The Role Of Women In Mrs. Dalloway, By Virginia Woolf

Contemporary novels have imposed upon the love tribulations of women, throughout the exploration of genre and the romantic quest. Zora Neale Hurston’s Their eyes were watching God (1978) and Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway (2000) interplay on the various tribulations of women, throughout the conventions of the romantic quest and the search for identity. The protagonists of both texts are women and experience tribulations of their own, however, unique from the conventional romantic novels of their predecessors. Such tribulations include the submission of women and the male desire for dominance when they explore the romantic quest and furthermore, the inner struggles of women. Both texts display graphic imagery of the women’s inner experiences through confronting and engaging literary techniques, which enhance the audiences’ reading experience. Hurston’s reconstructions of the genre are demonstrated through a Southern context, which is the exploration of womanhood and innocence. Whilst Woolf’s interpretation of the romantic quest is shown through modernity and an intimate connection with the persona Clarissa Dalloway, within a patriarchal society.

Laura Brown is also a married woman, like both Woolf and Dalloway, but rather than having affairs with women, she, like Clarissa Dalloway, feels bound by her role in society and is greatly unhappy with her situation. For a brief moment, she breaks away from her heteronormative life and seems to truly desire to break free from the gender roles forced upon her while sharing a kiss with her neighbor’s wife, Kitty.

Characters like Peter Walsh, Sally Seton and finally, Clarissa Dalloway are centred in the novel as they highlight conflicting views of imperialism and the British empire. According to Elleke Boehmer, “in Virginia Woolf, empire is invariably associated with self-delusion, purblindness and, a self-destructive reality” (211) which is apparent in Mrs. Dalloway. Clarissa is centred in the novel as the embodiment of the upper-class, repression and denial. She refuses to confront the reality of the post-war world and instead, she chooses to occupy herself with parties. Her husband, Richard Dalloway is a conservative politician who himself refuses to engross himself with the thoughts of war and imperialism as he justifies it based on the idea of progress and development. He holds on to the romanticised image of colonialism that brings civilisation and light to uncivilised countries. There is also an awareness in the upper-class of their diminishing status. The detached emotional state of the upper-class thus becomes a way to cling to their temporary and short-lived power. Richard’s aspiration to historically document the Bruton family’s life is halted by Lady Bruton

V. Ivbulis (23:1995) stresses that in Modernist fiction an individual in this technologically developed world has become trivial. The world-wide market of goods, the fake blaze of the mass culture, the variety of the offers on TV and radio, and the developing power of all this over an individual has made him small. Also in "Mrs Dalloway" Clarissa is of less importance than the position she holds in the society. Everyone who comes to the party is interested only in the luxuriance and the possibility to be at least for some time in the higher levels of the society. For example, Ellie Henderson, who is a cousin of Clarissa, is very poor, but still she would find something to wear on and to be among those people from the higher levels of society: "It was an event to her, going to a party. It was quite a treat just to see the lovely clothes." They go to this party at Mrs Dalloway's to show off, to show themselves in a possibly richer way. They do not go there to meet Mrs Dalloway. She is as if only a person to meet them at the entrance.

For, although Clarissa is not necessarily a lesbian, Woolf makes it clear that her marriage to Richard is one of convenience, resulting from her need to conform to rigid social regulations. Whether she could find true happiness with any man is debatable, but a possible answer lies in the fact that she rejects Peter Walsh. Judging by the description of their courtship and time together, Peter is a lot closer to Clarissa emotionally than Richard is. Therefore, it seems that had she desired a relationship with a man, she would have chosen Peter. Since her true physical attraction is for women, however, she decides to marry for social reasons and weds Richard.

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.

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.

Woolf’s essay offers an implicit attack on the attitude of the Beadle towards women as he regards that the grass of the university is only for fellows and scholars and that women must remain on the gravel path. Woolf attacks this idea by arguing that humans tend to build their confidence by making others seem inferior to them. In other words, Woolf argues that in order for an individual to feel better about themselves, they should seem others as inferior individuals. The author uses rhetorical devices such as allusions to famous leaders throughout history such as Napoleon andMussolini who she claims treated women as lower-ranking individuals. Furthermore, Woolf also employs rhetorical questions in order to make readers reflect upon her ideas

However, enforced cultural notions of gender differences prohibit Clarissa from blossoming a lesbian attraction towards Sally Seton. Progressing through the novel, Clarissa asks “had not that, after all, been love?” in regards to her relationship with Sally. She makes it obvious she was stifled in her homosexual love, due to her conservative attitude and society’s standards. Many critics believe that Sally Seton represents Virginia Woolf’s love for Violet Dickinson. To further elaborate, Clarissa feels that a sexual dimension in her life is now irrevocably lost, due to her understanding of her own capacities for bisexuality. Similar to Virginia and Leonard’s relationship, Clarissa and Richard are no longer sharing a bedroom, as sexual relations

From the very beginning of the novel, the reader is confronted with thoughts of death from the main character, Clarissa Dalloway. When running her errand, she plummets into deep thought about her death and what would follow it,

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.

During the time of a young modern society, there were ideals and social standards that led people to feel isolated from their own expressions and thoughts. In Mrs. Dalloway, identity is a significant theme depicted in the novel and is prevalent between the characters portrayed throughout. One character in particular that represents the image and reflection of identity in the British society during the first world war is Clarissa Dalloway. All the attributes such as her love for flowers, her lavish entertaining parties, and the bonds she has between her friends and lovers reveal something about her identity that she discovers about herself at the end of the book. Clarissa’s personality is complex and moving as her emotions and life events are unraveled in the moment as things happen.

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,”

‘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.

Clarissa and Septimus both feel trapped in their lives and oppressed by the people around them, which leads to them find ways in which they can escape the negative world around them. Clarissa is described to the reader as having “a perpetual sense, as she watched the taxi cabs, of being out, out, far out to sea and alone; she always had the feeling that it was very dangerous to live even one day” (Woolf, 17). Even as Clarissa walks down a crowded street the sense of loneliness controls her mind. Societal oppression of loneliness makes her feel distant from the rest of society. She describes herself as, “no longer being Clarissa, but simply Mrs. Dalloway” (Woolf, 11). Clarissa has lost a sense of herself and feels as though she no longer fits in. However, her parties serve as an escape from the outside world, which helps to explain why she loves