Alexandra Harris states in Romantic Moderns that planting flowers in the midst of a war was to affirm one's firm faith in the future. Virginia Woolf's Mrs Dalloway, published in 1925, seven years after the First World War, and her last novel Between the Acts, published in 1941 in the midst of the Second, are full of flowers. The pastoral and natural images of these novels resonate with nostalgia, commemorating happier times gone by and hoping for their recreation. However, even in their abundance of flowers and birdsong, the pastoral images in Woolf's work do not always look to a better future. The images are distorted and corrupted, resonating with the remaining fears of the previous war and the encroaching fear of the war to come. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay In Between the Acts, Woolf uses natural imagery as a means to connect the present to the past, reflecting the nostalgia and hope that nature provides for continuity. Miss La Trobe struggles in the silence of the stage, but fortunately "the cows took the brunt of it...just at the right moment she raised her great moon-eyed head and screamed." Herding animals fill the silent void, all in unison with the 'same fiery bellow' (p. 87). Cows are gentle and "big", with eyes like a "moon", timeless in orbit and with worldly continuity. The visceral 'bellow' unites past and present: 'it was the primordial voice ringing loudly in the ear of the present moment' (p. 87). Their ability to cross the boundaries of time goes beyond the context of saving the show as they have "annihilated the gap"; bridged the gap; it filled the void and continued the emotion" (p. 87). The 'gap' and 'distance' of time are 'filled' by the cry of nature, which has filled the 'void' left by human action, presenting pastoral care as a tool to connect with the past and continue towards a saved future . While the actors are still adorned in their performance costumes depicting characters from English history, "each still played the unacted part conferred upon them by their clothes" (p. 121). Their 'beauty' (p. 121) of the past is 'revealed' (p. 121) by the light: 'the tender, faded, not curious but inquiring light of the evening that reveals the depths of the water and makes even the red radiant brick bungalow' (p. 121). The natural glow is "tender", enveloping both nature and the industrial "red brick bungalow", uniting them in one place and time to discover the beauty of each. The idyllic pastoral setting of the evening creates nostalgia for the beauty found in the "idle part given to them by their clothes", a "part" that has its roots in pre-war England. Birds and flowers in particular are remembered in Mrs. Dalloway along with nostalgic thoughts. The depth of Clarissa Dalloway's emotion for Peter Walsh as she watches him "pass by all that time" (p. 37) is compared to a bird that "touches a branch and rises and flutters away" (p. 37). The emotion is fleeting and gentle, remembered in natural terms that remain "all that time." Clarissa's happiest memory has flowers scattered throughout it, reflecting the positive connotations they can have. This climax, "the most exquisite moment of his entire life", followed "passing a stone urn with flowers in it". Sally stopped; plucked a flower; he kissed her on the lips" (p. 30). The flowers are the catalysts and witnesses, poised in Sally Seton's hand during Clarissa's "most exquisite moment." Despite the grandeur of this moment, it is the presence of the flowers that takes precedence,highlighting its lasting power. Clarissa in particular loves the flower that is probably the symbol of the continuity of England, which sinks its roots slowly and firmly into the earth: the rose. She thinks they are "absolutely adorable" (p. 101) and cares about them more than international politics, like the Armenians in the aftermath of their genocide during the First World War: "she cared much more about her roses than about the Armenians" (p. 102). Yet, strangely, they are also “the only flowers he could bear to see cut” (p. 102). This contradicts both his affection for them and their status as symbols of continuity, but hints, rather, at an emerging corruption of traditional natural imagery in the face of the horrors of war. By comparing humans to birds, often sinisterly, Woolf begins to corrupt the pastoral imagery, contaminating it with the actions of humans. In Between the Acts, Isa and Rupert Haines are trapped swans, “his snow-white chest surrounded by a tangle of dirty duckweed; and she too, in her webbed feet, was entangled by her husband" (p. 2). The “snow white” is polluted, and it is difficult to separate the “dirty duckweed” that imprisons them both with barbed wire connotations, tangling, cutting and trapping those on the war front. People are constantly described negatively as animals, Mrs. Haines with her "goose-like, devouring eyes" (p. 3), Clarissa with "a ridiculous little face, with a beak like a bird's" (p. 9) . The beggar woman in Mrs. Dalloway is a sinister bird, "a looming form, a shadow form" (p. 70), immersed in uncertain darkness, possessed of the "bird-like freshness of the elders, she still chirped " (page 70). “Bird-like freshness” is juxtaposed with “the very aged,” uniting the two and implying that birds now have ominous echoes of decay and death. The aggressive diction that Lucrezia uses to describe her husband Septimus Smith further distorts the symbol of the bird, bringing them closer to the monstrosities of war. Her first impression of him was that of a "young hawk" (p. 124), a bird of prey but not yet aggressive, until Septimus becomes "a hawk or crow, being mischievous and a great destroyer of crops" (p . 126). The circling hawk, “mischievous” and “a great destroyer of crops,” is no different from the circling of military aircraft, threatening to destroy what nourishes and nourishes a country. These Woolf comparisons between birds and people corrupt natural images on several levels. First, the actions of human beings – that of war, perhaps even that of urbanization – have repercussions so great that they influence the perception of the natural world, that which was meant to remain and continue. Secondly, there may also be suggestions about the transposition of human and animal roles, where humans are now each other's prey and, like wild birds, fear being hunted. Furthermore, humans are like the birds in Woolf's novels because the birds create a birdsong, but through mirroring and merging with humans, it becomes a war song. The pastoral requires birdsong and there is plenty of it in Woolf's novels, but what was once a chorus of idyllic chirping is distorted to the sinister and finally to a war chorus. Septimus, suffering from shock-shock, hears a sparrow chirp his name "four or five times and continued, drawing out his notes to sing freshly and piercingly in Greek words...joined by another sparrow they sang in prolonged voices" (p. 21). Birdsong with Greek voices was not an unfamiliar concept to Woolf, who in February 1904 suffered her first complete nervous breakdown afterheard the birds speaking in Greek. The voices of birds are now an indication of madness, of corruption of nature. The birdsong is haunting and 'drawn out', the voices are invasive and piercing like the sounds of bombs, drones, gunshots and screams - painful memories for a shell-shocked Septimus. However, in Between the Acts, a novel published in 1941, these wartime connections are made even more explicit. The birds are portrayed in an equally 'piercing' way, constantly preventing the characters from sleeping: 'she had been woken up by the birds. How they sang! Attacking the dawn...', 'random ribbons of birds' voices woke her' (p. 127). The diction used begins to resemble that of wartime, they 'attack' in the morning and appear randomly in sound 'tapes'. Like air raids, birds are an aerial assault, sonic and prevents humans from sleeping and resting. The swallows dancing to the show's music are similar, "retreating and advancing... yes, they blocked the music, they crowded together and piled up" (p. 113). The birds "retreat and advance" like soldiers on the field in their multitude, excluding in the play the music of England's happier past with the song of the present and near future, a song that Woolf knows at this point to be of war. The distortion of nature, therefore, signals a loss of the hope and nostalgia found in the pastoral, and indicates resignation to another world war, the second that Woolf has seen. In Mrs Dalloway, Woolf and the characters are still recovering from the First World War, but there is the slightest glimmer of hope: "the plane took off, it took a turn, it ran, it sank, it up and whatever it did, wherever it went, a thick rippling streak of white smoke fluttered behind it' (p. 17). The aircraft here is safe for commercial use, 'writing letters in the sky' (p. 17), and in his description it resembles a swan. The plane "ran, sank, rose" in the same way a swan would in the water, and this image is compounded by the "thick ruffled bar of white smoke", like feathers. ruffled whites of the bird. In its comparison with a swan, the plane adopts a naturalness that reflects optimism for the return of the positive undercurrents of the pastoral. This, however, contributes to the historical setting and publication of Mrs. Dalloway, nestled seven years after the First World War with no Second World War in sight. In Between the Acts, however, the situation begins to change. Airplanes are still compared to birds: "twelve airplanes in perfect formation like a flight of wild ducks passed overhead" (p. 119) and ducks are still thought of in their unison and harmony, "perfect formation." Nonetheless, when applied to aircraft, the designed aerial layout takes on a menacing edge, indicating that war is near. Ultimately, you get the reverse comparison between birds and planes, as starlings become air forces attacking a tree, "the whole tree buzzed with the hissing sound they made, as if each bird were tearing a thread." A hiss, a hum rose from the humming, bird-vibrating, bird-blackened tree” (p. 130). Starlings are now mechanical with hissing sounds and wires, no longer birds but merciless machines. Conveyed in a tricolon of the birds' actions, the tree is overwhelmed and helpless as they do not want to "stop devouring the tree" (p. 130). There is no "perfect formation", but simply a chaos that resonates with mechanical, weapon-like sounds that seem to have penetrated nature's creatures, Woolf reveals that war is here. Please note: this is just an example. Get a custom paper now from our expert writers. Get a custom essay Woolf.