Mrs Dalloway

vacui elucidates the human desire to maintain a grasp on the material world in times of adversity or turbulence. In Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway, Sarah Waters’s The Night Watch, and Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, this fear of existential emptiness is manifested into the characters’ own materialist strategies to cope with it. Whether it be through the accumulation of memories and social clout, physical tokens from the past, or knowledge and exquisite treasures, the characters of these three novels find their own distinct ways to fill the vacui, or void, they feel within themselves. The elderly Mrs. Clarissa Dalloway, after whom Woolf’s novel Mrs. Dalloway is named, constantly struggles to balance her internal desires with the material world to which she is bound. The high-society housewife of a Parliamentarian,…

The world of Mrs. Dalloway can be summarized in one word, insane. Everyone is different and no one is who he or she portrays himself or herself to be. Even Mrs. Dalloway herself is a room full of people, all of whom are compressed behind the thin mask that doesn’t hide a thing, at least to the reader. Some people like Peter, are a mess of emotions so jumbled that even as the reader you have no idea what his reaction to a situation will be. Others like Hugh Whitbread have put up a front, that…

The famous Russian writer Boris Pasternak ever said, “Art has two constant, two unending concerns: It always meditates on death and thus always creates life.” Like a coin always having two sides, the problem of life and death always interact with each other. In the 1925 published novel Mrs. Dalloway, Virginia Woolf points out that the view of life and death is rooted in individual consciousness. Some people die, their consciousness still live; some people live, their consciousness is empty, they…

In Virginia’s Woolf Mrs. Dalloway, originally published in 1925, is the utmost example of modern literature today. Woolf’s depiction through her novel, Mrs. Dalloway, truly immerses into a single day event from morning to night, recollecting memories while she’s meeting people throughout her day. As this single day event is written, Woolf explains a character in the novel a man named Septimus, describing the struggles he is having with his insanity. As a balanced contrast to Septimus, the short…

The First World War took over 16 million lives (“World War I Casualties”); however, the impact was much more immense than the lives taken. On top of this high death toll, over half of the surviving soldiers faced severe psychological damage which was treated incorrectly because of the social stigmas perpetuated by many doctors. The war impacted all aspects of life, not just the lives of the soldiers who fought. Despite the fact that Mrs. Dalloway is set in the summer of 1923, just five short…

Mrs. Dalloway, written by Virginia Woolf, is full of heavy imagery and challenging passages. The biggest problems in the storyline is when the writing is usually at its toughest. One of the main characters, Septimus, served in the war. This caused him to have post traumatic stress which caused him to lose interest in his favorite things and lose the girl he liked. Throughout the book, he talks about suicide and death frequently which foreshadows what will come. On page 149 and 150, arguably the…

Throughout the novel “Mrs. Dalloway” by Virginia Woolf, there is a certain understanding of underlying skepticism of the world. A huge part of the story revolves around the premise of being able to see into the thoughts of all of the characters. This allows the reader to make assumptions about each character’s own unique morals and their personalities. Woolf does an exquisite job of giving the reader an omnipresent point of view in which we see all occurrences throughout the span of a single…

Today is tomorrow’s yesterday. Each day is interwoven with past, present, and future. The past is filled with memories and lessons learned, while the future holds our dreams. The present cannot be successfully lived without a healthy balance of the past and the future. Many times, though, we get caught up in either in the choices of yesterday or in the worries of tomorrows. In her novel, Mrs. Dalloway, Virginia Woolf shows that living life without a good balance of past and future in the present…

In the novel Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf, there is a reoccurring motif of nature, birds, and flowers. Each character has a unique attitude towards flowers and nature in general. Oftentimes, a specific type of bird or flower represents a character. Reiza, Clarissa, and Lady Bruton are prime examples of these motifs in the lives of the novel’s characters. Reiza is an Italian woman who married Septimus. When Septimus comes back to England with post-traumatic stress disorder, Reiza cares for…

In creating Mrs. Dalloway, Virginia Woolf comments on the corruption of society and the lack of care for those affected by mental illnesses. Sir William, a psychologist with a superiority complex in Mrs. Dalloway, treats all of his patients the same way: he prescribes them bedrest, a lesson in proportion, and ultimately conversion. Although this treatment may help some, it is not a “cure-all” and, conversion causes more harm than good. Through Sir William’s treatment of his patients, Virginia…