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

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 affirms the coexistence of humans with all heterogeneous beings in mutual interdependence.

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