THE FRAGMENTED SELF AND MODERNIST EXPERIMENTATION IN VIRGINIA WOOLF’S MRS DALLOWAY

This article sets out to examine the migration of Virginia Woolf’s character Clarissa Dalloway from its original score (The Voyage Out) to other autographic (the short story “Mrs Dalloway in Bond Street” and the novel Mrs Dalloway) and allographic (Robin Lippincott’s Mr Dalloway and John Lanchester’s Mr Phillips) texts. The itinerary selected here traces her evolution from the very beginning of the twentieth century, when she is a rather conventional character, to a modernist, then post-modernist and neo-modernist character at the beginning of the twenty-first century. This itinerary reflects the authors’ evolving literary theories on character representation and construction of fictional worlds. By following Clarissa Dalloway’s textual itinerary, this article provides insights into her narrative identities, that is to say the way the different authors perpetuate the original character’s diagnostic properties and adapt them to new diegetic environments. Clarissa Dalloway migrates across texts, mutating and adjusting to new socio-cultural concerns and aesthetic contexts.

This paper deals with the motifs of clothing and fashion in Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway , with the aim of pointing out that these frequently used motifs of Woolf’s should be seen as one of the points where the character and the city – two significant participants in her novels – meet. Acknowledging the standpoints of Milina Ivanovic Barisic, who understands fashion as both a sign of social status and an expression of personal identity; R. S. Koppen, who reads clothes as a sign of both a personal style and interpersonal (class/ gender) relations (in Virginia Woolf’s case especially); Asta Andresdottir, who has a similar view on clothing based on Woolf’s novels; and McGaw and Vance, who consider the emotional relationship between urban dwellers and their cities, this paper analyses the clothing and fashion styles of two representative female characters in Mrs Dalloway – Clarissa Dalloway and Doris Kilman. Conclusions are then derived as to the way in which the two contrasting styles reveal the social identity and personal characters of each of the heroines, and as to what kind of individual emotional relationship with the city their fashion choices may suggest.

It is not an easy novel to read, but Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway is the easiest of novels to summarize. ‘A day in the life of a middle-aged upper-class London woman planning her party’, is how the Oxford Companion to Twentieth Century Literature encapsulates it. The long prelude to the novel is Clarissa Dalloway’s morning walk through the West End on a brilliant June morning (the 13th) in 1923 to select the flowers for the entertainment she and her politician husband are giving that evening. One of the pleasures of Mrs Dalloway is that you can follow quite exactly the route taken by Clarissa on her morning walk. OUP has helpfully provided a map for pedestrianminded readers. They should also set their watches. Woolf originally called her novel ‘The Hours’, and Clarissa Dalloway’s early morning peregrination through the London streets is precisely measured by the chimes of two clocks, Big Ben and the slightly belated St Margaret’s (the parish church of the House of Commons). It is with Mrs Dalloway’s morning excursion that I am concerned –– specifically, the puzzle of how she makes her return journey.

Virginia Woolf in Mrs Dalloway (1925) primarily focuses on Clarissa Dalloway’s multifaceted identity. In this study I intend to shed more light on the problem of subjectivity from a feminist perspective. The present study draws on Woolf’s own understanding regarding the formation of identity as well as Simone de Beauvoir’s, Judith Butler’s and Susan Bordo’s to locate Clarissa’s feminine qualities and resistance in the novel. All the above mentioned figures believe in the constructivity of identity formation: that Clarissa's identity, far from being given in advance for her to step into, emerge over time through discursive and other social practices; her identity is inflected and constructed by ideologies of gender and other social constructs. These interactions between language and gender on the one hand, and feminist theory on the other, are of tremendous significance in this study. The present study challenges the essentialist notion that identities in general, and gender identities in particular, are inevitable, natural and fixed. Clarissa’s identity needs to be constructed socially through language, but this very language is patriarchal and, therefore, marginalises feminine identity. I conclude that Clarissa Dalloway, as a social being, is not able to achieve a stable and unified position as a subject and her struggles are frustrated and ultimately lead to defeat of constructing a unified subjectivity.

Modernism is a movement seen in arts, literature, music and architecture in Europe and the USA at the beginning of the twentieth century. In this study, Peyami Safa’s Dokuzuncu Hariciye Koğuşu, from Turkish Literature and Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway, from English Literature are compared and contrasted in respect to modernist tools of stream of consciousness and interior monologue techniques. The main motivation behind this research is that the stories in both novels are narrated strikingly in a similar way which is through the main characters’ thoughts. On the other hand, differences in narrative techniques in both novels are also striking. In Dokuzuncu Hariciye Koğuşu, stream of consciousness is present in the apogee of fits that the sick hero suffers; however, in Mrs Dalloway, Clarissa Dalloway’s inner conflicts are presented in the form of interior monologue which is a subtler and refined way of emphasising the inner world of the main character.

Hate speech is a notion that many people see as intuitively easy to grasp, while many others deny it is even an understandable concept. The present article aims to identify and examine the hate speech situations manifested in Virginia Woolf’s famous novel, “Mrs. Dalloway”. An alternative reading of the novel “Mrs. Dalloway” explores the seemingly minor character, but with a substantial impact on the unfolding of the plotline, Miss Kilman represents a secondary objective. Following the triangle, Clarissa Dalloway - her daughter, Elizabeth, and Doris Kilman, the present essay tries to explain the situations in which hate speech occurs in “Mrs. Dalloway”.

Almost a century after its publication, Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway (1925) continues to endure and influence many international contemporary writers. This chapter focuses on three contemporary women writers who have authored recent novels inspired by Mrs Dalloway and who have revived Dalloway-esque themes within a renewed spectrum of aesthetic, cultural and political contexts. From direct, intended homages to Woof’s Mrs Dalloway to more subtle allusions, Anne Korkeakivi (An Unexpected Guest, 2012), Carole Llewellyn (Une ombre chacun, 2017) and Gail Jones (Five Bells, 2011) have taken their own twenty-first-century Clarissa Dalloway to Paris and Sydney. These cities, with their topographic, historical and cultural specificities, function as the canvas for the contemporary characters’ wanderings. Korkeakivi, Llewellyn and Jones perpetuate Woolf’s Dalloway-isms, but they also make them new by adapting them to contemporary expectations, settings and situations.

Mrs Dalloway, Virginia Woolf’s fourth novel, offers the reader an impression of a single June day in London in 1923. Clarissa Dalloway, the wife of a Conservative member of parliament, is preparing to give an evening party, while the shell-shocked Septimus Warren Smith hears the birds in Regent’s Park chattering in Greek. There seems to be nothing, except perhaps London, to link Clarissa and Septimus. She is middle-aged and prosperous, with a sheltered happy life behind her; Smith is young, poor, and driven to hatred of himself and the whole human race. Yet both share a terror of existence, and sense the pull of death. The world of Mrs Dalloway is evoked in Woolf’s famous stream of consciousness style, in a lyrical and haunting language which has made this, from its publication in 1925, one of her most popular novels.

The paper investigates the gerascophobic temperament of the protagonist, Clarissa Dalloway in Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway following the theory of semantic analysis. Although the plot orbits mundane events yet beneath the surface of everyday life, thoughts of progression towards death lurk persistently. With the help of the terms and expressions made by different characters in the novel, the paper finds how Virginia Woolf sets up the gerascophobic temperament of the characters by placing several personal, temporal, spatial and social lexical expressions in the novel at various intervals subconsciously.

Mrs Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself. For Lucy had her work cut out for her. The doors would be taken off their hinges; Rumpelmayer’s* men were coming. And then, thought Clarissa Dalloway, what a morning—fresh as if issued to children...

The purpose of this research was to find the depression symptoms of Virginia Woolf as the author portrayed in the characters Septimus Warren Smith and Clarissa Dalloway in Mrs Dalloway novel. It could be seen from the analysis of the data from biographical information of Virginia Woolf, narrations and utterances of the major characters Septimus and Clarissa. In order to determine the depression symptoms, Beck’s cognitive theory of depression was used in this research. This research belonged to qualitative method. The data sources were Mrs Dalloway novel and the biographies of Virginia Woolf. The data were the biographical information of Virginia Woolf, narrations and utterances in the novel refers to Woolf’s depression symptoms portrayed in the characters Septimus and Clarissa. The finding showed the depression symptoms of Virginia Woolf as were portrayed in Septimus such as negative expectation, self blame and self criticism, paralysis of the will, avoidance, escapist, and withdrawal wishes, suicidal wishes, loss of appetite, sleep disturbance, loss of libido, and hallucination.Meanwhile, the depression symptoms that were portrayed in Clarissa such as dejected mood, negative feeling toward self, low self evaluation, delusion of worthlessness, and suicidal wishes.

The purpose of this research was to find the depression symptoms of Virginia Woolf as the author portrayed in the characters Septimus Warren Smith and Clarissa Dalloway in Mrs Dalloway novel. It could be seen from the analysis of the data from biographical information of Virginia Woolf, narrations and utterances of the major characters Septimus and Clarissa. In order to determine the depression symptoms, Beck’s cognitive theory of depression was used in this research. This research belonged to qualitative method. The data sources were Mrs Dalloway novel and the biographies of Virginia Woolf. The data were the biographical information of Virginia Woolf, narrations and utterances in the novel refers to Woolf’s depression symptoms portrayed in the characters Septimus and Clarissa. The finding showed the depression symptoms of Virginia Woolf as were portrayed in Septimus such as negative expectation, self blame and self criticism, paralysis of the will, avoidance, escapist, and withdrawal wishes, suicidal wishes, loss of appetite, sleep disturbance, loss of libido, and hallucination.Meanwhile, the depression symptoms that were portrayed in Clarissa such as dejected mood, negative feeling toward self, low self evaluation, delusion of worthlessness, and suicidal wishes.

Introduction - Dissolving Self - Self at War - Self-Deception and Self-Conflict - Fragmented Self - Discontinuous Self - Conclusion - Notes - Index

Deeper than words

This paper poses a parallel analysis of Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway and Jean Rhys’s Voyage in the Dark, two novels set in London around the First World War that complement one another with regard to representation of women in the city. In focus are Woolf’s and Rhys’s heroines who belong different social classes. With a view to producing a fuller picture of the London strata of the time, the essay concentrates on a dual front: it examines the position the protagonists enjoy in respect to their gender as well as in respect to their social status. While Rhys’s Anna is a young woman from a distant colony, that is an outsider with no permanent residence in London, Woolf’s Clarissa Dalloway, however seemingly privileged, is greatly disadvantaged by her restricted experience of the metropolis. The essay argues that in these two novels London is a source of double marginalisation – a city unjust to the colonial subjects but unjust to women of all strata. As a theoretical background, the essay uses the concept of gendered geographies of power, which are supposed to help us reveal how different power structures affect the cityscape on both macro and micro level.