Mrs. Dalloway: Societal Oppression and the not so Private Privacy of the Soul Zoe Tierney College

Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway criticizes societal conventions as it portrays the internal thoughts of its protagonist, Clarissa Dalloway, and the various characters that surround her in post-World War I London. Woolf illustrates the mental repercussions of the war and the past in general through the perspectives’ of individuals from a variety of different backgrounds and experiences. The two central characters of the narrative, Clarissa and Septimus, initially could not appear more different. Septimus is a male war veteran suffering from undiagnosed PTSD while Clarissa is a female matriarch who dedicates her life to trying to maintain a sane composition. Arguably, the decision to make the male foil the one “diagnosed” with insanity might be a result of Woolf’s feminism but, with access to her internal thoughts, we quickly see that Clarissa isn’t as sane as she initially appears. Woolf juxtaposes Clarissa and Septimus to illustrate the inability to escape from societal oppression, except through death, and the consequences of choosing whether or not to sacrifice one’s soul in order to conform.

Both Septimus and Clarissa are trapped by societal subjugation; the two are victims of disingenuous relationships, emotional repression,...