Virginia Woolf
Virginia Woolf was born in London and she grew up in an intellectual atmosphere.
She studied to her father’s library with private lessons. The death of her mother in
1895 affected her deeply and brought her first nervous breakdown. Her stepbrother
also sexually abused her. She began aggressive against her father and, only with his
death, she felt free to start her own life and literary career. She left in Bloomsbury
and here she became a member of the Blommsbury Group. These writers rejected
the bourgeois sexual codes and exalted the stream of consciousness prose style. The
main themes are socialism, anti-war sentiment and unconventional sexual practices.
She married Leonard Woolf and in these years, Virginia published “The Voyage Out”,
“Mrs Dalloway”, in which she used new narrative techniques. Then she wrote also
“Orlando”, which was devoted to Sackville, a novelist with whom she had an intense
relationship.
Virginia was also a very literary critic and a brilliant essayist, in fact she wrote “A
room of one’s own”, a work of great impact on the feminist movement of the 1960s.
During her life, World War II increased her anxiety, so in 1941 she drowned herself
in a river.
Virginia was a modernist novelist and thought that the human personality was a
continuous shift of impressions and emotions. For her what mattered was no more
the events but the impression they left on the characters. In her novels, there
wasn’t an omniscient narrator and the point of view shifted inside the different
character’s minds.
Mrs Dalloway
Clarissa Dalloway, on a Wednesday, goes to Bond Street to buy some flowers for a
party she is giving that evening at her house. While she is in the flower shop, a car
drives noisily and get the attention to Clarissa. In this car, there are Septimus and
Lucrezia Warren Smith, an Italian girl and a veteran of world war I. Septimus’s
mental disorder has necessitated the calling of Dr. Bradshaw, a nerve doctor.
Clarissa walks back home and receives a visit from Peter Walsh, a man she used to
love in her youth. He then leaves her house and goes to Regent’s park, where he
met the Smiths with Dr. Bradshaw. At 6 p.m., Septimus jumps out of the window of
his room, and the ambulance carrying his body passes by Peter Walsh. All the
characters go at Clarissa’s party and she hears the death of Septimus with which she
feels a strong connection.
Mrs Dalloway takes place on a single day in June, in London. Virginia Woolf shows
the deep humanity of her characters: they enjoy all the sights and the sounds in
London. She uses the “tunnelling technique” in which she allows the reader to every
