Literary Analysis of Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway

Introduction

Mrs. Dalloway is a novel by Virginia Woolf, published in 1925. The book explores various aspects of life, including love, death, social status, and mental illness. Woolf condenses the story of Clarissa into a single day comprising past experiences and events (Latham 64). This paper analyzes the literary elements present in Mrs. Dalloway — namely, setting, character, and theme.

The setting of Mrs. Dalloway is London in early 1923, after World War I. The entire story takes place over one day in June, with many flashbacks to Mrs. Dalloway's youth in the 1890s. Each dimension of the setting — London, the post-war context, and a single day in June — is analyzed below.

Setting

The story takes place in London. Woolf mentions the city's iconic landmarks, including Trafalgar Square, Buckingham Palace, Big Ben, Westminster Abbey, and the Houses of Parliament. These landmarks remind the reader that the characters live in and around the City of London, and each landmark conveys a particular aspect of the story. For example, Big Ben represents the passage of time (Pattison 44). Trafalgar Square, with its statues of famous leaders and generals such as Gordon, reflects the patriotic spirit of the British people (Woolf 41).

Mrs. Dalloway takes place in the aftermath of war. In the story, the phrase "the War was over" is repeated twice (Woolf 2, 56). The war provides the historical backdrop of the narrative, and Woolf explores its effects on British society. Septimus suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder (shell shock); every night he has nightmares about his friend Evans, who died in the war (Pattison 31). He later takes his own life. Clarissa's sister was also killed during the war (Pattison 29).

The story begins at 10 a.m. and ends at around 3:00 a.m. (Pattison 12), meaning the entire narrative unfolds within twenty-four hours. This single day in June also reveals what a typical day in Clarissa's life looks like. She loves hosting parties, and this particular day in June is no exception (Woolf 139).

Clarissa Dalloway is the protagonist of the story, and the novel is named after her. She is in her early fifties and married to the politician Richard Dalloway. Together they have a seventeen-year-old daughter, Elizabeth Dalloway. The family lives in Westminster, London (Woolf 2).

Clarissa is fond of hosting parties. Woolf captures her feelings about them in the following passage:

"Every time she gave a party she had this feeling of being something not herself, and that everyone was unreal in one way; much more real in another. It was, she thought, partly their clothes, partly being taken out of their ordinary ways, partly the background, it was possible to say things you couldn't say anyhow else, things that needed an effort; possible to go much deeper" (Woolf 139).

Clarissa sometimes wonders how her life might have been had she accepted Peter Walsh's marriage proposal. She was afraid of marrying Peter and chose Richard instead. Richard is reserved and loves Clarissa deeply (Carey 53). One afternoon Richard decides to buy her flowers, and on his way home he contemplates telling her that he loves her — but when he arrives, he can only hand her the flowers: "(But he could not bring himself to say he loved her; not in so many words.)… She understood without his speaking; his Clarissa" (Woolf 96). The couple clearly shares an unspoken understanding, and their bond is strong.

Character Analysis

Clarissa also enjoys walking through the streets of London (Fong 3), which helps her unwind. During these walks she reflects on what she loves about the city:

"For Heaven only knows why one loves it so…the carriages, motor cars, omnibuses, vans, sandwich men shuffling and swinging; brass bands; barrel organs; in the triumph and the jingle and the strange high singing of some aeroplane overhead was what she loved; life; London; this moment of June" (Woolf 2).

Walking also brings Peter Walsh to mind: "So she would still find herself arguing in St. James's Park, still making out that she had been right — and she had too — not to marry him" (Woolf 4).

Peter Walsh is a former suitor of Clarissa, whose marriage proposal she rejected. He subsequently moved to India and has returned briefly to London to arrange his marriage to Daisy, a woman of twenty-four. Peter and Clarissa are age-mates, both in their early fifties (Woolf 128). On the day Clarissa is preparing for her party, she encounters him and invites him to attend. It is not entirely clear whether Peter loves Daisy (Woolf 64); what is clear is that he still loves Clarissa. At the end of the novel he is consumed by thoughts of her: "What is this terror? What is this ecstasy? He thought to himself. What is it that fills me with extraordinary excitement? It is Clarissa, he said. For there she was" (Woolf 159–60).

Peter also serves as an observer of how London has changed since the war. Having lived in India for more than five years, from 1918 to 1923 (Woolf 57), he is able to notice differences that long-term residents might overlook. He remarks that people look different and that journalism has changed — before the war, no respectable newspaper would have openly discussed topics like water-closets, but now they do.

Peter is insecure. He continually compares himself to Richard Dalloway, convinced he should have been the one to marry Clarissa. He also fidgets with his pocket knife, particularly when his thoughts turn to Clarissa (Woolf 34). Peter positions himself as Clarissa's harshest critic, claiming she lives in the past — yet it is Peter himself who cannot let the past go, making his criticism a classic case of projection (Woolf 44).

Sally is a friend to both Clarissa and Peter. All three grew up in the Bourton area. In her youth, Sally was known as a strong, independent woman, and she appears in the novel primarily through Clarissa's flashbacks. Clarissa once feared that Sally's life would end in tragedy or martyrdom (Woolf 149), but those fears proved unfounded: Sally is now married to a well-respected man and has five sons.

Sally does attend the party that evening and sits beside Peter. He notices that she seems less independent than before and attributes the change to motherhood: "Lord, Lord, what a change had come over her! The softness of motherhood" (Woolf 153).

Septimus is in his early thirties and a World War I survivor (Woolf 10). He is married to Lucrezia Warren Smith, an Italian woman who embodies love and vitality in his life but is unable to save him from self-destruction. He suffers from shell shock — what would today be called post-traumatic stress disorder. Woolf uses Septimus to illustrate the war's effects on soldiers and on British society more broadly. The war completely transformed him. As a child he loved reading poetry and Shakespeare, and as a young man he chose to serve his country partly to prove himself (Carey 55). Combat, however, shattered his idealism about war and empire, and he cannot return to the person he was before.

Septimus's breakdown is rooted in loneliness and a sense of persecution. "The world has raised its whip; where will it descend?" he wonders (Woolf 10). Despite his suffering, Lucrezia remains supportive and hopeful. His internal world is further revealed through his writings: "The table drawer was full of those writings; about war; about Shakespeare; about great discoveries; how there is no death" (Woolf 114).

Although Clarissa and Septimus never meet, she comes to believe that his death represents defiance against the forces that sought to break him, and that there is something she herself can take from it:

"A thing there was that mattered; a thing, wreathed about with chatter, defaced, obscured in her own life, let drop every day in corruption, lies, chatter. This he had preserved. Death was defiance. Death was an attempt to communicate; people feeling the impossibility of reaching the centre which, mystically, evaded them; closeness drew apart; rapture faded, one was alone. There was an embrace in death" (Woolf 151).

Septimus's death is thus not simply a tragedy; it is, in Clarissa's reading, a bold acknowledgment of the failures of British society. She sums it up by thinking that Septimus had "plunged holding his treasure" (Woolf 151) — that he had died with his dignity, independence, and integrity intact (Pattison 52).