1. What is an interior monologue? Describe, using a specific character in Mrs. Dalloway and show how the monologue functions as a narrative and expository device. 2. While Virginia Woolf was writing this novel, she referred to it as The Hours. She changed the title, but what evidence is there […]
Read more Study Help Essay QuestionsVirginia Woolf Biography
Sir Leslie Stephen was fifty years old when his second daughter, Virginia, was born January 25, 1882. He had been married before, to a daughter of Thackeray, and after her death had remarried a widow with three children. He reared that family and now was in the midst of rearing […]
Read more Virginia Woolf BiographyCharacter Analysis Septimus Warren Smith
Septimus Warren Smith is the other side of the coin in this study of sanity and insanity. Septimus went to war, he tried to defend his country, and he attempted to become a “man.” He lost. Clarissa did not do battle; she withdrew and married a safe man who would […]
Read more Character Analysis Septimus Warren SmithCharacter Analysis Clarissa Dalloway
Clarissa has just recovered from an illness and is still frail. Her husband tries to protect her, urging her to follow doctors’ orders, but then Richard has always tried to protect his wife. Despite the fact that she enjoys giving parties, Clarissa is basically shy, and Richard is also shy; […]
Read more Character Analysis Clarissa DallowaySummary and Analysis The Party
Like the birds on the curtain that blows back and forth during the party, we flit in and out of the party. First we are in the mind of one of the guests, then we are above and listening to that guest speak; we note incongruities, Virginia Woolf’s satiric touches, […]
Read more Summary and Analysis The PartySummary and Analysis Before the Party
The first sentence in this scene is transitional, linking Septimus’ suicide — a major occurrence — with a random observation that Peter Walsh makes. The speed and the noise of the passing ambulance suggest to Peter one of the “triumphs of civilization.” This is nothing more than a commonplace, a […]
Read more Summary and Analysis Before the PartySummary and Analysis The Suicide
Of all the novel, Virginia Woolf found it hardest to write Septimus’ mad scenes. She herself had suffered long periods of insanity and it was painful to recall the visions and the sounds she hallucinated. These scenes, however, besides containing the ruins of a lyric, poetic mind, are some of […]
Read more Summary and Analysis The SuicideSummary and Analysis Elizabeth and Her Tutor
It is far more interesting to consider the tutor, Miss Kilman, than it is to consider Elizabeth Dalloway. Perhaps this is true because Virginia Woolf, like Milton and many other writers, produces tour de force creations in her villains. And certainly Miss Kilman is a villain — and a magnificently […]
Read more Summary and Analysis Elizabeth and Her TutorSummary and Analysis Richard and Clarissa
Clarissa Dalloway’s character was introduced to us in fragments; but the pieces were large and began to fit together rather easily. Our introduction to Richard, on the other hand, has existed only in very small fragments so far — as an instant in memory (Clarissa’s) or in contrast to another […]
Read more Summary and Analysis Richard and ClarissaSummary and Analysis At Lady Bruton’s
Halfway through Mrs. Dalloway, Richard Dalloway makes his first appearance. However, he is still not our main concern. Virginia Woolf is far more interested in showing us Lady Bruton and, to a lesser degree, Hugh Whitbread, than she is in introducing us to Clarissa’s husband. In her diary, Mrs. Woolf […]
Read more Summary and Analysis At Lady Bruton’s