Mrs. Dalloway A Day in the Life

About the Author  Virgina Woolf  Born Adeline Virginia Stephen  Born on January 25, 1882  Parents were both widowed  Father – Leslie Stephen  Historian, Author, Critic, Mountaineer  Mother – Julia Prinsep Duckworth Stephen  Served as a model for Pre-Raphaelite painters  Woolf suffered from mental illness

About the Author (Cont.)  Household contained children from three marriages  1895 – Mother Julia died  1897 – Half-sister Stella died  These two deaths led to one of many nervous breakdowns for Woolf  1904 – Father Leslie died  Woolf suffered another breakdown and was institutionalized

About the Author (Cont.)  1904 – Bloomsbury Group formed  Intellectual circle of writers and artists  Lytton Strachey, Clive Bell, Rupert Brooke, Saxon Sydney-Turner, Duncan Grant, Leonard Woolf, John Maynard Keynes, David Garnett, Roger Fry  1912 – Virginia married Leonard Woolf  1913 – Woolf suffered third serious breakdown  1913 – First novel finished (published in 1915) – The Voyage Out

About the Author (Cont.)  Woolf died on March 28, 1941  Had been in a depressed state due to several factors: onset of World War II, destruction of home in the Blitz, poor reception to biography of friend Roger Fry  Put on her overcoat, filled pockets with stones, walked into River Ouse near her home, and drowned herself

Woolf’s Final Note Dearest, I feel certain I am going mad again. I feel we can’t go through another of those terrible times. And I shan’t recover this time. I begin to hear voices, and I can’t concentrate. So I am doing what seems the best thing to do. You have given me the greatest possible happiness. You have been in every way all that anyone could be. I don’t think two people could have been happier till this terrible disease came. I can’t fight any longer. I know that I am spoiling your life, that without me you could work. And you will I know. You see I can’t even write this properly. I can’t read. What I want to say is I owe all the happiness of my life to you. You have been entirely patient with me and incredibly good. I want to say that – everybody knows it. If anybody could have saved me it would have been you. Everything has gone from me but the certainty of your goodness. I can’t go on spoiling your life any longer. I don’t think two people could have been happier than we have been. V.

Novels by Woolf  1915 – The Voyage Out  1919 – Night and Day  1922 – Jacob’s Room  1925 – Mrs. Dalloway  1927 – To the Lighthouse  1928 – Orlando  1931 – The Waves  1937 – The Years  1941 – Between the Acts

Woolf’s Writing Style  Woolf 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 lie. After two novels, The Voyage Out and Night and Day, cast in traditional form, she developed her own style.

Woolf’s Writing Style (Cont.)  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 Woolf 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  “…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”

What is Woolf’s goal?  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.

About the Novel  Details a day in the life of Clarissa Dalloway  Dalloway is a high-society woman living in post-World War I England  Dalloway prepares to host a party  Novel follows stream of consciousness style  Woolf’s most famous novel  Story travels forward and back in time  Published on May 14, 1925

Other Characters  Septimus Warren Smith  World War I veteran suffering from shell shock  Sir William Bradshaw  Famous psychiatrist to whom Septimus is referred  Lucrezia “Rezia” Smith  Septimus’ Italian wife  Sally Seton  Friend of Dalloway

Other Characters (Cont.)  Richard Dalloway  Clarissa’s husband  Elizabeth Dalloway  Clarissa and Richard’s daughter  Peter Walsh  Old friend of Clarissa’s  Hugh Whitbread  Pompous friend of Clarissa’s  Miss Kilman  Elizabeth’s schoolmistress; dislikes Clarissa but loves Elizabeth

Themes in the Novel  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.

Themes in the Novel (Cont.)  The Intersection of Time and Timelessness: 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.  Mental Health: a study of insanity and suicide; life and death

Themes in the Novel (Cont.)  Artificiality of Life: Woolf also strived to illustrate the vain artificiality of Clarissa's life and her involvement in it. She is 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.

Themes in the Novel (Cont.)  Uncertainty of Life of Isolation: 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.

Final thought  Analyze the following famous quote from Virginia Woolf  “A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.”