Virginia Woolf’s novel Mrs. Dalloway contains many of the hallmarks of the author’s style and thematic concerns, including a critique of gender roles and concepts of mental illness. Protagonist Clarissa, the eponymous Mrs. Dalloway, reflects on the trajectory of her life. Self-reflection is a lens through which she develops a cogent critique of the entire social system in which she lives. Clarissa’s reflections, catalyzed by her observations of men and women in her social circle, comprise a pessimistic point of view. Septimus’s suicide then highlights the fact that there is no way out of the patriarchal structure; there are only ways of coping with its immutable power. In Mrs. Dalloway, Woolf employs Clarissa as a vehicle for critiquing patriarchy and all it entails: including class-based social hierarchies, gender bias, and heteronormativity.In Mrs. Dalloway, one of the themes is the way patriarchy constrains the organic evolution of relationships. Clarissa has been aware of the ways British social conventions restrict her ability to love whomever she pleases. Specifically, British social conventions prevent Clarissa from exploring her bisexuality even though she is infatuated with Sally Seton. Clarissa is cognizant of her love for Sally, and also understands that there is no place in British society for the development of romantic love between women. Romantic love remains confined to the dictates of heterosexual marriage. Yet Clarissa talks about “falling in love with women,” and when referring to Sally Seton states, “Had not that, after all, been love?” (Woolf 26-27).

One of the main reasons why Clarissa loves and admires Sally is for her carefree attitude and her indifference to social norms. Clarissa underestimates her own nonconformist tendencies, and instead projects her feelings onto her friend. “Sally’s power was amazing,” Clarissa notes, after musing on the nature of “falling in love with women,” (Woolf 26). One night, Clarissa “could not take her eyes off Sally,” something she does not necessarily feel when looking at her husband...

Stricken by Sally’s physical beauty, Clarissa notes she “envied” Sally’s “sort of abandonment, as if she could say anything, do anything, a quality much commoner in foreigners than in Englishwomen,” (Woolf 27).
Referring to Sally’s bohemianism as an inherently “foreign” quality and suggesting even that Sally might have been part “French,” draws attention to the primary social critique Woolf makes through her titular character. Clarissa shows readers that English society represses natural sexual and emotional desire, leading to problems in relationships, problems with identity, and problems with mental health. Mrs. Dalloway shows that patriarchal societies create dissatisfaction, loneliness, isolation, and even suicidal ideation. Woolf goes so far as to link patriarchy with death itself.

Death is a major motif in Mrs. Dalloway, serving several functions. One of those functions is to refer to way patriarchy kills the soul. The character of Septimus and his ongoing cries about the “death of the soul” underscores this trajectory of thought in Woolf’s novel. Another function of the motif of death in Mrs. Dalloway is for Clarissa to contemplate her own mortality and thereby show the reader what she thinks of her own life and how she views her role in society. Whereas she views Sally as someone with joie du vivre, someone who lives life fearlessly and to the fullest, Clarissa feels “sheltered” in comparison (Woolf 27). In one passage, Clarissa contemplates her own mortality directly and rather fearlessly in spite of her self-deprecating attitude: “Did it matter then, she asked herself…that she must inevitably cease completely; all this must go on without her,” (Woolf 7). Finally, death serves a symbolic function as the death of outmoded social norms.

The death of Septimus is the “death of the soul” that he so dearly feared throughout the novel, and which Clarissa also comes to fear from watching her acquaintance succumb to the horrors of…