“The Rise of consciousness in Mrs.

Dalloway”

Submitted By

Name: Sonjoy Boishnab

Reg. No. 2016236066

4th Year 2nd Semester

Session: 2016-17

Submitted To

Shareefa yasmeen

Associate Professor

Department of English

Date of Submission

17th December, 2020

Shahjalal University of Science and Technology, Sylhet

 “The Rise of consciousness in Mrs. Dalloway”

Virginia Woolf was an essayist, novelist, publisher, critique, especially famous for her

novels and feminist writings. She is considered to be one of the leading figures of modernist

literature of the twentieth century. Mrs. Dalloway is one of the famous novels of Virginia Woolf

which she wrote about the complexities of human life, its tension between misery and happiness

and its inevitable termination in death. Mrs. Dalloway gives a picture of the modern world with

its destructive forces of class struggle, economic insecurity and war.

In this novel all the characters are stuck in past and it seems that they are not happy with

their present situation; such as, peter thinks about Clarissa even when he married with Daisy,

Clarissa as a married woman think about Peter and Sally, also Septimus thinks about his dead

friend, Evans, when he was in the park. The novel begins with Clarissa’s point of view and

follows her perspective more closely than that of any other character. She often seems to

question about life’s true meaning, wondering whether happiness is truly possible. Besides, she

feels both a great joy and a great dread about her life, both of which are evident in her struggles

to keep a balance between her desire for privacy and her need to communicate with others.

Throughout the whole novel, she struggles constantly to balance her internal life with the

external world. Her world consists of glittering surfaces, such as fine fashion, parties, and high

society, but as she moves through that world, she discovers herself beneath those surfaces in

search of deeper meaning.

Constantly revolving around the past and the present, Clarissa becomes able to reconcile

herself towards life despite her potent memories. Though she is content, she never let’s go of the

doubt she feels about the decisions that have shaped her life, particularly her decision to marry
Richard instead of Peter Walsh. She understands that life with Peter would have been difficult,

but at the same time she is aware that she sacrificed passion for the security and tranquility of an

upper-class life. At that time, she wishes for a chance to live life over again. She experiences a

moment of clarity and peace when she watches her old neighbor through her window, and by the

end of the day she has come to terms with the possibility of death.

Moreover, Spetimus’ death in her party affects her and she considers his suicide an act to

preserve the purity of his happiness. When Clarissa hears about Septimus’s suicide, she is deeply

moved from her psychological state.  In fact, his suicide provides some clarity for Clarissa about

her own life.  Clarissa becomes conscious about her life when she views Septimus’s death as a

preservation of his soul and passion which she has compromised throughout her life. Like

Septimus, Clarissa keenly feels the oppressive forces in life, and she accepts that the life she has

is all she’ll get. Thus, through the death of septimus, Clarissa becomes able to gain her

consciousness out of her vacillating state of mind which was trouble with the outer world. Mrs.

Dalloway is thus one of the best examples of the novel that uses the technique of Stream of

Consciousness to explore the inner life of the characters, expose their follies, frustrations and

complexity