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EESA06H3 chapter 1 to 4 multiple choice questions. UTSC

1. 
   
2. 
   
3. 1)  Which of the following are part of the Earth System?
4. 
   
5. a. Biosphere 
6. b. Geosphere
7. c. Atmosphere
8. d. All of these and the hydrosphere
9. 
   
10. 2)  In which scenario below would you likely to hire a geoscientist to help better understand the situation?

1. A small community is worried about contamination of their water wells from an industrial waste site
   
2. A subway tunnel is being bored under a major city
   
3. Finding the best route for a subsea pipeline
   
4. Geoscientists might be employed in all of these scenarios

1. 
   
2. 
   
3. 3)  In which of the following is geological knowledge useful?

1. 1. a. Avoiding geologic and other natural hazards
      b. Supplying things we need
      c. Protecting the environment
      d. All of these are areas where geological knowledge is useful 
      
2. 
   
   1. 4)  Continental drift was suggested by this person to explain the movement of the
      continents.
      
   2. 
      a. William Logan 
   3. b. Alfred Wegner 
   4. c. William Smith
   5. d. Tuzo Wilson 

1. 5)  Pangea is the nameof:
   a. A country in Europe
   b. A supercontinent
   c. An OK continent
   d. The birth place of geology 
   

1. 6)  The rock cycle:
   
2. 
   
   a. Is a concept used to explain the relationship of the three main types of  rocks  
3. b. Describes the constant recycling of the three main types of rocks 
4.  c. Does not encompass all geologic processes 
5.  d. Is all of these 

7) What is the Earth’s external source of energy?  

a. Petroleum 

 b. Natural gas  

c. Coal  

d. The Sun 

8) This Canadian geophysicist is credited with naming transform faults. 

 a. Alfred Wegener  

b. Sir William Logan  

c. Tuzo Wilson  

d. William Smith 

9) The oldest known fossils on Earth are how old?

 a. 600 million years  

 b. 65 million years  

c. 3.5 million years 

 d. 3 million years 

10)  Which of the following are steps of the scientific method? 

 a. Problem  

b. Methodology 

 c. Analyze and Interpret  

d. All of these 

11) How big is the Manicouagan meteorite crater in Quebec?  

a. 1 kilometre 

 b. 10 litometres  

c. 100 lilometres  

d. 1 000 lilometres  

12)  The Burgess Shale:  

a. Contains fossils from the Cambrian “explosion”  

b. Is a World Heritage Site  

c. Is located in Yoho National Park, B.C. 

d. Is all of these  

13) The dinosaurs beame extinct about:  

a. 6.5 million years ago  

b. 65 million years ago  

c. 650 million years ago  

d. At the end of the Cretaceous Period  

14) The layer of Earth composed of iron, nickel and silicon.  

a. Core 

b. Asthenosphere 

c. Crust  

d. Mantle   

15) The division of geology that is concerned with the search for oil and gas is:  

a. Petroleum geology  

b. Petrology  

c. Geophysics  

d. Paleontology  

16) Which of the following are types of geoscientist?  

a. Mineralogist  

b. Seismologist  

c. Paleontologist  

d. A geologist may specialize in any of these  

17) This is one of the most important theories in geology  

a. Plate tectonics 

b. Continental drift  

c. Relativity  

d. Gravity 

18) Geologists are generally agreed that Earth is:  

a. As old as the hills and twice as dusty  

b. About 6 000 years old 

c. About 4.55 billion years old  

d. About 100 million years old 

19) Molten rock is called: 

 a. Magma  

b. Lithosphere  

c. Crust  

d. Mantle 

20) Igneous, sedimentary, and metamorphic are:  

a. The three major classes of rocks  

b. Three words that I never heard before  

c. Three words composed of multiple syllables 

 d. Three types of plate boundaries  

21)  The southern supercontinent was called:  

a. Laurentia  

b. Glossopteris 

 c. Gondwana  

d. Pangea  

22) The sliding of seafloor beneath a continent or island arc is known as:  

a. Obfuscation 

 b. Obduction  

c. Subduction  

d. Obliteration  

23) The tectonic plates of Earth are part of Earth’s:  

a. Crust  

b. Mantle  

c. Lithosphere 

 d. Asthenosphere 

 24) The Morley­Wine­Matthews hypothesis explains the origin of:  

a. Polar wandering 

 b. Seafloor magnetic anomalies  

c. Continental drift  

d. Mid­ocean ridges 

 25) The San Andreas Fault in California is a: 

 a. Convergent plate boundary 

 b. Divergent plate boundary  

c. Transform plate boundary  

d. None or these  

26) Which of the following features would you expect to find at an ocean­ocean convergent boundary?  

a. Volcanic island arc 

 b. Ocean trench  

c. Earthquakes  

d. All of these 

27) Which of the following features would you expect to find at an ocean­continent convergent boundary? 

 a. Deep ocean trench  

  b. Volcanic mountain chain  

c. Earthquakes 

 d. All of these 

28) Which of the following features would you expect to find at a continentcontinent convergent boundary? 

a. Deep ocean trench  

b. Suture zone  

c. Volcanic mountain chain  

d. All of these  

29) Passive Continental Margins are created at  

a. Divergent plate boundaries  

b. Convergent plate boundaries  

c. Transform plate boundaries  

d. All of these  

30) The Hawaiian Islands are the result of:  

a. Subduction

 b. Seafloor spreading  

c. A mantle plume 

d. None of these 

 31) Metallic ores are created at divergent plate boundaries:  

a. Through hydrothermal processes  

b. In lava flows 

 c. In sedimentary deposits  

d. All of these  

32) A large supercontinent that existed 225 million years ago was: 
a. Gondwanaland  

b. Laurasia 

 c. Glossopteris  

d. Pangea  

33) Alfred Wegener was a: 

 a. Geologist 

 b. Geophysicist  

c. Astronomer
 d. Meteorologist  

34) Which of the following was not used by Wegner as evidence of continental drift? 

 a. Fossils that were common to many continents 

 b. Evidence of glaciation on widely separated continents  

c. The geometric fit of the continents  

d. Magnetic anomalies on the seafloor 

35) Continental drift and the reorganization of this hypothesis to Plate Tectonics was  made possible by advances in: 

 a. Understanding of Earth’s magnetic field  

b. Understanding of Earth’s fossil record  

c. Development of radiometric dating methods  

d. None of these 

36) An early hypothesis that eventually led to the Theory of Plate Tectonics was:  

  a. The Elastic Rebound Theory of G.K. Gilbert in the early 1900’s 

  b. “Theory of the Earth” by James Hutton, 1788 

 c. Seafloor spreading by Harry Hess, 1962

 d. All of these

37) The age of the seafloor is relatively young because 

 a. It is continuously generated at mid­ocean ridges 

 b. It is continuously destroyed at subduction zones  

c. Both of the above  

d. None of the above 

38)  If a plate moves 20 mm per year, how far will it move in 1 million years?  

a. 20 meters  

b. 20 kilometers  

c. 20 centimeters  

d. 2 000 kilometers  

39)  The East African Rift is an example of:  

a. A continent­continent convergent boundary  

b. An ocean­continent convergent boundary  

c. An ocean­ocean convergent boundary 

 d. A divergent plate boundary 

40) The Wilson Cycle is  

a. The formation of hot spots  

b. An ocean current  

c. The melting of rocks

 d. The opening and closing of an ocean  

41) The elastic rebound theory: 

 a. Explains folding of rocks  

b. Explains the behavior of seismic waves  

c. Explains the origins of earthquakes 

 d. None of these  

42) The point within the Earth where seismic waves originate is: 

 a. The epicenter  

b. The fault scarp 

 c. The origin  

d. The focus  

43) P­waves are:  

a. Transverse surface waves  

b. Compressional body waves  

c. Tensional surface waves  

d. Shearing body waves  

44) The minimum number of seismic stations needed to locate an earthquake is:  

a. 8 

b. 2

 c. 3 

d. 1

45) The Richter Scale is used to determine:  

a. Intensity of earthquakes 

 b. The magnitude of earthquakes  

c. The damage of Earthquakes  

d. The number of casualties in an Earthquake  

46) Benioff Zones are associated with:  

a. Mid­ocean ridges 

b. Ancient mountain chains  

c. Subduction zones  

d. All of these  

47) Most earthquakes at divergent plate boundaries are:  

a. Shallow focus  

b. Intermediate focus  

c. Deep focus  

d. All of these  

48) Most earthqukes at convergent boundaries are:  

a. Shallow focus  

b. Intermediate focus  

c. Deep focus  

d. All of these  

49) A zone of shallow earthquakes along normal faults is typical of:  

a. Divergent plate boundaries  

b. Convergent plate boundaries  

c. Transform plate boundaries  

d. None of these  

50) A seismic gap is:  

a. The time between large earthquakes  

b. A segment of an active fault where earthquakes have not occurred for a  long time  

c. The center of a tectonic plate where earthquakes rarely occur  

d. A large chasm opened by an earthquake  

51) Which of the following is characteristic of a tsunami? 

a. Very long wavelength  

b. Very fast moving 

 c. Very low amplitude in the open ocean  

d. All of these  

52) The fastest seismic waves are:  

a. P­waves  

b. S­waves  

c. Love waves 

d. Rayleigh Waves  

53) The first seismic waves to arrive at a seismic station are: 

 a. P­waves  

b. S­waves  

c. Love waves  

d. Rayleigh Waves  

54) What should you do during an earthquake?  

a. Get under sturdy furniture  

 b. Stay away from windows  

c. Stay away from power lines  

d. All of these  

55) What should you do before an earthquake occurs  

a. Develop an emergency plan 

b. Assemble an emergency kit  

c. Quake­proof your house 

 d. All of these  

56) Analyses of seismograph records cannot provide information on:  

a. The magnitude of the earthquake  

b. The location of the earthquake  

c. The number of fatalities in an Earthquake  

d. The depth of the earthquake  

57) Which of the following provinces has a seismic hazard?  

a. New Brunswick 

 b. Ontario  

c. British Columbia  

d. All of these  

58) The process of fluidizing water­saturated soil during an earthquake is know as:  

a. Liquefaction  

b. Quick sand  

c. Gelatinization  

d. None of these  

59) Among the secondary effects of large earthquakes are:  

a. Tsunamis  b. Fires  c. Landslides  d. All of these  

60) Which of the following areas is most likely to experience a large magnitude  earthquake?  

a. Southern California  b. Arctic Canada  c. Eastern Brazil  d. Southern Australia  

61) Felsic and mafic terms used by geologists to describe: 

 a. Composition of continental and oceanic crust  

b. Behaviour of earthquake waves 

 c. The mechanical behaviour of rocks  

d. None of these  

62) The boundary that separates the crust from the mantle is called: 

 a. The crust mantle boundary  

b. The lithosphere  

c. The Moho  

d. All of these  

63) The inner core is most likely composed of:  

a. Silicon   

b. Oxygen  

c. Sulfur 

d. Iron  

64) The principle of continents being in buoyant equilibrium is known as:  

a. Isostasy  

b. The principle of buoyant equilibrium  

c. The elastic rebound theory  

d. None of these  

65)  A positive gravity anomaly indicates  

a. A excess of mass  

b. A deficiency of mass 

 c. A reversal of the gravitational field  

d. None of these  

66) Positive gravity anomalies are often associated with:  

a. Deep ocean trenches  

b. Ore bodies beneath Earth’s surface  

c. Large cavern systems beneath Earth’s surface  

d. All of these 

 67) A positive magnetic anomaly indicates:  

a. A body of magnetic ore  

b. An intrusion of Gabbro  

c. Mafic rock masses  

d. All of the above  

68) Which of the following is not an example of Isostasy?  

a. Deep mountain roots  

b. Crustal Rebound  

c. Ocean basins are deeper than continents 

d. All of these  

69)  The S­wave shadow zone is evidence that:  

a. The outer core is liquid  

b. The outer core is composed of iron and nickel oxides  

c. The inner core is solid  

d. It is very hot near the core 

70) The physical evidence that the core is composed mostly of iron is:  

a. The known mass of Earth requires material of high density at the core 

b. Scientists have sampled the core and determined its composition  

c. Volcanoes regularly erupt material from the core to the surface  

d. All of these  

71) The velocity of seismic waves varies through Earth because  

a. Temperature varies within the Earth 

 b. Density of rocks varies within the Earth 

 c. The composition of rocks varies within the Earth  

d. All of these  

72) Convection is likely occurring in:  

a. The mantle  

b. The outer core    

c. Both the mantle and the outer core  

d. Throughout the Earth  

73) The interior composition and structure of Earth have been deduced in part from:  

a. Studies of meteorites  

b. Deep drilling projects  

c. Analyses of the behaviour of seismic waves  

d. All of these  

74)  Heat inside Earth:  

a. Is generated by radioactive decay  

b. Is uniform throughout the interior  

c. Decreases with increasing depth  

d. None of these  

75)  The geothermal gradient in the crust averages  

a. 25 degrees Celsius per kilometer  

b. 1 degrees Celsius per kilometer  

c. 10 degrees Celsius per kilometer  

d. 100 degrees Celsius per kilometer  

76) Heat flow to the surface of Earth:  

a. Varies from place to place  

b. Is highest in areas of active volcanism  

c. Is lowest in stable continental interiors 

d. All of these  

77) The boundary between the crust and mantle:  

a. Coincides with the boundary between the asthenosphere and lithosphere  

b. Is marked by a change of velocity of seismic waves  

c. Is the source of the S­wave shadow zone  

d. None of these  

78) The largest portion of Earth’s volume is:  

a. The crust  

b. The Mantle 

c. The inner core  

d. The outer core  

79) The composition of the upper mantle is known because:  

a. Samples of mantle rock have been analyzed by scientists  

b. Meteorites are believed to be similar to the mantle 

 c. Some caves on Earth extend into the mantle  

d. None of these 

80) The average thickness of the crust is:  

a. 10­12 km  

b. 30­50km  

c. 100­150km  

d. 1 km 

1. 
   

The Penelopiad By: Margaret Atwood ENGB02 Notes

The Penelopiad By: Margaret Atwood


• Introduction
­ Story of Odysseus’ return to home country, Ithaca, best known from Homer’s Odyssey.
­ Absent from Ithaca for 20 years, half of those years said to be fighting in Trojan War, the other half slaying monster, sleeping with goddess’s etc.
­Penelope daughter of Icarus of Sparta and cousin of Helen of Troy.
­ Penelope thought to be faithful to Odysseus.

• Chapter 1 ­ A Low Art (pg. 1­4)
­ Told from the perspective of Penelope after her death, she knows everything now that she is dead (wishes she didn’t?).
­ Arrive in the underworld with a sack filled with everything you have said, everything said about you, and words you’ve heard.
­ Penelope’s sack filled with words about her husband
­ Odysseus used in tricks and lies on Penelope even though she was faithful.
­ Penelope has waited through all the various renditions of The Odyssey? To finally tell her story in The Penelopaid.

• Chapter 2­ A Rope Jumping Rhyme ( pg. 5­6)
  ­ Poem told from the perspective of the 12 maids killed by being hung by Odysseus after
  his return.
  

• Chapter 3 – My Childhood (pg. 7­12)
  ­ Mother was a Naiad, born semi­divine.
  ­ Father, Icarus of Sparta, ordered Penelope to be thrown into the sea possibly because of an oracle said she would weave her fathers shroud.
  ­ Naiad’s element is water, purple­stripped duck saved her from drowning.
  ­ Nick named “duck” from then on.
  
  

• Chapter 5 – Asphodel (pg. 15­22)
  ­ “The gloomy halls of Hades”, Penelope in the underworld.                                                          -The dead can go on “outings” by the sacrifice of an animal people can talk to whomever they wish, through dreams, and being conjured by a magician.                                                             -Magicians conjure up Helen rather the Penelope.                                                                        -Helen didn’t get punished when she died like most did for driving men mad in lust and causing the destruction of Troy. 

• Chapter 6 – My Marriage (pg. 23­38)
­ Marriages were only for the important people.
­ There were contests to see who would marry the women.
­ Penelope not sure to this day why her father threw her into the ocean.
­Every time she sees him in the Asphodel (light part of the underworld) her father
hurries away.
­ Sacrifice to the God of the sea??
­ Odysseus was never expected to win Penelope’s hand in marriage.
­ Contest was a race (varies in different places).
­ Odysseus was one of Helen’s suitors but didn’t win the
competition.
­ Odysseus cheated and one race.
­ Penelope’s Uncle, Helen’s father, gave wine to competitors to slow them down, and gave Odysseus a potion to make him fast.
Helped Odysseus win as payment for ensuring the Helen had wedding.
Both Penelope and Odysseus described as being “CLEVER”. 

• Chapter 7 – The Scar (pg.39­49)

a peaceful

­ Wedding feast
­ Penelope’s Naiad mother attended her wedding
­ Odysseus tells Penelope to scream in pain to pretend to have had sex after their wedding and then take the time to become friends.
­ Odysseus’s grandfather claimed to be the son of Hermes, a God who cheated, stole, and lied.
­ Perhaps where Odysseus got these characteristics?
­ He has a scar on his thigh, from a boar while retrieving gifts promised to him at birth from Mount Parnassus.
­Penelope suspects that his grandfather had something to do with it since no one
else was injured.
­ Penelope feels connection to Odysseus; both were almost destroyed in youth by family members.
­ Odysseus takes Penelope away from Sparta to his homeland, Ithaca.

Chapter9–TheTrustedCackle­Hen (pg.55­64)
­ Voyage from Sparta to Ithaca.
­ Growing attraction to Odysseus.
­ Arrive in Ithaca with maid father gave her as a wedding present.
­Maid died not long after
­ Everyone looks up to Odysseus, and people come from far and wide to consult him to undo complicated knots.
­ Odysseus’s mother does not like/approve of Penelope.
­ Nurse teaches Penelope customs of Ithaca since mother­in­law will not.
­ Penelope has a son, Telemachus, and Odysseus says that Helen has not yet.

Worried why Odysseus is always thinking about Helen.

Chapter 11 – Helen Ruins My Life (pg. 71­80)
­ After making love Odysseus likes to talk and tell stories to Penelope.
­ When Telemachus was one Helen ran away with Paris from Troy.
­ Helen’s husband and brother­in­law try to retrieve Helen from Troy with no success.
­ All swore an oath on a sacred horse so now Odysseus must sail to Troy to wage war to get Helen back.
­ Oath was Odysseus’s idea.
­ Penelope doesn’t want Odysseus to leave because she doesn’t want to be alone in the palace without any friends or allies.
­ Pretends to be crazy, not remembering who his son and Penelope are, to try and get out of fighting against Troy.
­ CLEVER idea was Penelope’s

Act doesn’t work when they threaten their son, Odysseus runs to get him showing that he knows who he is.

Chapter 12 – Waiting (pg.81­92)
­ Ten years later and Penelope is still alone in Ithaca and Odysseus is fighting in the Trojan War. ­ News travels about Odysseus’s involvement in the war, all his contribution are not of fighting but rather acts of cleverness.
­ Made wooden Trojan Horse.
­ Troy fell and the Greeks set sail for home, but Odysseus did not return.
­ Stories were told about the things he was doing.

Penelope learns how to run a palace on her own is husband’s absence and parents­in­law increasing age.

Chapter 14 – The Suitors Stuff Their Faces (pg.99­ 108) ­ 
 Back in the present with Penelope in the underworld.

­ Questions suitor why he wanted her when she was old enough to be his mother and getting fat by that point.
      -Reason was for the treasure of Sparta of course.

*Back to retelling of life* Suitors came when they felt there was no hope in Odysseus returning. 

Chapter 15­ The Shroud (pg. 109­ 119)
­ Spends whole day in room, but not the room she shared with Odysseus. ­ Weeps all day.
­ If Telemachus were to kill his mother to get his inheritance he would be haunted and die a horrible death raving madness.
­ Made a plan that she would not pick a suitor until she was done weaving a shroud in case of the death or her father­in­law.
­ Every night she would undo what she had done so that the shroud would never get any bigger.
­ Picked 12 young maids to help in her scheme.
­ One maid let the secret slip.
­ Instructed maids to get close to suitors to find out anything they could about them.
­ Some maids inevitably fell in love with the suitors.

Chapter 16 – Bad Dreams (pg.121­ 124)
­ Telemachus of age to order his mother, Penelope, around.
­ Telemachus sails around looking for father, Odysseus, and Penelope’s suitors plan to ambush and kill him upon his return since he has started standing up to them.
­ Penelope weeps.

Has a dreams where her mush older sister comes to her and says that Telemachus will return

Chapter 18 – News of Helen (pg. 127­ 133)
­ Penelope and Telemachus have a fight when he returns from his voyage.
­ Telemachus was told that Odysseus is trapped on an island with a goddess forced to make love with her every night.

Telemachus tells Penelope what she wants to hear, that Helen is looking old and wrinkly, though she knows that her son is lying and she looks as gorgeous as ever.

Chapter 19 – Yelp of Joy (pg.135­ 141)
­ Finally Penelope’s pray fro Odysseus to return is answered.

­ Dressed in a disguise as a dirty old beggar.
­ No one but Penelope knew it was him, by his short legs.

Penelope set up a little surprise for Odysseus’s nurse to know it was him. ­ Asked his nurse to give beggar a bath and she noticed his scar. 

Chapter 20 – Slanderous Gossip (pg.143­ 145)
­ Rumors that Penelope slept with a suitor.
­ Another that she slept with all the suitors, one after the other (over 100).

Chapter 23 – Odysseus and Telemachus Snuff the Maids (Pg.157­ 161)
­ Odysseus wins the bow and arrow competition, winning Penelope as his wife for the second time from the suitors.
­ He then killed all the suitors.
­ Made the 12 maids drags to bodies of the suitors outside (some of them loved some of the suitors) and clean up the gore.
­ Telemachus hangs all the maids in a row.

The maids haunt Odysseus is all his new lived, until he has an accident or commits suicide. ­ And the cycle continues. 

LOVE VERSUS “the twin goddesses of CONVERSION and Proportion” IN MRS. DALLOWAY ENGB02 UTSC

UTSC ENGB02

LOVE VERSUS “the twin goddesses of CONVERSION and Proportion” IN
MRS. DALLOWAY

In Mrs. Dalloway, “time” and “reality” are related to a more specific issue: the conflict between love and conversion/proportion (the favorite forces of Sir William Bradshasw: to “stamp” his own image on other people).

Early in the novel Mrs. Dalloway, Clarissa Dalloway has a private searching moment when she examines her image in the mirror. There she sees a face, “her” face, distinctively "pointed; dartlike; definite"—the familiar face, composed and tense, that her mirror has reflected back to her "many million times."' This clearly focused image represents a unified and static self: the person she can “produce” whenever she needs a recognizable social mask. But she knows—unlike every other character in the novel except Septimus-- that her social image conceals "incompatible" aspects of her personality which, were they to surface, would shatter this coherent image  into divergent and contradictory images.  What helps keep this potentially shattered image coherent is its place in a coherent “social imaginary”—that is, society as imagined by all who participate in it.  The “social imaginary” is a particular form of ideology that gives a sense of collective agency. 

When Peter Walsh sees an ambulance moving through London, he thinks about what an amazing society he lives in—so organized—it can speed help where needed in a busy urban environment.  In fact, this is the very ambulance on the way to pick up the remains of Septimus—a man pushed out the window by the SAME social  imaginary Peter is admiring.  Bradshaw, too, is at the center of a monstrous “collective agency” that gives him the right to lock up Septimus—put him out of sight, deny him the company of his loved ones, and condemn him to a living death.  His decision to leap out the window instead is understood by Clarissa as a refusal to conform to the current social imaginary that permitted World War I (and will permit World War II).  What Septimus calls “brute human nature” is, in fact, the current social imaginary that sent ten million young men to their deaths for an economic war from which few of them, always assuming they ever came home again, would benefit directly. 

The social efficiency Peter admires is the same one one that “cleans up” anything that threatens to expose the limitations of the social imaginary.  Lady Bruton’s plan to get more white couple to emigrate to Canada to assure that it remains “British” in her sense of the term (i.e. white) is another example of the “social imaginary” at work.  Woolf shows us the luncheon where Lady Bruton gets “her” letter to the newspaper written (NOT by her, but the sycophant Hugh Whitbred who has made a career out of properly phrasing  dominant “converting” discourse so it seems like “common sense”).  Maintaining the the social imaginary is a lot of work.  . 

Thus, as the novel progresses, the early static image in the mirror of Clarissa’s gives way to a series of shifting and contradictory views of Mrs. Dalloway;  her identity expands to encompass all the divergent images while remaining unencompassed by them.

The special way that each character has of seeing Mrs. Dalloway reflects an incompatibility in points of view. While one character can see her as a sophisticated lady (the woman in the flower shop), another sees her triviality (Lady Bruton); while one sees her generosity (Richard Dalloway), another sees her selfishness (Peter Walsh); while one reacts to her life-giving force (Sally Seton), another responds to her parasitism (Miss Kilman). Thus, her personality begins to emerge as a relative quality.  She herself, at the age of 53, declares “she would never say again that anything was this or that” and in this way she begins to sense a “beyond”--something out past the current horizon of the social imaginary in which she is embedded.

Clarissa Dalloway, however, never experiences this loss of identity—despite the ambiguities of her personality and the various images reflected to her by others. Whenever she wishes, she can summon to the mirror her dependable and familiar image, her pointed, dartlike face, yet she ALSO remains—especially after unexpectedly hearing of the death of Septimus-- certain of a fundamental identity beneath all her masks. This is the identity she reveals in the novel by her decisions, not the trivial decisions of the day—such as, which book to select for an invalid friend, how to arrange her flowers, whom to invite to her party—but by her fundamental decisions to dedicate herself to resist destructive strategies of  “conversion and proportion,” embodied by the hateful Sir William Bradshaw. Her opposition to conversion and proportion gives Mrs. Dalloway the opportunity for the moral choices by which she creates herself apart from the regard of others, or of the roles she is expected or presumed to play.

And what is the opposite of conversion and proportion?  Love.  Not love of one’s self, or even love of the other (which can be a kind of imposition) but love of all the differences between and among us that make declaring anything to be “this” or “that” impossible and false. 

Love vs. proportion/ conversion :

the creative vs. the coercive.

In the novel, love implies

--an attitude of allowance;

-- letting others be;

-- recognizing in them an inviolable private self.

A character who experiences love has a sense of wonder at life, for he or she sees that it offers the possibilities of both solitude and society. One is free to be who one is, and yet also come together with others in a close but unstultifying relationship. Love inspires creativity, without which there is no hope for escape from the constrictive horizon of the social imaginary where “conversion and proportion” insist that everything must be “this” or “that”.  

The exponent of love wishes to express the beauty of his or her vision of life as it allows the one and the many to come together.

Conversion, on the other hand, is a destructive force, always indicating coercion. It is symbolized in the novel as an iron Goddess whose worshippers identify themselves by their desire for power.

The followers of conversion seek out people they can dominate: the weak, or sick, or disenfranchised. They "swoop" upon their victims, always concealing their true motives under a charitable guise. They appear as the helpers, the philanthropists, scientists, or evangelicalists, who “know” what is good for others.

Their true natures are not concealed from Mrs. Dalloway: she (along with Septimus, but he cannot communicate it) has the ability to see through the charitable gesture to its tyrannical meaning.

Indeed her principal and coherent action, the action, that like her party preparations, gives unity to the novel, is to expose and condemn the various forms of conversion. Her basic opposition to the coercive will is an absolute quality of her personality. As she stands intransigent in her resistance to conversion, she becomes more than the sum of her multiple roles, and more than the sum of responses to her.

Love and proportion/conversion are dramatized by a double apposition of characters: in the main plot, Peter Walsh, Miss Kilman, and Lady Bruton are set against Mrs. Dalloway;

in the sub-plot, Dr. Holmes and Sir William Bradshaw are opposed to Septimus Smith.

The conflict in the sub-plot, which ends in violence and death, intensifies the more tenuous position involving Clarissa. This double polarity of characters creates a structure for the novel as important thematically as the careful structuring of time and place. The narrative progresses through a series of revealing encounters between the exponents of love and those of proportion/conversion.

Some encounters juxtapose present and past; Clarissa, as she now is, recalls the girl of eighteen, where she made her first discovery of proportion/conversion in her first encounter with love in the form of Peter Walsh. 

She realizes, shortly before she flees the relationship and into the arms of Richard Dalloway, that Peter is intent on making her something she is not to conform to what he feels he needs her to be—what he is convinced she “actually” is—and when she runs from him he pronounces her lost—insulting her as nothing but a future trivial hostess standing at the top of a stair.  In fact, this will be the final scene of the novel, but she is a great deal more than Peter’s caustic comment suggests—and even he feels it in this final moment, despite himself.

 Some encounters show the clash between reality and delusion. The most terrible of these are Septimus' hallucinatory meetings with the brute conversion –“human nature” --bearing down on him with nostrils aflame.

Clarissa's party, the climax of the action, unites both plots as it gathers together the double set of characters. The party is Clarissa's creation, her equivalent to a work of art. The party brings to life Mrs. Dalloway's vision of the irrefragable possibilities for free and easy mingling. The exponents of conversion are present at her party, but deprived of the opportunity, and even the will, to exercise power.

As the party momentarily banishes differences between the strong and the weak, the "dominators" and their victims, it becomes Clarissa's symbolic victory over the forces of conversion.

Here, in this configuration of people that she has created and maintained for the evening, she establishes her presence and shows the full weight of her personality. Her party is for her an existential act by which she deliberately evokes and expresses her preference for love over proportion/conversion.

For secretly, beneath the veneer of her conventional middle-class manners, Mrs. Dalloway lives as a rebel and existentialist before her time. Outwardly, her life is one of propriety and order; her gestures seem gentle and conservative. But inwardly, she is carried away by overwhelming emotions: she hates, she fears, she achieves ecstasy, and she rebels. She most clearly asserts this unsubdued and unsuspected private aspect of her personality when she identifies herself with Septimus Smith. 

She feels a tremendous empathy with this mad poet whom she has never seen, because he  chose death in defiance of authority. This act, she felt, had created even as it had destroyed him, and only by acts of volition, those seemingly passive (like her own) and those violent (like his), does one achieve and assert a reality beyond the grasp of the “social imaginary”.

Clarissa sees  Death as that which gives meaning to life.   Ironically, all the deaths of World War I were deaths caused by an increasing need to try and “conquer” death through the acquisition of wealth and power (the European Nations went to war partly over a squabble as to who would continue to control the most lucrative colonies, such as the Congo).  Like many contemporary characters, Clarissa ignores conventional linear time and exalts “the moment” and seeks within it an "illumination," which she imagines to be as "a flame burning in a crocus."

Preoccupied as she is with  death, she withdraws into the private world of herself, and her rebelliousness finds implicit expression in her refusal to conform to prescribed social roles. Through excuses of ignorance, ineptness, frailty, or disinterest, she keeps herself apart from social institutions (much to lady Bruton’s disgust, who considers Clarissa to have failed at being the political wife Richard  needed to “advance”). She does not participate in politics, religion, philanthropy, or social reform. Despite her sociability, she lives, essentially, a life of her own, as detached and singular in its way as the pathologically isolated life of her counterpart, Septimus Smith.

She gives parties—quiet, staid affairs, but purposeful only in their purposelessness. Parties are her gestures toward art, for they create what she considers to be a free and self-contained configuration of people that is beautiful and unavailable to the coercive forces of proportion and conversion.

Thus Mrs. Dalloway's day represents a search for values—values that the current “social imaginary” that led to world War I will not allow, values that Septimus, too, wishes to express, but will not be allowed to do so.   

 Clarissa seeks the meaning of life while her "double," Septimus, becomes progressively convinced that life is meaningless if he is handed over to the likes of Sir William Bradshaw. By sifting through her memories, by taking an imaginative leap into the lives of others, by questioning her own image in the mirror, and above all, by exposing and condemning proportion/conversion, she tries to arrive at a hierarchy of moral values and to define a code to live by.

Peter Walsh, in his demanding passion, first revealed to her man's hidden will to dominate, and Sally Seton revealed the possibility of "disinterested love." As Clarissa saw how Peter could not tolerate either Sally's idiosyncrasies or her own conventionalities, she understood his drive to "maul" and "maltreat" people until he had shaped them to his own desires. Thus Peter became the first personification of conversion and the first of her "enemies"—for Clarissa realized that "it was enemies one wanted, not friends" (p. 266). Enemies forced her to rally to herself, to achieve definition and point, to mobilize her inner energies and become who she was. Peter Walsh prepares the way for an assemblage of enemies that will include Miss Kilman, Lady Bruton, Dr. Holmes, and Sir William Bradshaw.  All of these people have a disguised will to dominate and control; all worship conversion, the iron Goddess, "who loving to impress, to impose, adoring her own features stamped on the face of the populace ... feasts most subtly on the human will".

The most blatant example of conversion is the eminent physician and "priest of science," Sir William Bradshaw.For his wife and patients he set a standard, his standard, of normality, and if they did not conform to it, he threatened confinement. Fifteen years ago his wife had "gone under" and submitted her will to his: "there had been no scene, no snap; only the slow sinking, water-logged, of her will into his" . Now he presents Septimus with his standard of "proportion" as the cure for his madness. But while he appears in the guise of the healer, with "love, duty, self sacrifice" as his ostensible motives, his real drive is for power. If the sick or helpless refused his version of normality, then, "He swooped; he devoured. He shut people up" . 

That evening at her party, Mrs. Dalloway recognizes Sir William as the quintessential enemy, the disciple of conversion; but all during the day she has been weighing love and conversion, and she has found beneath the spurious masks of charity, passion, or religion, the same cruel will to dominate.

What else, she thinks, is Miss Kilman's relationship to young Elizabeth Dalloway than the expression of a desire to convert? Miss Kilman's possessive desire for Clarissa's daughter is presented as almost comically excruciating: "She (Miss Kilman) was about to split asunder, she felt. The agony was so terrific. If she could grasp her, if she could clasp her, if she could make her hers absolutely and forever and then die; that was all she wanted" . Her pressing emotions are hatred, frustration, embarrassment, and greed. Unable to devour the girl, she gorges on sticky chocolate éclairs. But she cannot enjoy even her gluttony, for she is uncomfortable and awkward wherever she is because she always feels herself frustrated in her desire to dominate. Even her religion, or especially her religion, makes her ugly and potentially cruel, so thinks Mrs. Dalloway: "religious ecstacy made people callous,"— and she adds "(so did causes)."

The main exponent of social causes is Lady Bruton.Her great cause, one of many in the novel, is a "project for emigrating young people of both sexes" to Canada.  This project has become the focus of her life, giving her "pent egotism" a form of release. Through emigration she will assume, she dreams, a position of leadership like that her forebearers held, the commanders and generals whose lust for power she has in her blood. Like Miss Kilman (both women have names that belie their good intentions), Lady Bruton stuffs herself at lunch, until bloated and drowsy, she falls into a sleepy fantasy of domination that leaves her content: "Power was hers, position, income". While Clarissa earlier held the drunkard on the street inviolate, Lady Bruton never asks whether the "young people" want to be moved to Canada, for her philanthropy, like Miss Kilman's religion and Sir William's science, is the sublimation of her strong egocentric will for power.

Peter Walsh represents another disguise of conversion. His dominating will takes the form of passion. As a young man in Bourton, his love for Clarissa threatened the privacy she held inviolate. He insisted that she change herself to conform to his image of the ideal woman; he wanted to absorb her personality into his. Thinking back on Bourton, Clarissa unites the present with the past, for she still believes that "in marriage a little licence, a little independence there must be between people living together day in day out in the same house; which Richard gave her, and she him.... But with Peter everything had to be shared; everything gone into" .  In Peter's dominating love, Clarissa found the first clue to the tyranny hidden behind the masks of the Goddess conversion, and she realized also that conversion destroyed, no matter what its benevolent guise. Peter said he loved her, but he could not let her be: his passion was a fire that consumed as it embraced. Richard, on the other hand, offered love that was protective but unconsuming, and that allowed her the solitude and freedom to be herself. Thus her early choice between the two young men is a distinction between love and conversion, Although she occasionally regrets the decision, thinking that with Peter she would have had a more intense and exciting life, she has found in her marriage that balance of solitude and society that she absolutely needs:

... there is a dignity in people; a solitude; even between husband and wife a gulf; and that one must respect, thought Clarissa, ... for one would not part with it oneself, or take it, against his will, from one's husband, without losing one's independence, one's self-respect—something, after all, priceless

The symbol that expresses for Mrs. Dalloway the balanced relationship between self and others is the window. The window reveals people to each other, but also keeps them separate. Through her window, Mrs. Dalloway can see the old lady in the house across the way as she goes through her preparations for the evening, privately and undisturbed. For Clarissa, this ordinary sight is reassuring, and indeed, beautiful:

... she watched out of the window the old lady opposite climbing upstairs. Let her climb upstairs if she wanted to; let her stop; then let her, as Clarissa had often seen her, gain her bedroom, part her curtains, and disappear again into the background. Somehow one respected that—that old woman looking out of the window, quite unconscious that she was being watched. There was something solemn in it—but love [passion] and religion would destroy that, whatever it was, the privacy of the soul . 

At one point in the novel, Septimus Smith cries out that for him too "beauty was behind a pane of glass." But to him the glass represents total withdrawal, a barrier that shuts him away from society and keeps in his pain.  Solitude without society is madness. Septimus cannot share experience; he has lost the ability to relate to others except in a way that victimizes him. He feels himself either totally isolated or under coercion. His pathological withdrawal, first symptomized by a strange numbness at his friend's sudden death, has continued into his marriage. Shut in upon himself, he experiences horror at the sheer emptiness of life. To live in dread as he does must mean, he thinks, that he is guilty of unspeakable crimes, and guilt haunts him in the form of hallucination. Hallucination takes him out of a terrifying reality to an even more ominous world filled with unseen voices and figures of the dead. When he finally confesses his utter helplessness and turns to others for support, he encounters the iron Goddess conversion. She appears to him under the masks of the Doctors Holmes and Bradshaw, those "repulsive brutes, with blood-red nostrils" who threaten to lock him up if he does not submit to them. In reaction to the forces that Septimus feels to be coercing him—Holmes and Bradshaw telling him what he "must" do—he calls forth the one strength left to him in his weakness. He has the freedom of utter detachment: "now that he was quite alone, condemned, deserted, as those who are about to die are alone, there was a luxury in it, an isolation full of sublimity; a freedom which the attached can never know" .  His sense of freedom is delusory, but it gives him the courage for defiance. At the expense of his life, he keeps himself inviolate—his suicide assures that he will never be converted to Sir William's standard of "proportion."  

Septimus Smith's sense of inviolability, though symptomatic of his paranoia, makes him Mrs. Dalloway's dark complement. He represents her possible destiny were she to lose her tenuously free contact with other people which gives her a hold on sanity. For like Septimus, she feels herself threatened, and she too experiences panic at the fact of being alive. Unlike him, though, she has the support of money, maids, position, and her husband; but her strongest support is really her own illuminated vision of life.

In a sense, Mrs. Dalloway's party saves her from Septimus' fate (originally Virginia Woolf had intended her to die). Her party expresses her affirmation of life and creativity, even as it forces her to face the knowledge of death: "In the middle of my party, here's death, she thought" (p. 279). At this confrontation, she achieves more than a reconciliation to the fact of death: she comes to view it as the ultimate form of man's defiance. "Death was defiance," she thought, and secretly she applauds Septimus' suicide because she surmises that it had preserved the integrity of his inviolable self. When once again the old lady appears in the window across the way, Mrs. Dalloway feels a rush of affirmation and love; and she reasserts the value of her party as a creative gesture. Her desire "to combine, to create" is her tacit acknowledgment of the darkness of life, and her victory over it. This darkness is not merely the threat of death: it is the possibility for total isolation in the solitude of madness, or for the brutality of power. As her party serves "to kindle and illuminate," it expresses her answer to the powers of darkness. Her party has taken the individual out of the possible panic of isolation while it has at the same time rendered powerless the "dominators and tyrants" who serve the Goddess conversion. At her party, she has momentarily vanquished the arch-enemy, Sir William Bradshaw, a man capable of that "indescribable outrage,": "forcing your soul."

No one sees the parties in the same light as she.

To Peter Walsh, who cannot conceive of an unegocentric or gratuitous act, they seem attempts at social climbing, directed towards her husband's advancement.

To Lady Bruton, with her ideal of military command, they seem idle and vain. To her husband, they seem undue taxations of her strength.

To Miss Kilman, sin. But her party nevertheless establishes her in juxtaposition to the others and elicits their secret if begrudged admiration. For it shows her to be truly untyrannical; and while it also reveals her as trivial, snobbish and dependent, she can transcend her faults to become a definitive central figure. Having recognized and rejected the multifaces of power and coercion, she has achieved, through a mature and comprehending acceptance of self and others, her moral victory.

The form of the novel attempts to transmute the everyday realities of life into a metaphorical equivalent of the sea. The sea was Virginia Woolf's primal symbol of fluid continuity, and she tried to create an impression of life as being as flowing, as timeless, as continuous, as the sea. As Mrs. Dalloway flows in one uninterrupted stream from first word to last, aesthetic form mimetically simulates the theme of continuity. The stream-of-consciousness technique makes past and present continuous in the character's mind. The poetic language of the novel achieves a compression and ambiguity suited to its organic view of life; and symbolism weights a seemingly insignificant object or gesture with ramified meanings from other times and other contexts. Thus the surface of the novel suggests the movement of the sea, constantly flowing; and like the sea, it contains beneath its surface the dimension of depth.