MRS DALLOWAY
CONTEXT
WOOLF’S FEMINISM AND In Woolf’s 1929 essay ‘A Room of one’s own’ she illustrates the necessity for women writers to have access to a space where they can enjoy
POLITICAL VIEWS privacy and solitude on their own terms and have a means of keeping people out
- Argues that the men who claim ‘a woman could never have written the plays of Shakespeare’ are right, but only because women were
not given the training necessary to write like Shakespeare did
Woolf opposed the status quo: the way that a patriarchal society supported male privilege and kept women in rigid roles
Woolf’s involvement with the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom allowed her to be a prominent anti-war activist
She took part in anti-war demonstrations and spoke out against militarism
THE FIRST POST WAR Because veterans of the war experienced the foreboding image of death almost constantly, they found it difficult to reintegrate into society and
WORLD TRAUMA deal with the mundane futilities of everyday existence
WAR Some men with shell shock (PTSD) were put on trial, and even executed, for military crimes including desertion and cowardice
While it was recognised that the stresses of war could cause men to break down, a lasting episode was likely to be seen as symptomatic of an
underlying lack of character
- In his testimony to the post-war Royal Commission examining shell shock, Lord Gort said that shell shock was a weakness and was not
found in ‘good’ units
COLLECTIVE Woolf sees every characters being in dialogue with their personal and national ‘shared’ pasts
LOSS AFTER - This connectedness is part of the novel’s extension of empathy
WAR Time and again, the novel reveals how the myriad anxieties and overwhelming grief of the war were etched into every aspect of past war life
- Seen when the aeroplane hovering over London creates a sense of unease in those beneath it. The sound stilll ‘ominously’ brings to
mind the German planes that had attacked the capital
NOVEL AS A The novel can be seen as a commemorative text which memorialises the war dead
WAR TEXT Every element of the post war culture of remembrance is evoked or brought into focus
- On each occasion, the official sites and rituals of national mourning are treated with something akin to straightforward veneration,
rather than satire of hostility
There are moments of silent observance which are almost ceremonial in their reverence and dignity
PSYCHOANALYSIS The Woolfs at Hogarth press had begun to publish the translations of Freud in the 1920s
Although Woolf was not Freudian, she got from him the idea that personality is layered and complex, composed of memories, dreams, and
fantasies
WOMEN AND MARRIAGE In the 1920s the idea of the housewife was offered as a highly valued and ‘modern’ role for women albeit a conservative one, focusing as it did on
women’s traditional functions in the family and thereby reproducing the limitations of a single role and self identity
In the first half of the twentieth century the term ‘housewife’ came to signify an apparently homogenous group of women who could be addressed
as having common interests by the media, by politicians, and by the designers and producers of domestic technology
POLITICS POLITICS AT The early 1920s brought to an end the Conservative-Liberal coalition in British politics; the elections of 1922 and 1923 marked the eclipse of the
, THE TIME Liberals and the rise of Labour
- This posed a threat to the ‘governing class’
The Muslim Turks’ massacre of the Christian Armenians in 1915 may be considered the century’s first act of genocide
- Earlier slaughters of the Armenians had occurred in 1894-6
In 1915, the Turks drove out two thirds of the Armenian population forcing them to Soviet Armenia, Syria, and Palestine
- During this exodus (1915-20), one million Armenians were either killed or died of starvation, prompting a great death of debate in the
British press about how to best protect the Armenians
CLASS Mrs Dalloway is in large measure an examination of a single class and its control over English society – the ‘governing class’ as Peter Walsh calls it
Solidity, rigidity, stasis, and the inability to communicate feelings are characteristics which apply to the governing class of the novel.
- Thus, they point to something inflexible, unresponsive, or evasive in their nature which makes them incapable of reacting appropriately
to the critical events of their time or their own lives
The governing class uses its influence to exclude and sequester alien or threatening forces (Septimus smith, Doris Kilman) and to protect itself from
any sort of intense feeling
- It may be this calculated emotional obtuseness that has kept it in power
MODERNISM Literary modernism originated in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and is characterised by a self-conscious break with traditional
ways of writing, in both poetry and prose fiction
Modernism experimented with literary form and expression
Time, following Bergsonian influence, is not linear and is reconceived in this novel as the ‘semi-transparent halo’ of Woolf’s ‘Modern Fiction’
manifesto
- Woolf argued that it is impotence to trace ‘the atoms as they fall’ and the impressionistic result is a new kind of Modernist Realism
In keeping with modernist aesthetics, the Dalloway party created a mode of being seen as fundamentally separate from mundane life
- It creates a scene that wrenches the guests from the dullness of habitual activity and serves as a stage for moments of heightened
consciousness
Like a conventional drama, the party distorts the forms of everyday life to reveal a truth Daloway believes to be more profound and important
CUBISM Woolf and the rest of the Bloomsbury generation were struck by the first shows of the Post Impressionists and the Cubists.
The concept of Cubism was to represent an object in space from several different angles and perspectives, taken at different times, and the combine
them all on the two dimensional picture plane so that you had in the object not only the idea of the three dimensions, which had been developed
in art, you know, way to the Renaissance, but the idea of the fourth dimension of time. That idea of multiple perspectives was very influential
LITERARY ALLUSIONS Septimus and Clarissa both read and recite a line from Shakespeare’s Cymbeline: ‘Fear no more the heat o’ the sun’
- The lines come from a funeral Dirge and suggests that death is not a thing to be feared, but should instead be embraced a as a release
from the constraints of life
WOOLF’S TUNNELLING Woolf’s diary entry August 30, 1923 ‘How I dig beautiful caves behind my characters: I think that gives exactly what I want; humanity, hummer,
PROCESS depth, the idea that the caves shall connect, and each comes to daylight at the present moment’
Woolf digs into the past of her characters and lets the tunnels she has created connect at specific moments in the narrative (through, for example,
imagery or echoing thoughts)
The concept of tunnelling into caves behind characters enfranchised her from the unwanted linear narrative structure in which an omniscient
CONTEXT
WOOLF’S FEMINISM AND In Woolf’s 1929 essay ‘A Room of one’s own’ she illustrates the necessity for women writers to have access to a space where they can enjoy
POLITICAL VIEWS privacy and solitude on their own terms and have a means of keeping people out
- Argues that the men who claim ‘a woman could never have written the plays of Shakespeare’ are right, but only because women were
not given the training necessary to write like Shakespeare did
Woolf opposed the status quo: the way that a patriarchal society supported male privilege and kept women in rigid roles
Woolf’s involvement with the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom allowed her to be a prominent anti-war activist
She took part in anti-war demonstrations and spoke out against militarism
THE FIRST POST WAR Because veterans of the war experienced the foreboding image of death almost constantly, they found it difficult to reintegrate into society and
WORLD TRAUMA deal with the mundane futilities of everyday existence
WAR Some men with shell shock (PTSD) were put on trial, and even executed, for military crimes including desertion and cowardice
While it was recognised that the stresses of war could cause men to break down, a lasting episode was likely to be seen as symptomatic of an
underlying lack of character
- In his testimony to the post-war Royal Commission examining shell shock, Lord Gort said that shell shock was a weakness and was not
found in ‘good’ units
COLLECTIVE Woolf sees every characters being in dialogue with their personal and national ‘shared’ pasts
LOSS AFTER - This connectedness is part of the novel’s extension of empathy
WAR Time and again, the novel reveals how the myriad anxieties and overwhelming grief of the war were etched into every aspect of past war life
- Seen when the aeroplane hovering over London creates a sense of unease in those beneath it. The sound stilll ‘ominously’ brings to
mind the German planes that had attacked the capital
NOVEL AS A The novel can be seen as a commemorative text which memorialises the war dead
WAR TEXT Every element of the post war culture of remembrance is evoked or brought into focus
- On each occasion, the official sites and rituals of national mourning are treated with something akin to straightforward veneration,
rather than satire of hostility
There are moments of silent observance which are almost ceremonial in their reverence and dignity
PSYCHOANALYSIS The Woolfs at Hogarth press had begun to publish the translations of Freud in the 1920s
Although Woolf was not Freudian, she got from him the idea that personality is layered and complex, composed of memories, dreams, and
fantasies
WOMEN AND MARRIAGE In the 1920s the idea of the housewife was offered as a highly valued and ‘modern’ role for women albeit a conservative one, focusing as it did on
women’s traditional functions in the family and thereby reproducing the limitations of a single role and self identity
In the first half of the twentieth century the term ‘housewife’ came to signify an apparently homogenous group of women who could be addressed
as having common interests by the media, by politicians, and by the designers and producers of domestic technology
POLITICS POLITICS AT The early 1920s brought to an end the Conservative-Liberal coalition in British politics; the elections of 1922 and 1923 marked the eclipse of the
, THE TIME Liberals and the rise of Labour
- This posed a threat to the ‘governing class’
The Muslim Turks’ massacre of the Christian Armenians in 1915 may be considered the century’s first act of genocide
- Earlier slaughters of the Armenians had occurred in 1894-6
In 1915, the Turks drove out two thirds of the Armenian population forcing them to Soviet Armenia, Syria, and Palestine
- During this exodus (1915-20), one million Armenians were either killed or died of starvation, prompting a great death of debate in the
British press about how to best protect the Armenians
CLASS Mrs Dalloway is in large measure an examination of a single class and its control over English society – the ‘governing class’ as Peter Walsh calls it
Solidity, rigidity, stasis, and the inability to communicate feelings are characteristics which apply to the governing class of the novel.
- Thus, they point to something inflexible, unresponsive, or evasive in their nature which makes them incapable of reacting appropriately
to the critical events of their time or their own lives
The governing class uses its influence to exclude and sequester alien or threatening forces (Septimus smith, Doris Kilman) and to protect itself from
any sort of intense feeling
- It may be this calculated emotional obtuseness that has kept it in power
MODERNISM Literary modernism originated in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and is characterised by a self-conscious break with traditional
ways of writing, in both poetry and prose fiction
Modernism experimented with literary form and expression
Time, following Bergsonian influence, is not linear and is reconceived in this novel as the ‘semi-transparent halo’ of Woolf’s ‘Modern Fiction’
manifesto
- Woolf argued that it is impotence to trace ‘the atoms as they fall’ and the impressionistic result is a new kind of Modernist Realism
In keeping with modernist aesthetics, the Dalloway party created a mode of being seen as fundamentally separate from mundane life
- It creates a scene that wrenches the guests from the dullness of habitual activity and serves as a stage for moments of heightened
consciousness
Like a conventional drama, the party distorts the forms of everyday life to reveal a truth Daloway believes to be more profound and important
CUBISM Woolf and the rest of the Bloomsbury generation were struck by the first shows of the Post Impressionists and the Cubists.
The concept of Cubism was to represent an object in space from several different angles and perspectives, taken at different times, and the combine
them all on the two dimensional picture plane so that you had in the object not only the idea of the three dimensions, which had been developed
in art, you know, way to the Renaissance, but the idea of the fourth dimension of time. That idea of multiple perspectives was very influential
LITERARY ALLUSIONS Septimus and Clarissa both read and recite a line from Shakespeare’s Cymbeline: ‘Fear no more the heat o’ the sun’
- The lines come from a funeral Dirge and suggests that death is not a thing to be feared, but should instead be embraced a as a release
from the constraints of life
WOOLF’S TUNNELLING Woolf’s diary entry August 30, 1923 ‘How I dig beautiful caves behind my characters: I think that gives exactly what I want; humanity, hummer,
PROCESS depth, the idea that the caves shall connect, and each comes to daylight at the present moment’
Woolf digs into the past of her characters and lets the tunnels she has created connect at specific moments in the narrative (through, for example,
imagery or echoing thoughts)
The concept of tunnelling into caves behind characters enfranchised her from the unwanted linear narrative structure in which an omniscient
