any book will, of course, tell us a lot about an author’s worldview, experiences, and personality. Reading Mrs. Dalloway, I found myself often reflecting not on the characters in the story but on Virginia Woolf herself and what drove her to make each of the characters the way they were, and I often thought about how she could have felt deciding and writing the events in her book. What sparked this focus for me was finding out that Virginia Woolf committed suicide – and that, prior to writing Mrs. Dalloway , she had attempted twice already. That is why one of the characters I found most intriguing and quite sobering was Septimus Smith, who I began to look at as not only his own character (still well written and impactful without context on Woolf, of course), but also as a reflection of Woolf’s lowest moments of depression and suicidal thoughts. One of the first parallels I found interesting was moments such as on page 87, when Septimus describes people very negatively and hopele...