Top-Rated Free Essay
Preview

Briefly discuss about interior monologue in "Mrs. Dalloway" by Virginia woolf.

Good Essays
369 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Briefly discuss about interior monologue in "Mrs. Dalloway" by Virginia woolf.
R.L. Chambers has pointed out "in Mrs. Dalloway the action of the book is limited temporary to a single day in the life of the chief characters, spatially to a single place, London, and emotionally to the relations of Mrs. Dalloway with few other people." but the action is presented through the stream of consciousness of the major characters.

In this novel characters are presented through stream of consciousness. The flow of consciousness waves backward and forward in time. And at crucial moment they had molded their personality. this interior monologue means thinking him/herself. for example love song of perforce by Eliot. Here prufrock presented as modern man. That modern man always thinking but can not make it action. They just thinking and confused of what they want .same as mrs Dalloway. Her she is thinking of her past

Septimus suffers from a nervous breakdown, abnormal self-conscious and on the edge of insanity. To the novelists of the new school human consciousness is a chaotic weather of sensations and impressions; it is fleeting, trivial and evanescent. And according to Virginia Woolf, the great task of the novelist should be "to convey this varying, this unknown and uncircumcised spirit". His main business is to reveal the sensations and impressions to bring us close to the quick of the mind. He should be more concerned with inner reality rather than other. This is what is known as "the stream-of -consciousness-technique". And we are introduced into interior life of a character by means of interior monologue.

There is very little intervention in the way of explanation or commentary on the part of the novelist. And this has been done by Virginia Woolf by a very skillful use of " the interior monologue" or " the stream-of-consciousness" technique. She has very successfully revealed the very spring of action, the hidden movies which impel men and women to act in a particular way. She has been able to take us directly into minds of her characters and show the chaotic flow of ideas, sensations and impressions there. And thus Mrs. Woolf has been able to create a number of memorable, many- sided and rounded figures, such as Mrs. Ramsay or Mrs. Dalloway, which are among the immortals of literature.

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    An unreliable perspective is used through the text, employing a narrative voice which results in ambiguity, leading the reader to think about the reality of the novel.…

    • 874 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Good Morning friends, today I will be giving a eulogy to share about my experiences with Mrs Dubose.…

    • 583 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Today there was a holiday carnival and I saw Jem and Scout dressed up as a ham. I noticed this weird guy following them, I believe he goes by the name of Bob Ewell. I decided I would follow them as Atticus wasn't with them and I knew something was unusual. I'm super glad that I followed them because next thing I knew Bob tried stabbing them with a knife. I grabbed the knife and he didn't expect it. Next thing I knew I stabbed him and saved the two terrified kids. It was really dark out and it all happened so fast.…

    • 103 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Lady Of Letters Monologue

    • 712 Words
    • 3 Pages

    so in equal pace I replied straight away. Well, I’d had all my jobs done by breakfast and those opposite weren’t about, so I was just twiddling my thumbs.” Although, at the same time I believe that unlike Bennett’s other monologue characters, Miss Ruddock is somewhat aware of her isolation as she often pauses after speaking of her mother. This implies that she is reflective of the past; the only time she was truly happy, when mother was alive. To mirror this literary device, I kept pausing after mentioning of her mother, this is evident with “It’s not like the good old days, when mother was alive. Pause.” Also, as in my piece Irene speaks of the time when she tripped and fell, over the same step that she wrote a previous letter about that symbolises the change in time and society, as she believes that when she was younger there would be a whole host of people out to nurse her skinned knee and to find justice for Irene,…

    • 712 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    There are two distinctive voices, Claudia Valentine and Harry Lavender. Claudia valentine is shaped to be a strong character, who is not inhibited by traditions. Her independent nature and “hard bitten” experiences make her more observant and resourceful. However as we keep reading; we understand her insecurities and the subtle heart all women have. Harry Lavender the antagonist of this novel is a man of strong power who is metaphorically illustrated to be the heart, the veins, and the blood of Sydney. He is a man of corruption and crime, and a symbol of the calamitous facade of Sydney. Both voices are created by the world of Sydney or how the author has quoted “the sewage of Sydney”.…

    • 961 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Standing here, trembling in the eerie silence of my husband’s room, I am confronted by all the memories we’ve shared together. I feel that a shadow as thick as a velvet curtain has been pulled from my eyes. How could I have been so blind to not have known? To not have known that my own husband, Sir Percy Blakeney, is none other than the elusive Scarlet Pimpernel himself! Imagine that? The man whom we all believed, even me his wife, to be a simpleton, a mere charming fool incapable of nothing more than inhaling his snuff in fact is a hero of the people. I feel in torment now, and I fear for his life! Oh, why was I so stupid to agree with Chauvelin’s demands? Please God, tell me why!…

    • 701 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    For hundreds of years, women have been shackled from their freedom and morally separated from men. They have always been treated as lesser beings by men, and have been seen as inferior. However, as time went on more and more women emerged from their captors and brought great change to the world. History shows that women indeed had it rough but they have become a more important role to society and have had a strong effect on our current world. One career where women have strived in is literature. There are countless female writers and a number of them have become far more successful than male writers. However, Virginia Wolfe describes how in the early days before women found the ability to be successful…

    • 989 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Diagnosing Septimus Smith

    • 1397 Words
    • 6 Pages

    Virginia Woolf’s novel, Mrs. Dalloway, features a severely mentally ill man named Septimus Smith. Throughout the novel the reader glimpses moments of Septimus’s dementia and how his poor frazzled wife, Rezia, deals with him. Septimus, who has returned from the war and met Rezia in Italy on his discharge, has a seriously skewed version of reality. He has been through traumatic events during the war, including the death of his commanding officer and friend, Evans. Upon his return to England he suffers from hallucinations, he hears voices (especially Evans’), and he believes that the trees have a special message to convey to him. Rezia attempts to get Septimus help by taking him to several doctors. Ultimately Septimus commits suicide rather than let the doctors get to him.…

    • 1397 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    Virginia Woolf, acknowledged as one of the greatest female writers of her time, and ours, wrote two essays in which she attended the meals of a men's and women's university. In the first passage, Woolf describes an extravagant luncheon at a men's college, using long and flowing sentences to express the seamless opulence of the "many and various retinue[s]" displayed at the convention. On the other hand, in the second passage Woolf illustrates a bland, plain, and institutional-like dining hall. It was nothing special, and nothing great, only a poor regimen of "human nature's daily food." Woolf's contrasting diction, detail, syntax and manipulative language in these two passages convey her underlying attitude and feelings of anger and disappointment towards women's place in an unequal, male dominated society.…

    • 711 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Individuals will go to extraordinary lengths—even fight against an entire, community—in order to seek justice.…

    • 634 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The epigraph of the poem is an excerpt from Dante's Inferno, in which that the perfect audience could only be someone who would never be allowed into the real world where that person(s) might reveal Prufrock's idiosyncrasies. This of course is impossible so therefore he must settle on a personal reflection, thus creating an interior dialogue. This in effect sets a mood of isolation giving the reader some foreshadowing in to what the poem will be about.…

    • 825 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In two passages, Virginia Woolf describes her experience at a two cafeterias, one for a men’s college, and the other for a women’s college. Virginia Woolf uses complex diction, imagery and detail to convey her negative attitude towards women’s place in society. She also uses contrasting sentence lengths (short and long), tones (awe and formulaic), and imagery (vivid and bland) to help convey her attitude. Both passages contrast each other in terms of tone and sentence structure. The juxtaposition of the two passages leaves a strong contrasting effect for readers. Passage 1 is filled with a tone of awe and contains detailed sentences and imagery, while Passage 2 is constructed with a very formulaic tone and bland imagery.…

    • 729 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Critical Analysis

    • 1005 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Karen DeMeester. ‘Trauma and recovery in Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway’, MFS, Modern Fiction Studies, Volume 44, number 3, Fall, 1998, 649-673.…

    • 1005 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    A Dialogue of Self and Soul

    • 11432 Words
    • 46 Pages

    prospect of a marriage of equals. Others were to read the ending as a compromise with contemporary patriarchal ideals of marriage.…

    • 11432 Words
    • 46 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Better Essays

    Time and time again, gender-conflict has continued to be a focal issue. Since the beginning of time, this dilemma has been articulated through novels or other various forms of writing. It is now brought to the public's attention in forms such as the news, radio and the workplace. Habitually asked, are the age old questions of: "what is a man's place in society?", "what is a woman's place in society?", or "is there a specific place for either?" Furthermore, "is there a genuine difference at all?" One critic explains, "Woolf reaches beyond personal relationships to explore man's wider relation to the Universe" (McNichol 1). In Virginia Woolf's novel, To the Lighthouse, the differences in male and female roles are a reoccurring theme that is ultimately answered by one character in her final days at the Ramsey's home.…

    • 2055 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays