Virginia Woolf was born in London 1882. When Virginia was thirteen, the death of her mother, and two years later of her step-sister Stella, caused a nervous breakdown and to her mental instability. In 1904 After the death of her father, she moved to Bloomsbury in central London where, together with her brother and sister, she founded a circle of intellectuals which would become known as the Bloomsbury Group. In 1941 Virginia Woolf drowned herself in the River Ouse in Sussex.
Literary production
• In 1915, Virginia Woolf published her first novel, The Voyage Out.•In 1917, she and her husband founded The Hogarth Press, which published most of Virginia Woolf’s books. •The publication of Night and Day in 1919 was followed by Mrs Dalloway (1925), To the Lighthouse (1927), Orlando (1928), The Waves (1931) and Between the Acts (1941).
•Woolf was also an essayist and critic. Her most acute critical work is collected in The Common Reader (1925-32) and A Room of One’s Own (1929).
Interior time
Virginia Woolf is not interested in the actions and events but in the impressions of the characters for these events, in their subjectivity. She is particularly concerned with female subjectivity, which has made her a heroine to many feminists. When we read Woolf’s novels, we have the feeling of entering her characters’ inner world, a single moment can last for a very long time. This is achieved through indirect interior monologue, to represent the gap between chronological and interior time.This technique means that we are ‘within’ the minds of characters, showing their thoughts, feelings and sensations directly, as they occur. In Virginia Woolf’s indirect monologues there is still the occasional presence of a narrator who, however invisible, gives some order to the character’s thoughts by arranging them in logical and grammatical sequence.
MRS DALLOWAY
The story
The action of Mrs Dalloway is limited to the events of a single day in central London. It opens on a June morning as Clarissa Dalloway, the 51-year-old wife of a politician, leaves home to buy flowers for the party she has organised for the evening. During the day, Clarissa is captured in her many changing moods and memories. We also see her through the eyes and thoughts of other characters. Her day is also contrasted with that of Septimus Smith, a disturbed, shell-shocked war veteran. At the end of the day Septimus commits suicide by jumping out of the window of his room. News of his death intrudes upon Clarissa’s party, brought by William Bradshaw and by his wife. Learning about this tragic event, Clarissa reflects on how necessary it is for her that Septimus dies because as he embraces death, she at last can fully embrace life.
Features and themes
The interior monologue of Mrs Dalloway, is combined with the sights and sounds of the city of London. Virginia Woolf portrays interior time in contrast with chronological time
As Clarissa walks around London, her physical journey to the flower shop is constantly interrupted by the interior thoughts on the past and on the future . Walking around London, Clarissa’s physical impressions of the city are combined with her mental associations. Clarissa and Septimus become mutually dependent, although they are never directly connected apart from at the party scene. Like Clarissa, Septimus also moves around London, the brilliant chaos of his mind merging with the physical act of walking. His choice to die is inseparable from her acceptance of life, and his death becomes the halo that illuminates her life.