Understanding Modernism
Charlie Gardiner
Modernist writers aim to unsettle their audience by disturbing the relationship between writer
and audience. To what extent does your reading of your three texts support or challenge this
view?
Bertolt Brecht’s ‘Mother Courage and her Children’, Virginia Woolf’s ‘Mrs Dalloway’ and T.S
Eliot’s ‘The Waste Land’ and ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’ all support the view of
modernist writers unsettling their audience by disturbing the relationship between the writer and
audience. All three writers disrupt the relationship through their use of themes, language and
structure techniques that marked the ‘breakaway’ in literature from the traditional romanticism
that held huge provenance in the Victorian era[1]. These techniques include the use of socially
uncomfortable themes such as: war and its aftermath, sexuality, and despair with modern
life/values including the social hierarchy, capitalism, and lack of feeling/ love. All three writers
also include experimental language and structural techniques including: stream of consciousness,
lack of chronological events, the ‘verfremdungseffekt’ (alienation effect), non-personal setting,
fragmented verses/ sentences/ dialogue and also the use of songs/ different languages. All three
writers make use of these techniques and effectively disrupt the relationship between the writer
and audience.
Modernist writers attempt to disturb the relationship between them and their audience through
their controversial use of themes that were socially unacceptable/ uncomfortable to their
audience of the time. This is particularly evident in Brecht’s ‘Mother Courage and her Children’
where he uses the theme of war and its effects. Brecht sets the play in the ‘Thirty Years War’ of
the 1600’s. As the ‘Thirty Years War’ was fought several hundred years before the first
performance of the play, Brecht’s audience would therefore have no emotional connection to the
setting of the play. This therefore would remove a significant amount of sympathy that the
audience may have had for those who suffer from the ugliness of war, as although the theme of
war is linked to that of World War One, (which had a large effect on Brecht, notably creating his
hatred for war due to his experiences as a German medical orderly[2]), and also the aggressive
action taken by Nazi Germany at the time of the play’s writing (which Brecht himself lived
through which forced him to leave the country[3]) it is not so strong that the audience can
connect to it. This effectively achieves Brecht’s intention of his audience not connecting to the
setting and it effectively allows the audience to focus on the content raised by him. This is
supported by Franz Norbert Mennemeier in his essay[4] where he states: ‘Almost always the
action takes place in far-away settings, / exotic lands out of which all temporal references have
been carefully removed’. This therefore, supports the view that modernist writers disturb the
relationship between themselves and their audience. Virginia Woolf in ‘Mrs Dalloway’ also uses
the socially uncomfortable theme of war by highlighting the terrible effects of war through
Septimus’ shell-shock. His suffering is emphasized through his continual hallucinations
including the encounter with a ‘Skye terrier’ dog on page 51 which ‘started him into an agony of
fear’ as he watched it ‘becoming a man’. Septimus’ hallucinations emphasize the terrible effects
that World War One had on many young service men, which effectively disrupts the relationship
between Woolf and her audience as it forces them to address the theme of war which was
increasingly uncomfortable in Woolf’s society. Woolf herself was prone to patches of insanity,
which was expected to have originated from the death of her mother, and worsened later in her
life and through her marriage[5]. It is likely that this influenced Woolf’s work on the novel and
particularly the breakdowns and hallucinations of Septimus.
Modernist writers also attempt to disturb the relationship between themselves and their audience
through the use of structural techniques such as the ‘verfremdungseffekt’ (the alienation effect).
This is a major part of Brecht’s ‘Mother Courage and her Children’ where Brecht makes use of
the technique in several ways. One way in which Brecht uses the ‘verfremdungseffekt’ is
through his revealing of the coming action at the start of each scene. The technique is
particularly evident at the start of Scene three where Brecht reveals that Mother Courage’s
‘honest son (will be) killed’. By Brecht revealing the coming action at the start of this scene,
when Swiss Cheese is finally executed at the end of the scene; Brecht’s audience are not shocked
but are forced to become critical observers of the play, and they can therefore see that it is
Mother Courage’s fault that Swiss Cheese is killed (as it is with all her children) as she haggled
too much over the price to bribe the corrupt officer who had the power to save Swiss Cheese
from the ‘eleven bullets they gave him’. This effectively disrupts the relationship between
Brecht and his audience, as it steers the audience away from the emotion and possible sympathy
they may have felt for Mother Courage after her loss of Swiss Cheese, as Brecht highlights the
fact that it is Mother Courage’s lust for profit that eventually causes the loss of her children.
Mother Courage’s lust for and eventual failure to achieve financial profit, could have been
influenced by Brecht’s own political views. Due to him being a well-known anti-capitalist and
also expected communist[6], it is possible that Brecht’s presenting of Mother Courage as a
woman obsessed with profit may have been influenced by his political views as he stated that
‘big profits are not made by little people’: a direct parallel to Mother Courage’s shortcomings.
Brecht’s need to focus the audience on the reasons for Mother Courage’s behaviour explains why
it is hard to empathise with her.
Moreover, another way in which Brecht makes us of the ‘verfremdungseffekt’ to disturb the
relationship between him and his audience is through his use of various songs throughout the
play. Brecht uses various songs in the play including: ‘The Song of the Grand Capitulation’ sung
by Mother Courage to the ‘Young Soldier’, ‘The Lullaby’ sung by Mother Courage to Kattrin
and also ‘The Song of Fraternisation’ sung by Yvette to Kattrin. The songs used by Brecht
effectively disturb the relationship between him and his audience. As the songs used by Brecht
usually carry a message usually moral, ironical or political, this avoids the characters having a
long emotional conversation. This is particularly evident in Scene three of the play where Yvette
sings the ‘Song of Fraternisation’ to Kattrin to warn her how she can get hurt emotionally if she
fell in love with an enemy of their regiment. ‘When sorrow first I knew/ the foe, my lover still
went marching out of sight.’ This song effectively makes use of the ‘verfremdungseffekt’ as it
prevents Kattrin and Yvette having an emotional conversation about love and relationships
(which seems like a perfect scene to do so), which again prevents the audience from emotionally
connecting to the characters which achieves Brecht’s intention of not ‘writing for the scum who
want the cockles of their hearts warmed[7].’ Brecht here contradicts the work of Constantin
Stanislavski who believed in portraying ‘emotion memory’[8] i.e. the actors to use emotional
memories to recreate the emotion on stage, as Brecht looked to remove the emotion through
various ways including through the use of songs as mentioned above. Similarly, in T.S. Eliot’s
‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’ Eliot uses the Italian Language: ‘s’io credesse che mia
risposta fosse’ which immediately disturbs the relationship between writer and audience due to
the fact that much of Eliot’s audience would not understand Italian, which would therefore make
the poem harder to follow, as it creates a challenge for the audience to understand the hidden
meanings of the poem. Much like Brecht; Eliot wanted his readers to actively engage with the
text rather than being passive.
One other way in which Modernist writers attempt to disturb the relationship between them and
their audience is through the use of uncomfortable themes such as sexuality. This is interestingly
explored by Woolf in ‘Mrs Dalloway’ where Clarissa begins to question her heterosexuality
when she begins to spend time with Sally Seton. On page twenty-six of the novel Clarissa’s
questioning of her sexuality is strongly emphasized where she states her belief that she is in fact
in love with Sally Seton. ‘That was her feeling- Othello’s feeling, and she felt it, she was
convinced, as strongly as Shakespeare had meant Othello to feel it, all because she was coming
down to dinner in a white frock to meet Sally Seton.’ Woolf later continues: ‘then came the most
exquisite moment of her whole life… Sally stopped, picked a flower; kissed her on the lips.’
Here Woof is using the theme of sexuality to unsettle her audience. She describes the
(homosexual) love that Clarissa has for Sally as strong as ‘Othello’ had for his wife Desdemona,
that upon his wife’s death he killed himself as he could not live without her. This love is
emphasized through the kiss that the two women share outside the house at Bourton which
Woolf describes as Clarissa’s ‘most exquisite moment of her life’. This disturbs the relationship
between writer and audience, as the subject of sexuality and homosexuality was one of great
controversy to Woolf’s contemporary audience and would have made the theme very
uncomfortable for the audience to read. Woolf herself was rumoured to have experimented in
homosexuality[9] later on in her life; and it seems that this probably influenced her writing in the
novel, particularly the relationship between Clarissa and Sally. Sexuality is also a theme
explored by T.S. Eliot in his poem the ‘Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’. Here Eliot emphasizes
Prufrock’s inability to express his true sexual feelings or feelings of love to a woman, due to his
embarrassment of ageing and his appearance. In the poem Eliot writes: ‘and indeed there will be
time to wonder, ‘Do I Dare?’ and ‘Do I Dare?’ time to turn back and descend the stair, with a
bald spot in the middle of my hair [they will say: ‘How his hair is growing thin.’] Prufrock’s
embarrassment of ageing and his appearance is emphasized by Eliot here by Prufrock’s thoughts
of people judging his appearance and how he will be more comfortable if he ‘descend(ed) the
stair’, and not tell this woman about his true feelings. This notion of questioning the individual in
society was a key feature of modernist writing.
Modernist writers also attempt to disturb the relationship between writer and audience through
structural techniques such as the stream of consciousness. This is particularly evident in Virginia
Woolf’s ‘Mrs Dalloway’ where Woolf uses it to show the disjointed thoughts of the characters.
A prime example of the use of this technique is on page thirty of the novel, ‘Here she is mending
her dress; mending her dress as usual, he thought; here she’s been sitting all the time I’ve been in
India; mending her dress; playing about; going to parties; running to the House and back and all
that, he thought, growing more and more agitated, for there’s nothing in the world so bad for
some women as marriage’. The long sentence used here by Woolf emphasizes the continual
thoughts that Peter has about Clarissa. Moreover, the sudden subject shift of his thoughts to
marriage emphasizes the disjointedness of Peter’s thoughts, which effectively disturbs the
relationship between writer and audience as the stream of consciousness makes Peter’s thoughts
harder to follow. This structural technique used here by Woolf is also presented in the work of
the well-known novelist James Joyce who wrote at the same time of Woolf, and who Woolf
states that through their techniques (including stream of consciousness) ‘they attempt to come
closer to life’[10] perhaps showing an influence on Woolf’s work on ‘Mrs Dalloway’. Moreover,
the technique used here by Woolf is highlighted in a dramatized film version[11] of the novel
where Clarissa’s disjointed thoughts are continually heard by the audience effectively showing
the technique of stream of consciousness. T.S. Eliot also makes use of the stream of
consciousness in ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’ where Eliot makes Prufrock’s thoughts
intentionally disjointed; where he goes from thoughts of the city ‘the yellow fog/ yellow smoke/
drains’, to ageing ‘with a bald spot in the middle of my hair’, to time ‘would it have been worth
it, after all, after the cups, the marmalade, the tea’ which is very similar to Peter’s disjointed
thoughts. This also makes the thoughts of the character of the poem that harder to follow, which
also effectively disrupts the relationship between the writer and audience.
As mentioned above Modernist writers attempt to disturb the relationship between writer and
audience through the use of uncomfortable themes. This is also evident in Eliot’s ‘The
Wasteland’ where Eliot uses the theme of war and its aftermath. Throughout the poem Eliot
makes many references to the war and the effect it has had on society. This is particularly evident
in ‘A Game of Chess’ where Eliot takes the setting to an East End pub, where the wife of a
soldier named ‘Lil’ is eagerly awaiting the return of her husband. We learn that Lil’s husband
left her money to ‘get herself some new teeth’ as he could not ‘bear to look at’ her. We learn that
Lil is taking ‘pills’ and that she is unhappy in her marriage. This stanza of the poem seems to
emphasize the terrible effect war has had on society. ‘Lil’ it seems, that due to her husband’s
‘four year’ service in the army ‘Lil’ has become unhappy in her marriage and has now turned to
‘pills’. The fact that Lil’s husband left her money for her to buy ‘new teeth’ could represent the
decaying Europe after World War One. This uncomfortable theme used here by Eliot effectively
disturbs the relationship between the writer and audience, as the decaying society after the war
would be a subject greatly uncomfortable to Eliot’s audience. The fact that Lil is unhappy in her
marriage could have been influenced by Eliot’s own experiences in marriage; as his wife Vivien
had many problems with her physical and emotional health and Eliot as a result suffered two
breakdowns and eventually separated from her[12]. Virginia Woolf in ‘Mrs Dalloway’ also uses
the socially uncomfortable theme of war by highlighting the terrible effects of war through
Septimus’ shell-shock. His suffering is emphasized through his continual hallucinations
including the encounter with a ‘Skye terrier’ dog on page 51 which ‘started him into an agony of
fear’ as he watched it ‘becoming a man’. Septimus’ hallucinations emphasize the terrible effects
and stress[13] that World War One had on many young service men, which effectively disrupts
the relationship between Woolf and her audience as it creates the theme of war which was
increasingly uncomfortable in Woolf’s society.
Another uncomfortable theme that Modernist writers use to unsettle their audience is the struggle
of the individual in society. This is evident in Eliot’s ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’
where Eliot creates this theme through Prufrock’s dilemma of whether or not to tell a woman his
true feelings for her. Throughout the poem Eliot makes many references to Prufrock’s struggle to
express his true sexual feelings of love towards a woman he is attracted to. In the poem we read:
‘and indeed there will be time to wonder, ‘Do I Dare?’ and ‘Do I Dare?’ time to turn back and
descend the stair, with a bald spot in the middle of my hair [they will say: ‘How his hair is
growing thin.’] Eliot here effectively creates the uncomfortable theme of the struggle of the
individual in society; through Prufrock’s apparent fear of rejection by the woman he has feelings
for due to the fact of his ‘bald spot in the middle of (his) hair’. This therefore could suggest that
due to his ageing appearance, in this society Prufrock cannot express his true feelings and
therefore should ‘turn back and descend the stair’. Moreover, later in the poem Eliot emphasizes
Prufrock’s confusion with his identity by stating: ‘No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to
be; am an attendant lord, one that will do/ at times, indeed, almost ridiculous almost, at times the
Fool.’ This effectively establishes the theme of the struggle of the individual in society as it
effectively shows Prufrock’s confusion over his identity and through the derogatory noun ‘fool’
Prufrock emphasizes the struggle for the individual in society. Virginia Woolf in ‘Mrs Dalloway’
also uses the uncomfortable theme of the struggle of the individual in society through the
character of Sally Seton. On page 25 of the novel, Woolf describes the ways in which Sally used
to ‘shock people’ and it was that which first attracted Clarissa to Sally. On this page Clarissa
recalls: once ‘she (Sally) forgot her sponge, and ran along the passage naked. That grim old
housemaid, Ellen Atkins, went about grumbling- ‘suppose any of the gentlemen had seen?’
Indeed she did shock people.’ This care-free attitude of Sally and the disapproving attitude of
Ellen Atkins presented by Woolf clearly highlight the struggle of the individual in society. It is
clear that Sally represents the ‘individual’s struggle’, and perhaps the character of Ellen Atkins
represents the standard person of Woolf’s society, who expected women to behave in a manner
and decorum that was considered reserved and respectable, and not in a way in which Sally
conducts herself. This therefore creates the uncomfortable theme of the struggle of the individual
in society, which effectively disturbs the relationship between Woolf and her audience. This
uncomfortable theme also seems to have been explored by Brecht in ‘Mother Courage and her
Children’ through Yvette’s marriage to a colonel for seemingly immoral reasons. In Scene eight
of the play Yvette tells us that her ‘husband the colonel died a few years back’ to which Mother
Courage congratulates her on having ‘made it in this war’. Through Yvette making no attempt of
claiming she married ‘the colonel’ for reasons of love, shows the reader that the Thirty Years
War has forced Yvette into marrying into high society for immoral reasons; which therefore
creates the theme of the individuals struggle in society; in this case to marry for the ‘right’
reasons.
In conclusion, I feel that all three modernist writers effectively unsettle their audience by
disturbing the relationship between themselves and their audience. It seems that Brecht does it
through incorporating his political views into the various language and structural techniques that
he uses most notably the theme of anti-capitalism that runs right through the play. However, it
seems that Woolf and Eliot attempt to disturb the relationship through the creation of new
writing style, particularly Woolf who developed this new style through her work with the
Bloomsbury Group and which is evident throughout her novel as is Eliot’s throughout his
poetry.