William Woolf 's Mrs. Dalloway

Time serves as one of the key structures of our society. Throughout each day we are constantly reminded of time: What time is it? What time did I start work? What time is the game? Remember that one time? Time flies when you are having fun! These expressions of time are categorized into two types of time: external time which labels our presence in reality and internal time which guides our actions, thoughts, and emotion. Naturally, we assume that these times are set in unison to each other, as time is always relative to an observer. But what happens when the times of the external and internal differ? In the novel Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf, Woolf begins to explore this question through her unique writing style of free indirect discourse to travel forward and back in time, as Woolf narrates freely through the thoughts and memories of each character. With each half-hour and hourly strike of Big Ben in the heart of London, the clock serves as a tool to remind each character of the reality of life. The clock further provides physical structure and unity in a post-World War I society, connecting characters of the past at specific moments in time. Through the use of flashbacks we can parallel characters of the past into the present moment, which supports Woolf’s intricate understanding of time as circular not merely linear. Wolf further guides the reader to see how time can provoke daunting effects of fear and anxiety upon one’s life, which is displayed through

Time is the one thing that is constant in life. For some, this provides a remedy for anxiety. The idea that time will go on, no matter the events it beholds can provide comfort. However, other people see this clock that never ceases as a trap, containing its prisoners in a life of misery. This concept is ever so daunting in Michael Cunningham’s novel, The Hours. His three main characters, Clarissa Vaughan, Laura Brown, and Virginia Woolf, live in three different time periods. Through the span of twenty-four hours their stories intertwine, defying the rules of time which the characters themselves were left to contemplate. In his novel, The Hours, Michael Cunningham’s characters, Clarissa, Laura, and Virginia demonstrate both the negative and positive connotations associated with a progression of time through their narratives. Virginia and Laura, provide the negative connotations of time. Virginia is restrained by the toll that time has taken on her mental health. Laura is tortured by the plainness of her life and the idea of time prolonging agony. Lastly, Clarissa provides the positive connotations of time. She emphasizes the importance of appreciating life. Through these opposing viewpoints, Michael Cunningham introduces the bittersweet concepts of time.

Mrs. Dalloway is an exceptional novel with several varying themes throughout the book. The setting of the novel takes place after World War I, previously known has the The Great War. The characters express interesting reactions to topics common during their time period and illustrate their own struggles.

In their scene at the park, Rezia uses many means to distract Septimus from his reflections by pointing out planes and a troop of boys playing cricket (22-23). While having little to no understanding on her husband’s condition, she is the most willing to help him adjust back to normal life. Woolf uses characters like Dr. Holmes and Sir William Bradshaw to criticize many of the doctors after the war for pushing aside soldiers suffering from shell shock and claiming, “ there was nothing whatever the matter” (72). She also addresses her displeasure with the treatment of mental illnesses, depression, and other psychological conditions that were ignored by doctors. This could stem from Woolf also being afflicted by many psychological problems throughout her life. In Jean M. Wyatt’s “Mrs. Dalloway: Literary Allusion as Structural Metaphor,” she explains that the reason Septimus ended his life was because he saw an innocence and life in Rezia that he no longer possessed and decided that by committing suicide he was giving society a kind of renewal (443). His war experience, like that of many soldiers, shattered his perception of life and left fragments of it so deeply instilled in his life after the war that it impaired his ability to regain his past perceptions of life

    In Mrs. Dalloway, Woolf shows the effects of war in simple and complex ways.  Mrs. Dalloway has traveled to London to buy flowers for her party.  The Great War had just ended and not only

The ongoing relationship between the literary movements of modernism and post-modernism is encompassed by the intertextual relationships between Stephen Daldry’s “The Hours” and Virginia Woolf’s “Mrs Dalloway”. These relationships communicate the inadequacy of previous writings to convey trauma, cultural crisis and the deep fragmentation within their respective societies. The immediate context of these social dialogues creates a clear division between each text, however the intertextual similarities between minor and major characters create an effective parallel to traverse decades, years, months and days. This is in order to assess the lasting impacts of society on an individual’s desire to escape either physically or metaphorically.

Mrs. Dalloway will continue to develop into a plot-twisting, eventful and alluring story that readers will continue to enjoy in the future. It is extremely important to take a step back from the theory side of a novel and to simply enjoy the experience that the text is portraying, and to always remember language and literature is of humane values. This is something that expresses our humanity and provides readers with an experience in a way which will remain timeless and

Inspired by Virginia’s Woolf renowned novel, Mrs. Dalloway, the movie is an adaptation of the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, The Hours. In it, we get to glimpse a singular day in the lives of three women, who are contemplating suicide as they read the novel, whose protagonist’s struggle mirrors their own. The first woman depicted is Virginia Woolf herself in 1920s England. Although we first see her suicide, the movie than backtracks to examine her in a depressive episode, a product of her bipolar disorder. Woolf’s mental illness puts tension on all of her relationships as well as her artistic process, which can be seen in her difficulties when writing Mrs. Dalloway. Comparatively, Laura Brown is a 1950s housewife in LA and is pregnant with her second child. So clearly discontent with her life, Laura proceeds to do various underwhelming tasks before dropping her son off and heading to a hotel. She begins to commit suicide, but is suddenly unable. She returns home, but is still clearly depressed, which is only amplified once her husband comes home. The final woman that we get to follow is Clarissa Vaungn, a modern New Yorker, who is preparing for a party in honor of the work her friend, Richard, just published. Her story is very much inspired by the novel that the movie is centered around. As she organizes the event, her apparent distress slowly is revealed regarding her dissatisfaction with life and suicidal thoughts, which is amplified by Richard’s suicide. It is

In “Mrs. Dalloway,” Virginia Woolf highlights different experiences of everyday suffering after World War I. Septimus Smith, a veteran of World War I, loses his identity during his tour. Clarissa Dalloway and Lucrezia Warren Smith are both suffering as a result of society’s expectations; they both lose their individuality and succumb to their husbands. Many people did not know how to cope with the change of perspective after the war; some people tried different forms of treatment, while others chose to ignore the war and move forward. Virginia Woolf asserts the idea that depression can only be understood emotionally, not scientifically, ultimately proving that uneducated women have more wisdom than men after the war. Septimus suffered emotional

Dalloway depicts a “broken world” with “broken sensibilities impelled by the annihilative effects of war on both the human consciousness and the human soul”. Too broken, Woolf’s Jesus cannot save himself. Clarissa, his psychic sister, is stronger; yet despite her success as a hostess, she “always” believes “that it was very, very dangerous to live even one day” (8), which is to say, she struggles each day to survive. An apocalyptic novel, Mrs. Dalloway envisions a time when “London is a grass-grown path” whose former citizens “are but bones with a few wedding rings mixed up in the dust” (16). The few wedding rings symbolize the paucity of love, Christian or otherwise, that threatened to doom society. Woolf’s pessimism was understandable after war had killed or shattered millions of men like Septimus—and for

Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway is a piece of literature that helped to push forward a culture of writing that she felt was otherwise stuck. Along with a style that transcended how people thought about telling a story, was the commentary. The story is riddled with commentary on politics, society, war, class, and the medical system. Virginia Woolf lets her worldviews bleed into her writing in a way that is somehow both subtle and also still direct. She lets the characters have their own experiences and dialogue, which show her views from different perspectives and without just coming out and saying it. The commentary that this is most evident in is Woolf’s commentary on doctors and the medical system as a whole. Throughout Mrs. Dalloway, Virginia Woolf shows the incompetence of doctors and the medical system through Clarissa and Septimus’s interactions with them.

In Virginia Woolf’s novel Mrs. Dalloway, Peter Walsh serves as the focalizer for a good portion of the novel. It is through his eyes that we see Woolf’s critiques of the British middle class notions of propriety, success, and proper gender roles. Peter Walsh’s thoughts and observations of Clarissa Dalloway, Sally Seton and Richard Dalloway are all used to justify Woolf’s critics on societies pressures that cause people to become dependent on others to validate their place in society, lose who they are and what they stand for in order to fit societies idea of women, as well as question their masculinity because societal pressures force the association of success with characteristics of masculinity. It is Peter’s 5- year stay in India that

Throughout history, authors have responded to historical events like the war through different genres of literature from novels to poems. In this paper; I will look at how Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf, September 1st, 1939 by Wystan Hugh Auden and The Charge of the Light Brigade by Alfred Lord Tennyson respond to various historical events. A comparison between these texts will show the many similarities and differences in how they respond to the theme of war. In addition to this, I will examine the literary techniques used to reveal the different aspect of war. Although these texts deal with different historical events of warfare, an analysis of them shows that they focus on various aspects of war, the aftermath, the apathy of society and the tragic heroism of soldiers.

In 1903, when Woolf was in her very early twenties, her other half-brother George began to sexually abuse her, sliding into bed with her against her will, and almost never leaving her alone. Shortly after, she tried to commit suicide by jumping out a window, but it was too low to kill her (Whitworth, 9-10). Virginia met Leonard Woolf briefly in 1904, and after a long and tumultuous courtship plagued by doubt and Virginia’s mental illness, they were married on August 10th, 1912 (Whitworth, 15-17). In 1913, she took a very large dose of sleeping medication, hoping to kill herself. Before she was dead, however, she was found and her stomach pumped, saving her life (Whitworth, 17-18). All of these events shaped her life and writing, but certain aspects of what she experienced really seem to affect how a reader could interpret Mrs. Dalloway.

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.