VIRGINIA WOOLF

Virginia Woolf was born in 1882 into a household in South Kensington, London. She was
the seventh cild of eight. Her mother was a pre-Raphelite model while Woolf’s father was
man of letters. While Virginia’s brothers went to college, the girls in the family were home-
schooled in English classics and Victorian literature. Due to this, Woolf always cried that
she wasn’t able to go to college as her brothers did even though she was educated. Her
father’s dead in 1905 caused her a mental breakdown and her family moved to
Bloomsbury where Woolf will meet some intellectuals of those times and they will form
the Bloomsbury Group. Woolf drowned herself in 1941 after being depressed and felt so
close to death. Some of her works: The Voyage Out (1915), Night an Day “Modern Fiction”
(1919), Mr.Bennet and Brown (1914), Mrs.Dalloway, The common reader (1925), To the
Lighthouse (1927), Orlando (1928), A room of one’s own (1929), The Waves (1931), The Years
(1937), Between the Acts (1941).
She wrote both ction and essays. Her essays are mainly concerned with women’s right
and with the state of contemporary ction. In “Modern Fiction” and “Mr.Bennet and Mrs.
Brown” are actual aesthetic manifestoes. In A room of one’s own she combines both interests.
Later on, she would apply her theories to her ction, calling for a more subjective and
psychological re ection of life. Her commitment to Modernism and experimental
aesthetics is evident mainly from Mrs. Dalloway on. She grew very concerned with the
position of women, especially professional women. She was able to write a lot and be
more economically independent form his husband due to one inheritance.
MODERN FICTION
In Modern Fiction, an essay, she states that “task of the novelist is to look within, conveying
the mind receiving a “myriad impressions” (ingestas impresiones) (Life is a luminous halo, a
semitransparent envelop surrounding us from the beginning of consciousness to the end). She
focus on the many sensations that a person receives and takes note of it. Every sensation
appears in her works. Virginia Woolf thinks that life is something that starts when you are
born and ends when you die. It is this unstable and evanescent nature of life that she tried
to capture in her novels by privileging private thoughts and feelings over external and
observable actions. But Woolf’s own quest for meaning provoked anxiety and doubt. Life,
death, the ageing of the body (envejecimiento del cuerpo), reality, identity, communication,
these are constant themes in her work. Her life was marked by death from early
childhood. Her mother died when she was very young and her brother Toby died
suddenly at 22.
THE BLOOMSBURY GROUP (1905-1915
After her father’s death, Virginia’s family move to the Bloomsbury area, near the British
museum in London. She met most of the great artists, writers and thinkers of the day. She
was a member of the Bloomsbury group and married to one of the members too Leonard
Woolf, in 1912. The group had a considerable in uence on the world of letters, art and
philosophy. The group’s credo came form G.E. Moore’s Principia Ethica which states that
the most valuable things in life are certain states of consciousness, among which are the
perception of beautiful objects and personal relations. Virginia Woolf calls these moments
of personal revelation “moments of being” (=Joyce’s epiphany); the most valuable
moments in life are when you realize that you are alive. The Group reacted against what
they considered old-fashioned Victorian ways of feelings. A reaction against the
seriousness and the stiff mora property of, the previous generation, of their parents. It was
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a revolt centered on a more relaxed behavior and more bohemian lifestyle
(AGNOSTICISM). The Bloomsbury phenomenon lasted about a decade, roughly from
1905 to 1915.
MRS. DALLOWAY (1925)
Mrs. Dalloway has been adapted a lot like, for example, to the Spanish theatre. The novel is
set in London and there are a lot of references to real places. The full novel is based in one
day, the 13th June 1923, the day that Clarissa Dalloway is giving a party in her house after
recovering from in uenza. The duration o 4th ebook remembers of Ulises or The Dead by
James Joyce. And also, at the end, there is a moment of revelation. In the book, there is a
preoccupation with gender issues (something very present in Woolf’s works); by
contrasting the values of women with those which have been made by the other sex, Woolf
suggests the primacy of female’s values as products of nature rather than culture, she is
breaking the tradition that men are usually associated with civilization meanwhile women
are associated with nature. A novel of women’s life is not important, but Woolf is making a
point that is it’s important to look at their lives.
1. Main characters and plot(s)
CLARISSA DALLOWAY VS. SEPTIMUS WARREN SMITH. Septimus is a war veteran
from WWI who has shell shock (neurosis de guerra) (the effect that bombing have in our
brain): he wasn’t able to sleep. He is married to Lucrezia (or Rezia) and he is kind of
visionary.
THE LOVE TRIANGLE. Even though it is a very experimental novel, Woolf includes a
love triangle between Peter Wlash, Richard Dalloway and Clarissa. While Peter Walsh is
an old ame (a love from the past), Clarissa keeps thinking about what would happen if
they got married instead of marrying Richard Dalloway.
The novel progresses through two apparently unrelated plots — one concerning
Septimus illness and eventual suicide, the other concerning Mrs. Dalloway?s
preparation for a party, which the prime minister will attend. Although characters
related to each of the plots pass each other through the streets of London, the novel
achieves its real unity when Mrs. D learns of Septimus’ death from his psychiatrist (one
of the guests at the party) and feels strange sympathy from him. What is the connection
between the two plots? Mrs. D seems to suggest that the death and suffering of the
poor soldier redeems the apparently trivial life of the hostess, who entertains nobility
and politicians, the “old men” that postwar society held responsible for the war. One
key word in the novel is civilization. Peter Walsh admires British civilization. They on
lying and they must recognize that the civilization that persist them to do so is the same
one that allowed millions to die in the war.
2. NARRATIVE TECHNIQUE
Mrs. Dalloway is best understood in terms of Free indirect Style.
An omniscient narrator takes on the words and/or thoughts of the character in focus.
This allows the author to gather a different narrative perspective and draw together a
group a character in a single day.
3. THE PARTY
The party as topos of modernism writing and a very good excuse to write a novel. It
enables authors to gather characters together; provides anticipation, climax and

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aftermath; gives scope for descriptive detail; gives a chance for polyphony (as opposed
to omniscient narrative).
Narratological advantages — you have the possibility of describing any characters,
giving voice to many different characters.
Clarissa sees the party as her “creative act” — symbology for Clarissa. As she doesn’t
work, she doesn’t have to be cleaning the house or cooking or something. She has
servants that allow her to create something, she sees the party as her own personal
creation. In fact the novel begins with “Mrs Dalloway said she would buy the owers
herself”.
4. SPACE AND TIME
Mrs Dalloway is set in as ingle day in June, ve years after the end of WWI.
It takes place in London, the capital of the British Empire, the center of industrialization.
Many places in London are mentioned: they provide a connecting thread between the
characters in the two plots.
Constant reference to the Big Ben and other clocks, signaling the passing of time.
The war: Hyne’s “Myth of the War”: the old men had sent the young men to be
slaughtered like cattle (sacri cados como ganado). Crisis of civilization. The war, fought
in the name of the ideal civilization, was in fact meaningless and had in fact brought
civilization itself to a crisis.
5. GENDER
Clarissa seems to exemplify the lack of serious change in gender roles: concerned about
parties and dressing up; but she had to suffer the disadvantages of being a woman: no
formal education, economically vulnerable, she has limited income and no possibility to
work. She sometimes feels that she is invisible, that she has no identity of her own, just
being “Mrs. Richard Dalloway”. No self-esteem, she feels like she is only the woman of her
way in the world and speaks about new opportunities for the women of her generation.
She is actually speaking about the new opportunities for women of this generation. Even
though you cannot see it in Mrs. Dalloway, this was a moment when women are getting
their power and they are starting to go to university (e.g).
6. CLAS
The novel includes members of all social classes from the lowest to the highest: Prime
Minister, aristocracy (Lady Brunton), doctors (Dr.Bradshaw and Dr.Holmes), university
professors (Professor Brierly, “a very queer sh”), artists (Jim Hutton), the British middle
classes and servants (Lucy, etc.).
7. FEMINSIM
Mrs Dalloway is a typically female text as one that expresses and hides its subversive
impulses. This de nes Clarissa very clearly because she wants to break away with her
situation, but she never really does it.
8. HOMOEROTIC LOVE
Present in the relationship between Sally Seaton and Clarissa Dalloway.
They were kissing and Peter Walsh appears and breaks the magic of the moment
(anticlimax). She is aware that what they are doing is not accepted in society and it is
something that does not have to be talked about. Even if the sexual moment is like a
mystic moment. She had gone out of herself. Clarissa and Sally spoke of marriage “as a
catastrophe”. It is clear that Clarissa feels attraction for other women.
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9.SEPTIMUS WARREN SMITH
In her introduction to Modern Library Edition of Mrs. Dalloway (1928), Woolf said that
Septimus is “intended to be Clarissa’s double”.
But, in what ways are Clarissa and Septimus similar? They are survivors to the greatest
catastrophes that took place in mankind at the time (Spanish u and war), Clarissa is
obsessed with what happened when she was 18 and Septimus with what happened in
1918. They both want be free.
Septimus “had won crosses” which means that he was a military hero. He had served
England with zeal (afán) and patriotism; he was a courageous soldier. This is why it
seem so unfair that homes calls Septimus “a coward”.
The way his doctor treat him is unfair, when Holmes call him “a coward”.
He is very sick with shell-shock, effects of it, his stammer, loss of memory, his delusions
and his disturbed behavior he has suicidal tendencies. Society is enforcing rigid
constructions of madness and sanity in a society which had suffered such deep
psychological wounds.
10. MRS. DALLOWAY AND COLONIALISM
A number of countries form the British empire are mentioned in the novel, such as
Nigeria, South Africa and Ceylon (now Sri Lanka). But Canada and India stand for the
British empire as a whole. India because Peter lives there as an administrator and Canada
that wasn’t a colony but was still part of the CommonWealth and had a strong relationship
with the British empire.
Lady Brunton. She has a eugenicist theory —she wanted to export surplus britons to
Canada: “That project for emigrating young people of both sexes from respectable
parents and setting them up with a fair prospect of doing well in Canada. Emigration
had become, in short, largely Lady Brunton”. She is a British nationalist and rm
believer in the empire: “for she never spoke of England but this isle of men, this dead,
dear land… she had thought go the Empire always at hand… to be not English even
among the dead— no, no! Impossible!
Peter Walsh. His from a respectable Anglo-Indian family. He works as an administrator
in India and had not returned home for 5 years. His own and his culture’s alien place in
India is emphasized when he orders, “wheelbarrows from England, but the coolies
wouldn’t use them”. He does not like India. He goes to Clarissa’s party in order to nd
out about the new policy in relation to India (Ghandi passive resistance and
independent movements going on at the time).

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