The ethics of ontological relationality and becoming-plant of nonhuman beings in Virginia Woolf’s “The Plumage Bill” and Mrs. Dalloway

• 발행기관: 한국영미어문학회
• 저자명: Hyungshin Park
• 간행물 정보: 『영미어문학』제157호, 241~265쪽, 전체 25쪽
• 주제분류: 어문학 > 영어와문학
• 파일형태: PDF
• 발행일자: 2025.06.30

국문 초록

This paper examines the ontological relationality of nonhuman beings in Virginia Woolf’s “The Plumage Bill” and Mrs. Dalloway. Drawing on Rosi Braidotti’s definition, nonhuman beings—including birds, flowers, and women—form an alliance that traverses the power structures such as patriarchy, imperialism, and anthropocentrism, thereby decentering the human. In “The Plumage Bill,” Woolf portrays the relationality between women and birds as affiliated rather than antagonistic, positioning their alliance as a counter to male conservationist discourse. In Mrs. Dalloway, analyzing Septimus as Clarissa’s double reveals a profound affinity between Rezia, Septimus, Clarissa, and plants. Their ontological relationality emerges through Rezia’s uprooted and transplanted existence, Septimus’s body intertwining with fibers of the elm tree, and Clarissa’s “odd affinities” with trees. Particularly, Septimus’s becoming-plant challenges the boundary between consciousness and the unconscious, while Clarissa’s becoming-plant enacts rhizomatic movement, offering a model of interconnected existence. The ontological relationality reveals ethics that affirm humans coexist with all heterogeneous beings in mutual interdependence.

목차

1. Introduction

2. The Alliance of Birds and Women as Nonhuman Being in “The Plumage Bill”

3. Becoming-plant and the Ontological Relationality in Mrs Dalloway

4. Conclusion

Works cited

키워드

Virginia Woolf “The Plumage Bill” Mrs. Dalloway Nonhuman being ontological relationality Rosi Braidotti’s affirmative ethics Gilles Deleuze’s haecceity rhizome becoming-plant