L’expression linguistique de la marche dans Mrs Dalloway de Virginia Woolf : équilibre et déséquilibres de l’être

Abstract

The present article examines the linguistic choices made to refer to walking in Mrs Dalloway. While in an urban environment, walking itself is so elemental that all the characters do so, the linguistic means used by Woolf prove particularly significant. Walking, which is intrinsically dynamic, can thus be referred to via static phrases, or might even not be mentioned at all; conversely, the syntactic and semantic choices can make it appear excessive. Based on a corpus of 134 occurrences taken from all the passages in which a character proceeds along the streets, the study shows that these linguistic choices are not random at all: walking appears as a reflection of the balance or imbalance of the being, whose living force is at grips with a sense of proportion and threatened by alienation. Finally, it is proposed that the dynamic component inherent in walking can be interpreted as a metaphor of the living force which is to be found in all individuals.

Keywords

• équilibre
• excès
• linguistique
• marche
• sémantique
• silence