Social Commentary and Satire

Abstract

All three of the novels we are studying are set in Virginia Woolf’s own time. Septimus’s friend Evans died in the First World War and Clarissa exclaims with relief that ‘it was the middle of June. The War was over’ (Mrs Dalloway, p. 2). So, the Bourton memories in Mrs Dalloway belong before the First World War, but the day of the narrative itself is a June day in 1923. To the Lighthouse also bridges the First World War. ‘The Window’ takes place on a summer day before the war; ‘Time Passes’ refers to events and deaths of the war itself; and some of the original actors return years after the end of the war, during the 1920s. The Waves is less specific in its date and setting; but some internal references (deaths in action among the ‘boasting boys’ for example) show that the time-span of this novel also bridges the First World War.