Stylistic Innovations in Mrs Dalloway Vanshika Dhingra College

If realism could depict reality in the most truthful manner then the departure from the same in modernism proves the failure of this mode of representation of reality. The age faced loss of faith in religion, principles, ethics, human relations and even in own nation since they saw mass destruction caused by World War I. Literature found it difficult to represent this fragmented reality and so came the need to innovate. Virginia Woolf, one of the most important modernist writers, departs from conventional modes of writing not only in terms of subject matter but also in ways of representation of the subject matter. This representation leads us to the idea of stylistic techniques she uses in her writings which are not divorced from the motif or the subject matter of writing. Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway looks at the external reality critically and captures experiential reality through her stylistic innovations.

Mrs Dalloway focuses on vertical or subjective exploration as opposed to horizontal exploration. Now since individual perception does not function in defined structures, Woolf uses fragmented narrative undivided by chapters to show how categorization is irrelevant to individual subject. She uses the Stream of...