Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway Essay

The topic of war is hard to imagine from the perspective of one who hasn't experienced it. Literature makes it accessible for the reader to explore the themes of war. Owen and Remarque both dipcik what war was like for one who has never gone through it. Men in both All Quiet on the Western Front and “Dulce Et Decorum” experience betrayal of youth, horrors of war and feelings of camaraderie.

Annie Dillard and Virginia Woolf both wrote beautiful essays, entitled “Death of A Moth,” and “Death of the Moth,” respectively. The similarities between the two pieces are seen just in the titles; however, the pieces exhibit several differences. While both Dillard and Woolf wrote extensive and detailed essays following deaths of moths, each writer’s work displays influence from different styles and tone, and each moth has a different effect on the respective writer; Dillard utilizes more blunt, and often graphic description in her writing, contrasting with Woolf’s reverent and solemn writing. Dillard is affected by allowing her to contemplate the concept of eternity and purpose

Nobody likes the war and it is really a difficult topic to write on it. Louisa May Alcott expressed her personal experience with a dying war soldier in such a beautiful way that it extract the sympathy and emotions of the audience and readers. In her excerpt “Hospital Sketches”, she writes about a young, brave and bachelor soldier named John, who participated in the civil war in 1863. She encountered him in an army hospital, while working there as a nurse. He was brought there with the fatal injuries. Using her writer’s experience, she presents an emotional retelling of an story, which advances an argument. She gets her readers emotionally involved in this narrative. By using diction, imagery, selection of details and her rhetorical

By the end of the novel, it is evident that Woolf uses the Septimus subplot in order to establish Clarissa and Septimus’ unified vision of an oppressive society, despite their opposing backgrounds and mental conditions. Clarissa, on one hand, chose the safe route. She married a well-off politician, and lives a materially satisfying lifestyle. However, she constantly questions her life choices and is plagued by self-doubt. She seems to have lost her sense of self, seeing herself simply as “Mrs. Richard Dalloway” (10). Her lifestyle causes her to become concerned with her image in society, and she becomes burdened by her constant worry about living up to her role as a politician’s wife. Septimus, on the other hand, risks his life to fight in the war, resulting in a bad case of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. In addition, the war hardened him in some ways. After his friend Evans’ death, Septimus becomes worries with his lack of an emotional response. He feels a certain detachment from his feelings, yet imagines Evans throughout the day, perhaps trying to evoke some sort of feeling. Septimus describes his detachment by explaining that it is as if he [has] been dead, and yet [he is still] alive” (69). While he is physically there, his realization of his emptiness causes him to often zone out and become absent to the world around him. In this way, Septimus experiences a greater degree of mental instability than Clarissa. He has seen the horrors of war, giving him the undesirable

Howells' short story sheds light on the unreasonable outlook of the literal world from a perception fueled by standards of romanticism. Personified through Editha Balcom, a shallow, impersonal, perfection-seeking young woman, the influence of the ideal is emphasized through her self-centered demeanor, lofty expectations, and naive character. Early on, It is evident that Editha lives in a world of her own, unaware of wrong from right, rather, she only acknowledges whether an act is heroic or not. She looks at her fiancé, George Gearson, a humble, rational, peaceful young man, with this exact sentiment upon his weary announcement of the beginning of war. As expected, she calls the otherwise brutal act of war "glorious!" (Howells 168) in a frenzy of emotion. Editha seeks a perfect man who should return from war having done "something worthy to have won her" in other words, somebody to "be a hero, her hero" (169). As Editha prepares herself to relinquish George to war, the reader witnesses the true debilitating forces of one who is congenial with the ideal. Through dramatic and emotional outpourings to George by letter, her writing evinces to be the quintessence of unrealistic virtues; one in particular filled with fluffy, over

Power Struggles are very common is many marriages. In Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, by Edward Albee, the relationship or marriage between George and Martha is based in power. The power struggle between George and Martha has become the basis of their relationship. Their love has turned into hate. The only connection they have is through their insults and the series of games they play. The power struggle between George and Martha develops is reveled and is resolved through out the play.

‘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.

George, unlike the reader however, is unaware of Editha’s dishonest reasons for her support of the war and ignorantly goes off to war with the innocent belief that his girlfriend actually cares about the outcome of the war itself and not that it might potentially shape him into the man she secretly wishes he was. Howell’s use of Editha and her deceitful motives for supporting the war add a layer of realism to the story, as peoples’ motives in real life are not always pure.

‘No doubt they’ll soon get well; the shock and the strain / have caused their stammering, disconnected talk,’ writes Siegfried Sassoon in the poem Survivors (1917). Sassoon’s irony in these lines condense a prevalent view of non-combatants during the First World War that the soldiers would recover from their physical injuries and mental illness after the phase of shock had concluded. In the short story Speed the Plough (1923), Mary Butts articulates scepticism towards the idea that Shell Shock will simply pass. Instead of employing the habitual indicators of war, the story showcases Butts’s fixation in avoiding them. Modernist writers, such as Butts, were interested in innovation and experimentation with language to create new forms of expression. The following analysis will explore how the modernist aesthetics shape this passage in order to express the experience of war but avoid recurring to the same language that explicitly evokes it.

Since Geneva is desperately trying to avoid facing reality, her attitude begins to rub off on her daughter, Saranell. While Geneva and Saranell are leaving Gilead, Geneva mutters, “‘This whole war is so inconvenient, so ridiculous’” (Carr 118). Even though Geneva’s husband is in the war, she

Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway and Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights share similarities in many aspects, perhaps most plainly seen in the plots: just as Clarissa marries Richard rather than Peter Walsh in order to secure a comfortable life for herself, Catherine chooses Edgar Linton over Heathcliff in an attempt to wrest both herself and Heathcliff from the squalid lifestyle of Wuthering Heights. However, these two novels also overlap in thematic elements in that both are concerned with the opposing forces of civilization or order and chaos or madness. The recurring image of the house is an important symbol used to illustrate both authors’ order versus chaos

that he no longer had to deal with his illness which was a burden to

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,”

When WWI was over, many people questioned the brutality that carried on over the four years that the war was happening. The Europeans trust in authority and in their country began to collapse, and Modernism was a way they could respond to the damage of those beliefs. It was obvious that the old world was gone and a new one had started to arise. In this new world, while other aspects of Europe were advancing, improvement in the psychiatric treatment of mental conditions, for example shell-shock, fell short. Most of British society remained unaware and uninterested in the problems that these illnesses forced on the veterans. This insensitive attitude toward the soldiers inspired Virginia Woolf to write Mrs. Dalloway. In this novel she shows

Virginia Woolf’s outlook on life as expressed through the novel, “Mrs. Dalloway” is pessimistic and even cynical. Both, the satirical parts of the novel and the serious and tragic parts of it convey this pessimistic philosophy of life and nihilism. ‘Mrs. Dalloway’ is a representation of the post war civilization. The outward façade of that civilization, its external glitter and brilliance, its pomp and show, its social snobbery, its hypocrisy and its material achievements etc are all represented through the life of Dalloways. Virginia Woolf has juxtaposed this zest for life and outward pretence with the hollowness of mankind which is rotten within. So the novel generally portrays the concept of ‘nihilism’ through the spiritual death and emptiness of post war civilization.