Mrs. Dalloway
Virgina Woolf
Virgina Woolf
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1882: Born in London, named
Adeline Virginia Stephen.
1895: Mother died; suffered her
first mental breakdown.
1904: had a second breakdown for the
death of her father.
Bloomsbury Group formed
1912: married to Leonard Woolf.
1913: her third serious breakdown;
finished her first novel, The Voyage
Out.
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1917: Bought a hand printing press, Hogarth House.
First published a couple of experimental short
stories; ex: The Mark on the Wall & Kew Gardens.
1922: Jacob’s Room published. Met
Mrs. Harold Nicolson – Vita Sackville
West.
1925: Mrs. Dalloway
1927: To the Lighthouse
1931: The Waves
1941: Committed suicide by drowning
herself in the River Ouse.
Writing Style:
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Virginia rebelled against what she called
the “materialism” novelists and sought
a more delicate rendering of those
aspects of consciousness in which she
felt that the truth of human experience
really lay. After two novels, The Voyage
Out and Night and Day, cast in
traditional form, she developed her own
style.
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These technical experiments helped revolutionize
fictional technique and perfected a form of interior
monologue in her novels. The publication of To the
Lighthouse (1927) and Orlando (1929) established
Virginia as a major novelist. She explores not only
subtlety problems of personal identity and personal
relationships but also a great deal of social criticism,
such as the reflection on the position of women. Her
strong support of women’s rights can be viewed in a
series of lectures published as A Room of One’s Own
(1929) and in a collection essays, Three Guineas (1938).
Stream of Consciousness
Definition
“……to describe the unbroken flow of thought and
awareness in the waking mind; it has since been
adopted to describe a narrative method in modern
fiction. Long passages of introspection, describing
in some detail what passes through a character’s
mind,…”
 “… the continuous flow of a character’s mental
process, in which sense perceptions mingle with
conscious and half-conscious thoughts, memories,
expectations, feelings, and random associations. “
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Woolf's goal is to move steadily
away from traditional forms of
fiction, to come "closer to life," to
capture the moments of life, even
though those times make life both
terribly wonderful and completely
unbearable.
Main Themes:
The sea as symbolic of life: The ebb and
flow of life.
 Doubling: Many critics describe Septimus
as Clarissa's doppelganger, the alternate
persona, the darker, more internal
personality compared to Clarissa's very
social and singular outlook. The doubling
portrays the polarity of the self and exposes
the positive-negative relationship inherent in
humanity.
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The intersection of time and timelessness:
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Woolf creates a new novelistic structure
in Mrs. Dalloway wherein her prose has
blurred the distinction between dream
and reality, between the past and
present.
Social commentary:
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Woolf also strived to illustrate the vain artificiality of
Clarissa's life and her involvement in it. Even though
Clarissa is effected by Septimus' death and is
bombarded by profound thoughts throughout the
novel, she is also a woman for whom a party is her
greatest offering to society. The thread of the Prime
Minister throughout, the near fulfilling of Peter's
prophecy concerning Clarissa's role, and the
characters of the doctors, Hugh Whitbread, and
Lady Bruton as compared to the tragically
mishandled plight of Septimus, throw a critical light
upon the social circle examined by Woolf.
The world of the sane and the insane
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The critic, Ruotolo, excellently develops the
idea behind the theme: "Estranged from
the sanity of others, ‘rooted to the
pavement,' the veteran [Septimus] asks
‘for what purpose' he is present. Virginia
Woolf's novel honors and extends his
question. He perceives a beauty in
existence that his age has almost totally
disregarded; his vision of new life... is a
source of joy as well as madness.
a study of insanity and suicide; life
and death
 With this book, Woolf wrote that
she wanted "to give life and death,
sanity and insanity." Truths are
subjective and changeable, as the
plot streams back and forth in
space and time.
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Uncertainty of life and isolation
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Life suddenly seems meaningless to
both Septimus and Mrs. Dalloway.
They are alone; the people who love
them are alone. They exist in a place
apart, though really the same, as the
rest of the people of London. They
are outsiders.
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If Mrs. Dalloway is haunted by her invisibility,
Septimus is haunted by ghosts of a different sort.
Drawing from her own bouts of insanity, Woolf paints
Septimus. He is a troubled war hero, who has
returned from war only to discover that he can't
forget, that the voices of his dead comrades continue
to haunt him, and that "the world itself is without
meaning."
Then, what is the difference between Mrs. Dalloway
and Septimus? They are both lonely; they both feel
disconnected. Why does one commit suicide, while
the other survives to plan another party?
Questions for Discussion:
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1. In Mrs. Dalloway, Virginia Woolf combines
interior with omniscient descriptions of character
and scene. How does the author handle the
transition between the interior and the exterior?
Which characters' points of view are primary to the
novel; which minor characters are given their own
points of view? Why, and how does Woolf handle the
transitions from one point of view to another? How
do the shifting points of view, together with that
of the author, combine to create a portrait of Clarissa
and her milieu? Does this kind of novelistic portraiture
resonate with other artistic movement's of Woolf's
time?
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2. Woolf saw Septimus Warren Smith as an
essential counterpoint to Clarissa Dalloway.
What specific comparisons and contrasts are
drawn between the two? What primary
images are associated, respectively, with
Clarissa and with Septimus? What is the
significance of Septimus making his first
appearance as Clarissa, from her florist's
window, watches the mysterious motor car in
Bond Street?
3. What was Clarissa's relationship with Sally
Seton? What is the significance of Sally's reentry
into Clarissa's life after so much time? What role
does Sally play in Clarissa's past and in her
present?
 4. What is Woolf's purpose in creating a range of
female characters of various ages and social
classes--from Clarissa herself and Lady Millicent
Burton to Sally Seton, Doris Kilman, Lucrezia
Smith, and Maisie Johnson? Does she present a
comparable range of male characters?
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5. Clarissa's movements through London,
along with the comings and goings of other
characters, are given in some geographic
detail. Do the patterns of movement and the
characters' intersecting routes establish a
pattern? If so, how do those physical patterns
reflect important internal patterns of thought,
memory, feelings, and attitudes? What is the
view of London that we come away with?
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6. As the day and the novel proceed, the
hours and half hours are sounded by a
variety of clocks (for instance, Big Ben strikes
noon at the novel's exact midpoint). What is
the effect of the time being constantly
announced on the novel's structure and on
our sense of the pace of the characters' lives?
What hours in association with which events
are explicitly sounded? Why? Is there
significance in Big Ben being the chief
announcer of time?
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7. Woolf shifts scenes between past and
present, primarily through Clarissa's,
Septimus's, and others' memories? Does
this device successfully establish the
importance of the past as a shaping
influence on and an informing component
of the present? Which characters promote
this idea? Does Woolf seem to believe this
holds true for individuals as it does for
society as a whole?
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8. Threats of disorder and death recur
throughout the novel, culminating in
Septimus's suicide and repeating later in
Sir William Bradshaw's report of that
suicide at Clarissa's party. When do
thoughts or images of disorder and death
appear in the novel, and in connection
with which characters? What are those
characters' attitudes concerning death?
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9. Clarissa and others have a heightened
sense of the "splendid achievement" and
continuity of English history, culture, and
tradition. How do Clarissa and others
respond to that history and culture? What
specific elements of English history and
culture are viewed as primary? How does
Clarissa's attitude, specifically, compare
with Septimus's attitude on these points?
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10. As he leaves Regent's Park, Peter
sees and hears "a tall quivering
shape, . . . a battered woman" singing
of love and death: "the voice of an
ancient spring spouting from the
earth . . ." singing "the ancient song."
What is Peter's reaction and what
significance does the battered woman
and her ancient song have for the novel
as a whole?
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11. Clarissa reads lines from Shakespeare's
Cymbeline (IV, ii) from an open book in a shop
window: "Fear no more the heat o' the sun / Nor
the furious winter's rages./Thou thy worldly task
hast done, / Home art gone and ta'en thy wages:
/ Golden lads and girls all must, / As chimneysweepers, come to dust." These lines are alluded
to many times. What importance do they have for
Clarissa, Septimus, and the novel's principal
themes?
What fears do Clarissa and other characters
experience?
 What is Shakespeare’s role in this novel?
 Which plays are cited, and how? How do
different characters “use” Shakespeare,
and what does this tell us about them?
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12. Why does Woolf end the novel with
Clarissa as seen through Peter's eyes?
Why does he experience feelings of
"terror," "ecstasy," and "extraordinary
excitement" in her presence? What is
the significance of those feelings, and
do we as readers share them?
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13. Maureen Howard asserts that “If ever
there was a work conceived in response to
the state of the novel, a consciously
‘modern’ novel, it is Mrs. Dalloway…The
novel, [Woolf] knew, had only to be reimagined, an enormous task, but what a
grand and immediate occasion” (viii). How
exactly is this novel “modern”--consciously
or unconsciously?
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14. The Foreword cites Woolf’s essay in The
Common Reader: “In the vast catastrophe of the
European war our emotions had to be broken up
for us, and put at an angle from us, before we
could allow ourselves to feel them in poetry or
fiction” (xiii). In discussing the loss of romance in A
Room of One’s Own, Woolf asks “Shall we lay the
blame on the war?…But why say ‘blame’? Why, if it
was an illusion, not praise the catastrophe,
whatever it was, that destroyed illusion and put
truth in its place?” (15). How does World War I
function in Mrs. Dalloway? Is it a catastrophe to
be blamed? Has it destroyed illusions?