Analysis of Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
Mrs. Dalloway, published in 1925, is a romantic drama with deep psychological approaching in to the world of urban English society in the summer of 1923, five years after the end of World War I.
The book begins in the morning with the arrangements for a party Clarissa Dalloway will give and it ends late in the evening when the guests are all leaving. There are many flashbacks to tell us the past of each character, but it does not leave the range of those few hours. It presents several stream-of-consciousness devices: indirect interior monologue, time and space montage, flashbacks and psychological free association based mainly on memory, with the support of imagination and the senses (mainly sight).
We can compare the book to a tapestry where there are two strings being weaved together, separated from the narrative:
- Clarissa's party and all day long of arrangements;
- The craziness and finally Septimus' suicide.
To abolish the distinction between dream and reality; the writer effects this by mixing images with gestures, thoughts with impressions, visions with pure sensations. The language is short and dense, she writes in a flow of consciousness, floating from the mind of one character to the next.
In Mrs. Dalloway, Virginia Woolf used the non-linear time. One can compare this with surfing on the Internet where we can jump from place to place in a non-linear pattern. Despite its apparent discontinuity, Mrs. Dalloway has a pattern provided by several factors: unity of character, unity of time (everything takes place in one day and is centered on Clarissa's party) and the leitmotif: the sound image of Big Ben followed by the sentence "the leaden circles dissolved in the air...
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...ill" Clarissa, instead she decided that the double of Clarissa constructed in the form of a man destroyed by war and society, would take his own life in order for the rest of Clarissa's being can appreciate the life she had. She also analyses other kinds of death besides physical extinction: death of a friendship, by change, and death of the mind, by absence of change.
We know more about Clarissa from the comments and thoughts made by others, by memories discovered, and by symbolic reference. The postmodern novel is a simulation of reflections, alternating narration, poetic allusion, direct prose, metaphor, dialogue, and character development. Like the hat Clarissa and her husband made together, plenty of layers of emotion, feeling, logic, character, and motivation create the design. The moment of creation is thus a culmination of life and significance in the novel.
The heroine, Mrs. P, has some carries some characteristics parallel to Louise Mallard in “Hour.” The women of her time are limited by cultural convention. Yet, Mrs. P, (like Louise) begins to experience a new freedom of imagination, a zest for life , in the immediate absence of her husband. She realizes, through interior monologues, that she has been held back, that her station in life cannot and will not afford her the kind of freedom to explore freely and openly the emotions that are as much a part of her as they are not a part of Leonce. Here is a primary irony.
Severin argues that Smith, who breaks away from the traditional mold, is still a modernist writer and that her books are more important because in them she attempts to break free of social norms. The article focuses mostly on The Holiday by Smith, however the breaking of social norms is a familiar themes that runs throughout Novel on Yellow Paper. Severin explains, “Each of Smith’s novels marks an assault on the romance plot, although the techniques she employs are remarkably varied. Novel interrupts the romance first of Karl and heroine Pompey, then of Freddy and Pompey, with disruptive interludes – lists of quotations, fantasies, retold versions of the classics” (462). In The Holiday, Smith is taking an even more radical approach than her previous works, and in doing so she is shaking up the “social agenda” by breaking from narrative conventions and enabling her characters to not fall into romance, and instead come to terms with their own form of society: “According to Smith, a new world can only come about through the relinquishment of all forms of possessiveness, the psychological as well as the materials” (464). In Novel, Pompey is able to begin to break free from the societal norms because of her determination to be intelligent and her desire to avoid a marriage in which she would be merely a housewife. Smith allows her characters to
the novel is shown in a variety of different ways. The spaces in which Jane occupies, both narratively
In Mrs. Dalloway, Clarissa Dalloway undergoes an internal struggle between her love for society and life and a combined affinity for and fear of death. Her practical marriage to Richard serves its purpose of providing her with an involved social life of gatherings and parties that others may find frivolous but Clarissa sees as “an offering” to the life she loves so well. Throughout the novel she grapples with the prospect of growing old and approaching death, which after the joys of her life seems “unbelievable… that it must end; and no one in the whole world would know how she had loved it all; how, every instant…” At the same time, she is drawn to the very idea of dying, a theme which is most obviously exposed through her reaction to the news of Septimus Smith’s suicide. However, this crucial scene r...
... about things and develop a critical thinking, such as in the alienating subject as well as accepting a black person into the white society in the 1960’s.
The physical and social setting in "Mrs. Dalloway" sets the mood for the novel's principal theme: the theme of social oppression. Social oppression was shown in two ways: the oppression of women as English society returned to its traditional norms and customs after the war, and the oppression of the hard realities of life, "concealing" these realities with the elegance of English society. This paper discusses the purpose of the city in mirroring the theme of social oppression, focusing on issues of gender oppression, particularly against women, and the oppression of poverty and class discrimination between London's peasants and the elite class.
Virginia Woolf gave a speech in 1931 to the Women’s Service League about her life as a professional woman. Virginia Woolf was born in London in 1882 and became a professional novelist which was rare for a woman in this time period. She struggled with a mental illness and drowned herself in 1941. Her talk emphasizes that in order to be successful, you have to overcome your own personal obstacles and work hard at what matters to you the most. Virginia Woolf uses many rhetorical strategies to convey her message about women in the professional world, these rhetorical strategies include, appeal to logic, appeal to emotion, and an ethical appeal.
The extensive descriptions of Mrs. Dalloway’s inner thoughts and observations reveals Woolf’s “stream of consciousness” writing style, which emphasizes the complexity of Clarissa’s existential crisis. She also alludes to Shakespeare’s Cymbeline, further revealing her preoccupation with death as she quotes lines from a funeral song. She reads these lines while shopping in the commotion and joy of the streets of London, which juxtaposes with her internal conflicts regarding death. Shakespeare, a motif in the book, represents hope and solace for Mrs. Dalloway, as his lines form Cymbeline talk about the comforts found in death. From the beginning of the book, Mrs. Dalloway has shown a fear for death and experiences multiple existential crises, so her connection with Shakespeare is her way of dealing with the horrors of death. The multiple layers to this passage, including the irony, juxtaposition, and allusion, reveal Woolf’s complex writing style, which demonstrates that death is constantly present in people’s minds, affecting their everyday
Virginia Woolf's 'To the Lighthouse' is a fine example of modernist literature, like her fellow modernist writers James Joyce and D.H Lawrence. This novel in particular is of the most autobiographical. The similarities between the story and Woolf's own life are not accidental. The lighthouse, situations and deaths within the novel are all parallel to Woolf's childhood, she wrote in her diary 'I used to think of [father] & mother daily; but writing The Lighthouse, laid them in my mind ….(I believe this to be true – that I was obsessed by them both, unheathily; & writing of them was a necessary act). Woolf, Diary, 28 November 1928) Woolf like many other modernist writers uses stream of consciousness, this novel in particular features very little dialogue, preferring one thought, memory or idea to trigger another, providing an honest if not reliable account of the characters lives. There novels motifs are paired with many of the novels images. The novel features two main motifs that Woolf appears to be interested in examining, firstly we notice the relationships' between men and women and the other appears to be Woolf's use of parenthesis. The novels images only become apparent once these motifs have been explored, allowing the reader to examine the relationships between the different characters.
The language used portrays the characters thoughts and emotions for example she goes into great detail about her surroundings (her life) and the events which had taken place there .She talks about her environment as if she is closely connected with the associations to which she describes.
The entire basis of this book deals with communicating from both character to character, and narrator to reader, on a very high cerebral level. Because of this analytic quality of the book, the most important events also take place on such a high level. In fact, the major theme of the novel, that of the narrator searching for his past self, as well as the cognitive change between the "...
Clarissa Dalloway and Peter Walsh are defined by their memories. Virginia Woolf creates their characters through the memories they share, and indeed fabricates their very identities from these mutual experiences. Mrs. Dalloway creates a unique tapestry of time and memory, interweaving past and present, memory and dream. The past is the key to the future, and indeed for these two characters the past creates the future, shaping them into the people they are on the June day described by Woolf. Peter and Clarissa’s memories of the days spent at Bourton have a profound effect on them both and are still very much a part of them. These images of their younger selves are not broad, all-encompassing mental pictures, but rather the bits and pieces of life that create personality and identity. Peter remembers various idiosyncracies about Clarissa, and she does the same about him. They remember each other by “the colours, salts, tones of existence,” the very essence that makes human beings original and unique: the fabric of their true identities (30).
“I meant to write about death only life came breaking in as usual.” Virginia Woolf was a popular modernist back in the twentieth century. She wrote various novels, each novel different, but all connecting the same theme. Woolf struggled with a bipolar disorder and a deep depression within her years of living, and showed through her work the struggles she was faced with. Woolf put all her energy into writing what are now the most famous pieces from the twentieth century. Woolf was unlike average writers in her day, Woolf liked to focus on changes in the literature world. Although she was a dark writer, she liked to mix her darkness in with the changes the world was experiencing. Woolf’s famous novels are Mrs. Dalloway, The Lighthouse, A Room of One’s Own, and Orlando.
Clarissa's relationships with other females in Mrs. Dalloway offer great insight into her personality. Additionally, Woolf's decision to focus at length on Sally Seton, Millicent Bruton, Ellie Henderson, and Doris Kilman allows the reader to see how women relate to one another in extremely different ways: sometimes drawing upon one another for things they cannot get from men; other times, turning on one another out of jealousy and insecurity. Although Mrs. Dalloway is far from the most healthy or positive literary portrayal of women, Woolf presents an excellent exploration of female relationships.
...raps the sounds around each other, showing that language, even at its most freeing, is still confining. But the image is enough, and through this the Milky Way creates an anti-gravity field that lifts the characters out of their bodies: "The limitless depth of the Milky Way pulled his gaze up into it" (165). It is in this non-Newtonian manner that Kawabata directs our attention to the plot outline of his novel. We may focus on one moment, but it is infinitely refracted throughout the text, and at each moment we linger on the image, the reflected image, or the idea of the image; the plot is always there, but not always the primary image.