Mrs Dalloway Character Analysis

The 1920s exist in the popular imagination as a time of freedom and wild energy, a time where social mores were discarded and independance embraced. This perception hardly fits with the reality. As with most eras the 1920s had a multitude of conventions and taboos. As with most eras, those who broke with such things were frowned upon. While parts of society were changing, conformity was still very much valued, as explored in Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway. Through the character of Clarissa Dalloway and her parallel found in Septimus Smith, Woolf portrays oppressive conformity and the inner self it hides, especially as related to queerness and compulsory heterosexuality; all this serves to illuminate the themes of conventionality and conversion

‘Mrs. Dalloway’, by Virginia Woolf is a derivative text of ‘The Hours’, written by Michael Cunningham. The novels both share an important theme of mental health. The circumstances of mental health are commonly sympathetic, and empathetic. The characters Septimus and Clarissa in ‘Mrs. Dalloway’ and Richard, Laura Brown, and Virginia Woolf in ‘The Hours’ show the strongest symbols for this theme. Most of the problems and treatments these characters face are in direct result of the age they live in. Both novels express a relationship between era, illnesses and treatments.

Throughout her life, novelist Virginia Woolf suffered with mental illness, and she ultimately ended her life at age 59. As art often imitates life, it is not surprising that characters in Woolf’s works also struggle with mental illness. One of her novels, Mrs. Dalloway, recounts a day in the life of Clarissa Dalloway, a high society woman living in London, and those who run in her circle. As the novel progresses the reader sees one of the characters, Septimus, struggle with post-traumatic stress disorder brought on by serving in war. At the end of the story, he commits suicide. While there is no explicit articulation of any other character suffering from mental illness in the novel, Septimus is not alone. Through her thoughts and actions, we can deduce that Clarissa also endures mental and emotional suffering. Though Clarissa does not actually attempt to end her life in the novel, her mental and emotional suffering lead her to exhibit suicidal tendencies. To prove this, I will examine Clarissa’s thoughts and actions from a psychological perspective.

In the novel Mrs Dalloway, Woolf conveys her perspective, as she finely examines and critiques the traditional gender roles of women in a changing post-war society. Woolf characterisation of Clarissa Dalloway in a non linear structure, presents a critical portrayal of the existing class structure through modernist’s eyes. Titling her novel as Mrs Dalloway presents Clarissa’s marriage as a central focus of her life, drawing attention to how a women’s identity is defined by marriage. Despite the changing role of women throughout the 1920s, for married women life was the same post war. Clarissa experiences ‘the oddest sense of being herself invisible…that is being Mrs Dalloway…this being Richard Dalloway,”

Adeline Virginia Stephen was born in London in 1882 in a wealthy family belonging to the high intellectual spheres. Her education followed the Victorian tradition: she read classics and major works of Anglo-Saxon literature at a young age. But her life suddenly changed dramatically; her mother died in 1895 when she was only 13 years. Then, Stella, his half-sister, died two years later. Virginia was deeply affected, and had her first depression, which will be followed by many others: in 1904, her father died, and Virginia was institutionalized for a brief period. This dramatic childhood affected her whole life. Virginia Woolf was very emotionally unstable. She committed suicide on March 28, 1941, after completing her final novel, Between the

In Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway, Clarissa Dalloway and Septimus Warren Smith are perceived as completely different people, but as one looks deeper, their characters become hard to differentiate from one another. While Septimus is a young, male, middle class veteran suffering from post traumatic stress disorder, Clarissa is an older woman in the upper class who enjoys throwing parties. However, as the day continues one can see these two characters share more in common than previously determined. All in all, Clarissa and Septimus are an unlikely pair of characters to relate to each other, but the two are more alike than different.

Virginia Woolf is a married woman who had public affairs with women and who shares a chaste kiss with her sister during her narrative. Woolf is also the author of Mrs. Dalloway, a novel that centers on Clarissa Dalloway, a woman who feels the same way "as men feel" (Woolf 36) about women, yet marries a man as society dictates.

  Clarissa Dalloway, the central character in Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway, is a complex figure whose relations with other women reveal as much about her personality as do her own musings. By focusing at length on several characters, all of whom are in some way connected to Clarissa, Woolf expertly portrays the ways females interact: sometimes drawing upon one another for things which they cannot get from men; other times, turning on each other out of jealousy and insecurity.

Post World War I London society was characterized by a flow of new luxuries available to the wealthy and unemployment throughout the lower classes. Fascinated by the rapidly growing hierarchal social class system, Virginia Woolf, a young writer living in London at the time, sought to criticize it and reveal the corruption which lay beneath its surface. Mrs. Dalloway, Woolf’s fourth novel, was born in 1925 out of this desire precisely. A recurring focus in many of Woolf’s major novels is the individual and his or her conscious perceptions of daily life. Throughout Mrs. Dalloway, Woolf uses this technique, known as a “stream-of-consciousness,” to trace the thoughts of Clarissa Dalloway and Septimus Warren Smith during one day in London five years after the Great War. It is exactly this narrative technique which allows Woolf to compare the lives of these two characters which belong to different social classes to argue that social placement has a negative effect on one’s life and psychological being.

In the book Mrs. Dalloway, by Virginia Woolf, it is evident that the main character, Clarissa Dalloway, double persona is Septimus Smith. While Clarissa proves to be more rational, Septimus is irrational. Clarissa shows optimism with her life and finding her true identity while Septimus is someone who experiencing insanity and madness. Although she never meets him and their lives are vastly different, the two characters actually mirror each other. Clarissa and Septimus share many characteristics and think in similar manners. Septimus serves as a contrast between the veteran working class and upper class. Throughout the book, Septimus’ thoughts parallel Clarissa’s and can be seen as an echo in some ways. This illustrates how the line between sanity and insanity can become blurred. Both characters have similar experiences, but how they go about interpreting them and finding deeper meaning about it differ because of their different personalities and experiences.

Socrates, a Greek philosopher once said: "Each one must know himself." Unfortunately, most of us are not aware of our true character. Social conventions are the main cause making us repress what we really think and feel. Only when unexpected events happen, we do have an opportunity to take a close look at our hidden self. "The Story of An Hour" by Kate Chopin reflects the dramatic development process of Mrs. Mallard's character through the death of her husband; it demonstrates that the true identity cannot be sheltered forever.

This was soon followed by the death of her mother and the inevitable estrangement and death of her father. Due to these events, Woolf became close to her sister, Vanessa; whom both shared to goal of escaping the “constraints of Victorian womanhood” (Hussey 377). This mainly stemmed from the sisters not being able to go to traditional school like their brothers. Not being mainstreamed into the school system provided Woolf with few friends and lead to many of her mental disabilities. After the death of her father, Woolf attempted suicide for the first time by jumping out a window. Soon after this event, her doctor and family members deemed Woolf mentally unstable. This led to Woolf’s passion of writing, it allowed her to explore her mania-depression on a deeper level. Her mental issues also led to her feminist tendencies, in which she eventually turned against men completely, even her husband Leonard.

In the book Mrs. Dalloway, Virginia Woolf wanted to cast the social system and bash it for how it worked. Her intricate focus is focusing not on the people, but on the morals of a certain class at a certain historical moment.

In her own writing on the novel Mrs Dalloway, Virginia Woolf stated, "I want to give life and death, sanity and insanity; I want to criticize the social system, and to show it at work at its most intense…“ In this essay, I shall use this quote as a means to examine the theme of love and solitude in one of her most famous novels which follows a set of characters that go about their day. Virginia Wolf was able to illustrate the isolation one experiences within its own mind and the importance of one’s soul and ways in which souls connect through different memories and events. Even though independency is highly valued, the inability for people to communicate and build meaningful relationships is the most important aspect in the novel.

The title of my project is Virginia Woolf as a feminist in reference to Mrs. Dalloway.