Family name : Madiou

First name : Mohamed Salah Eddine

Group : 03

Topic: Analyze the modernist techniques used by Virginia Woolf in Mrs. Dalloway.

‘ Modernism is associated with attempts to render human subjectivity in ways more real than
realism; to represent consciousness, perception, emotion, meaning and the individual’s relation to
society ,’ Peter Childs asserts in Modernism (2000). Not only has modernism brought a new shade of
confidence but new trends of storytelling as well, subverting and shocking the traditional narrative
techniques. Tellingly, Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway remains an emblematic work of art that indicts
the British social, economic system as well as patriarchy. In brief, the two main personae, each with
his/her own struggle, are pitted against their opaque innerself, trying to fathom and claim steadfastly
the life that they deserve. In fact, Woolf ignites experimental techniques to paint a painstaking image
of a nefarious, ungrateful British society on the verge of the First World War. By means of this essay,
I shall analyze several modernist techniques that contribute to understanding Virginia Woolf’s Mrs.
Dalloway.

First and foremost, stream of consciousness is the prominent technique used by Virginia
Woolf. Consciousness, by definition, ‘ does not appear to itself chopped up in bits; it is nothing
nothing joined, it flows. A river or a stream are the metaphors by which it is mostly naturally
described,’ advocates Peter Childs in Modernism (2000). As can be gauged from this passage,
Virginia Woolf trespasses the characters ‘minds to get the reader acquainted with their thoughts, albeit
disarranged. In fact, her use of water imagery suggests that the character’s reminiscence and
recollections flit relentlessly because the individual’s mind has neither a beginning nor an end. An
outstanding example that instantiates Woolf’s use of nautical metaphors is the repetition of the word
‘wave’. In fact, she asserts that ‘the air was in the early morning like the flop of the wave, the kiss of
the wave chill and sharp.’ This quote is quite allusive and essentially tells that events are more
substantial when told by the memories themselves. Put simply, Woolf advocates that, like water,
thoughts flow constantly and speak the story that they witness.

Secondly, Virginia Woolf uses the ‘ Tunneling’ modernist technique to get the audience back
in time to witness the events by themselves. In fact, however different this groundbreaking technique
might appear from the stream of consciousness, there being a connection between them. In point of
fact, tunneling suggests that the clock is spun backward to provide the readership the chance to
discover what befalls in that period of time. In this context, the memories and thoughts are used as a
time machine to travel in. Virginia Woolf asserts that ‘ with a little squeak of the hinges which she
could hear now, she had burst open the French windows and plunged at Bourton into the open air.’
According to this passage, a tunnel is burrowed each time that the character hears a sound that makes
him/her reminiscent of an event. In this sense, like the stream of consciousness that finishes with the
strike of the Big Ben, tunneling also is triggered most of the time by a sound significant to a particular
character. Besides, as for stream of consciousness, tunneling is also associated with water imagery in
the sense that an individual cannot help going back to events like sea water that goes to and fro on
shore. Virginia Woolf uses tunneling in her groundbreaking novel and proves to be its instigator par
excellence.
 Last but not least, Virginia Woolf also uses other narrative techniques specific to Modernism.
In fact, there being a scene in Woolf’s work of art where Clarissa is startled when meeting Septimus
Warren Smith beside the flower shop. Indeed, the fact that Mrs. Dalloway remains surprised is not
allotted explanation. In this sense, this mystery spurs the audience to question and spend time to lay
reading. This new narrative device marks the breakdown from realism which would have accounted
for its cause and explained it. Furthermore, the characters, all along the story, questions their status
and seem to be blotted out by society. In fact, considering himself as a failed hero, losing her identity
and being alienated by society makes both of the characters disillusioned. In fact, these situations
arouse a particular emotion that is called ‘ objective correlative’ by T.S. Eliot . In brief. Virginia
Woolf uses a Modernist narrative device in Mrs. Dalloway.

To wrap up, the essay above aims to analyze Virginia Woolf’s use of Modernist techniques in
Mrs. Dalloway. In fact, Mrs Dalloway details Clarissa’s day in stream of consciousness. Virginia
Woolf delves into the characters’thoughts to make the events more concrete and momentous. What is
more, she uses the tunneling technique to get the reader back in a specific event to build tunnels
between the present and the past. Finally, she makes use of other narrative techniques that contribute
to understanding her luminal work. Virginia Woolf and her alter ego’s criticism of patriarchy as the
main cause of their subservience earns them the title of radical feminists.