Mrs.

Dalloway: A protest against patriarchy

By: LUCIA GÓMEZ
Friday, November 15, 2019.

Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway was published in 1925. The author tends to write about
a lot of themes and feminism is one of the fundamental topics in it which details the
roles of women at the Victorian period and their apparent insignificance. Woolf wanted
to show that women’s lifestyle at that time are mostly trivial.
The writer has much to say about society and the post-war changes but a steady
underlying theme in the book is feminism. Basically it is the character of Clarissa
Dalloway, her relation with other female characters, Sally Seton, Miss Kilman and
Lucrezia Warren, who are also clustered around Clarissa in different contexts of the
novel, through which the author reveals the physical as well as the psychological world
of womanhood: their difficulties, subjectivity, sexuality and conditioning in the
traditional patriarchal society.

Virginia Woolf’s fame conventionally rests on her own creative writing as a woman, and
later feminist critics have analysed her novels extensively from very different
perspectives. (Selden, Widdowson, & Brooker, 2005, p. 118)
Woolf hold the key to the meaning of life and the position of women in the existing
patriarchal society. She portrays the impact of the patriarchal English society on
women’s lives, the loneliness and frustration of women’s lives that had been shaped by
the moral, ideological and conventional factors. (Walker, 2017)
The writer fought for women’s individual identity, privacy and freedom in the male-
dominated society. The relationship between Clarissa and Peter reflects constant
tension between love and freedom. She wanted to preserve her virginity and paralleled
it with freedom as result of an aggressive society where women were ignored and
detested.
So, instead of Peter, she chose to marry Richard because she thought Peter would not
give the kind of freedom which was essential for her happiness. (Walker, 2017)
For in marriage a little licence, a little independence there must be between people
living together day in day out in the same house; which Richard gave her, and she him.
(Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway, 1925, p. 4)

The two relationships of Clarissa (Peter and Richard) reveal women’s existence in the
society. Both the males, viewed Clarissa as a woman, inferior and insignificant.
Peter never wanted to understand Clarissa. Rather he was deeply interested in the
affairs of the world. (Walker, 2017)
It was the state of the world that interested him; Wagner, Pope’s poetry, people’s
characters eternally, and the defects of her own soul. (Woolf, Mrs Dalloway, 1925, p. 4)
In Mrs. Dalloway, the terrible influence of patriarchy is effectively represented through
the exposition of Miss Kilman and Rezia’s lives. Both were victims of the cruelty of the
social and political doctrine of the Victorian society and their only guilt was that they
were simply women.
What is really tragic about Rezia is not her husband’s insanity or death but the unfriendly
manner in which the world treated her. She suffered silently and alone. Even her
husband Septimus for whom she left her relatives and country was indifferent to her.
(Walker, 2017)
She was very lonely, she was very unhappy! She cried for the first time since they were
married. Far away he heard her sobbing; he heard it accurately, he noticed it distinctly;
he compared it to a piston thumping. But he felt nothing. (Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway, 1925,
p. 72)

The masterpiece Mrs. Dalloway presented a universal influence to feminism. The author
proposed a challenge and transformation of gender identity socially created.
Her attempts to write about the experiences of women, therefore, were aimed at
discovering linguistic ways of describing the confined life of women, and she believed
that when women finally achieved social and economic equality with men, there would
be nothing to prevent them from freely developing their artistic talents. (Selden,
Widdowson, & Brooker, 2005, p. 118)
In the novel, women suffered alone, have no individual identity, lack warmth and are
forced to suppress their needs.
By writing Mrs Dalloway, Woolf meant to send out an objection against the patriarchy
society. She meant to destroy the patriarchal structures to give women female identity,
to re-write the history of women through female eyes and talk about themselves and
their experiences openly.
Woolf ends the novel with a hope for the new woman. Her point is that women
shouldn’t lose their femininity, and also shouldn’t be limited to it. (Walker, 2017)

Bibliography
Selden, R., Widdowson, P., & Brooker, P. (2005). A Reader's Guide to Contemporary
Literary Theory. In R. Selden, P. Widdowson, & P. Brooker, A Reader's Guide to
Contemporary Literary Theory. Great Britain: Pearson.

Walker, V. K. (2017, November 10). Victoria K. Walker. Retrieved from

https://www.victoriakwalker.com/blog/2017/11/10/reading-the-bloomsbury-
group

Woolf, V. (1925). Mrs. Dalloway. United Kingdom: Hogarth Press.