Feminist View of Virginia Woolf's "Mrs. Dalloway" #2

Virginia Woolf can be believed to be the oldest feminist, not within the political sense, but as an individual who dwelt upon her soil, an approach that was unusual for a woman of her time. Mrs. Woolf used her novels to advise women how to find value in life and fulfill their personalities, such as ''Mrs. Dalloway''. In her handling of women's impotence, Virginia Woolf proved herself as a notable revolutionary feminist writer.

Mrs. Dalloway (1925) by Virginia Woolf concentrates on Clarissa Dalloway's multidimensional character. Clarissa Dalloway, the novel's protagonist, is the wife of Richard Dalloway, a conservative Member of Parliament and the mother of Elizabeth, a seventeen-year-old daughter. Clarissa Dalloway embodies several of the feminine attributes expected of a lady of her upper-middle-class standing, but she also reaches far beyond: ‘her existence profoundly controverts the ideology and power relations of her cultural sphere.  Mrs. Dalloway did not determine if her husband was worried about Armenians or Albanians. Women have this sincerity that derives from consciousness and the ability to discriminate between the fundamental and the coincidental.

Mrs. Dalloway's most important characteristic is that she is a lady, not her wealth, social rank, or opinions. Her talent, as well as her relationship with life, stems from all this. Most of Virginia Woolf's works glorify the qualities of women or their worlds while identifying the oddities of men, although Mrs. Dalloway is by far the most feminine of them all. Clarissa is a person who enjoys life. She engages in the conscious vision of the world around herself. To appreciate life, someone has to be capable of producing something, as Clarissa Dalloway actualizes in building a world in her great hall, gathering and recognizing a diverse group of people, and throwing parties for her 'life.'

Different women characters in Woolf's novel represent a variety of traits that are both unique and everlasting. For instance, Lady Millicent Bruton is a member of high society while she has nothing to do with activities, she invests heavily in charitable activities to pass the time. Also, Clarissa's maid is a combination; Lucy is a domesticated lady who 'had her work cut out,' however the Dalloway's rely on her for approval as well as a comfortable lifestyle. On the other hand, Dalloway's identity was more focused on the novel rather than other female characters. Clarissa is the focal point of the narrative, not for her intense affection toward everyone else, yet since she is the source of their very own warming. Her maids, too, are hoping for a pleasant touch from her. Despite the fact that Mrs. Dalloway portrays herself as a flâneuse, the richer people even have the flexibility to explore. It was partly due to the war, with the city reconstructing itself with a more feminine area in order to compensate for the lack of males, as well as possible due to women's issues. Earlier to here, there was a set of rules about who may travel there; middle-class women, who were beholden to class hierarchies or the state machinery, were required to be accompanied.

Mrs. Dalloway contains several examples of feminism, yet the different two methods appear to cross once it comes to the portrayal of Mrs. Dalloway and Miss Kilman. Woolf is responsible for introducing these two primary female protagonists, and also portrays their disdain for each other, using the stream of consciousness technique, which really is a profoundly modernist approach. Woolf's feminism, on the other hand, allows herself to portray Miss Kilman as the opposite of Mrs. Dalloway by portraying Mrs. Dalloway as the classic Victorian woman and Miss Kilman as the developing contemporary woman. It demonstrates why Mrs. Dalloway is an important novel in terms of feminism's perspective with modernism.