VIRGINIA WOOLF:

'MRS. DALLOWAY'
  Was born on January 25,1882,near Rodmell
 Was the child of ideal Victorian parents.
 Her father was a literary figure and her mother was a really
beautiful woman with artistic connections.
 Had three siblings
VIRGINIA WOOLF  At the age of 9,Woolf was the genius behind a family
1882-1941 newspaper called the Hyde Park News
 Woolf and her family visited Kensington Gardens in the
summer and this visit structured Woolf's
childhood world in terms of opposites:city and
country,winter and summer,fragmentation and wholeness.
 After losing many member of her family,Woolf
had a breakdown.
 While trying to recover,the family moved to
Bloomsbury section of London and the
kids were free to pursue whatever career path
they wanted.
 Woolf and her friends would have avant-garde
gatherings,which come to be known as the
Bloomsbury group;inspired Woolf to exercise
her wit publicly,even while privately writing
'Reminiscence' she talks about her childhood
and lost mother.
 Woolf was interested in Italian art that summer, comitted herself to creating in
language; ''Some kind of whole made of shivering fragments'' to capture ''the flight
of the mind.''
 Virginia married Leonard Woolf in 1912.Although she thought of herself as a writer,
she had yet to publish a novel.
 Her first novel:The Voyage Out (1915)
 'Night and Day' (1919)
 The Woolf couple set up the Hogarth Press that would print Woolf's later
works.Having their own printing press gave Woolf the freedom to writer whatever
she liked.
 Her third novel 'Jacob's Room' was a significant turn in her writing
style.Embracing a more experimental made of writing,Woolf found her voice as a
writer.
She published Mrs. Dalloway in 1925,which is
considered to be Virginia Woolf's greatest work.
Woolf drew on her own experience of illness to
depict the inner lives of Clarissa Dalloway and
Septimus Warren Smith.
 For her next novel,Woolf drew on her
childhood holidays and attempted to
exorcise the ghosts the of her late
parents.In 'To the Lighthouse',Woolf
depicts the lives of the Ramsay family both
before and after the World War I.
 She focuses on the human cost of war and
loss while mediating upon the struggles
faced by female artists.
'Orlando': Woolf fictionalizes Vita's aristocratic
ancestry to create the novel's protagonist, who
lives for centuries and transitions from a man to
woman.
This is a feminist classic and important text for
transgender studies.
 In 1931,'The Waves': Woolf's most formally
experimental novel.
 The novel's narration is split between six
characters,whom we follow from childhood to
adulthood.
 Throughout the work,Woolf was concerned with
exploting human interiority.
 Virginia Woolf, a prominent English writer and one of the foremost modernists of
the 20th century, tragically took her own life on March 28, 1941. She drowned
herself in the River Ouse near her home in Sussex, England. She was 59 years old.
 Woolf had struggled with mental health issues throughout her life, including
episodes of depression.
 In spite of mental struggles,she managed to be a literary icon with her use of
stream of consciousness,interior monologue and psychology to become one of
the pioneers of Modernism.
  Third person omniscient narrator
 Non-linear narration
 Ordinary events,daily life
 The narrative begins and ends with Clarissa as it
details a day in her life.
MRS. DALLOWAY  Multiple perspectives
 Stream of consciousness:'memory'
 Interior monologue
 Mental illness:effect of war
 SUMMARY OF THE MRS. DALLOWAY

"Mrs. Dalloway" follows a day in the life of Clarissa Dalloway, a

socialite whose mood fluctuates, suggesting suppressed depression.The
narrative begins with her errand to buy flowers, marked by unexpected
events. Her former lover, Peter, arrives, revealing lingering feelings.
Interrupted by her daughter, perspectives shift to Septimus Warren
Smith, a World War I veteran suffering from shell shock.
Septimus and his wife wait to see psychiatrist Sir William Bradshaw,
highlighting the incomprehensibility of Septimus's suffering to others.
The perspective then shifts to Richard, Clarissa's husband,
expressing passionate but unspoken love through flowers. Clarissa
acknowledges their emotional distance as liberating.
Returning to Septimus, he learns of
psychiatric confinement and chooses to end
his life.The narrative then returns to
Clarissa during her party, where Sir
William's wife announces Septimus's suicide.
Initially annoyed, Clarissa reflects on
Septimus's overwhelming emotions, admiring
his choice to preserve his soul.This
realization brings shame for her own
compromises.
 The novel concludes with Clarissa
returning to the party, chastened by the
day's events. "Mrs. Dalloway" effectively
explores human emotions, social
expectations, and the choices individuals
make to preserve their souls.
 SETTING

 Place:London, England.The
novel takes place largely in
the affluent neighborhood
of Westminster, where the
Dalloways live.
 Time:A day in mid-June,
1923. There are many
flashbacks to a summer at
Bourton in the early 1890s,
when Clarissa was
eighteen.
 THEMES
Communication vs.
Privacy:Throughout Mrs.
Dalloway,almost all of the
characters struggle to find proper Disillusionment with the British
moments for communication as Empire:
well as adewuate privacy,and the
balance between the two is difficult
for all to achieve.

The Fear of Death:Thoughts of

death lurk constantly beneath the
The Threat of Oppression:Oppression is
surface of everyday life in Mrs.
a constant threat for Clarissa and Septimus
Dalloway,especially for Clarissa and
in Mrs. Dalloway,and Septimus dies in order
Septimus.This awareness makes
to escape what he perceives to be an
even ordinary events and
oppressive social pressure to conform.
interactions meaningful,sometimes
even threatening.
  The central focus of the novel is not the
plot;rather,it's the characters' thoughts that
create the story as they ruminate and reflect
on the world around them and sometimes
connect with one another. Mrs Dalloway
chronicles the characters' thoughts, one flowing

ANALYSIS
freely to the next.
 Sometimes one character's thoughts intersect
with another they can communicate,but most
of the time the character is left isolated from
the outside world as they work through their
own internal dialogue.Woolf wanted to present
dynamic characters in a state of flux instead of
static characters to represent how
complex and non-linear postwar life was.