Essay about Issues in Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway

Issues in Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway revolves around several of the issues that preoccupied the Bloomsbury writers and thinkers as a group. Issues of androgyny, class, madness, and mythology run throughout the novel. While that is hardly an exhaustive list, these notions seem to form the core of the structure of the novel. Woolf herself, when envisioning the project, sought to produce â€Å"a study of insanity and suicide, the world seen by the sane and the insane side by side.† This issue of madness, in particular, gives the novel its form as we follow the twinned lives of Septimus Warren Smith and Clarissa Dalloway. These preoccupations, occuring in the biographical and intellectual lives of the†¦show more content†¦By contrast, Septimus, the supposedly virile soldier, is found to be incapable of action, effeminized by his experiences in the war. Further considering the genesis of Septimus in Woolf’s own conception of the novel as birthed from her orig inal sketch of Clarissa’s character, we can see these two figures as merging towards some sort of composite identity. With their inverted gender roles, viewing them as one composite identity gives forth an image of an androgynous figure, the female body with a male mine and the male body with a feminine sense of agency. In terms of class, Septimus and Clarissa are clearly approaching from different ends of the social spectrum. Even in name, Septimus Warren Smith, we see the overreaching efforts of a middle-class attempt at culture, appending the absurd classical name, Septimus, onto the plebian and very British, Smith. Even in his efforts towards literature, Septimus goes off to war to save an England that consisted almost entirely of â€Å"Shakespeare’s plays and Miss Isabel Pole in a green dress walking in a square.† This conflation of Shakespeare with the lecturer is perhaps indicative of a certain insincerity or incompleteness of Septimus’s approach to the spiritual life. This culminates in his madness as he is rendered unable to feel and â€Å"that boy’s business of the intoxication ofShow MoreRelatedAnalysis Of Virginia Woolf s Gone At The Lighthouse Never Go Return 1706 Words   |  7 PagesElizabeth Conner 9 November 2017 ENGL-4010-001 Professor Westover Virginia Woolf: Gone to the Lighthouse, Never to Return Many authors inject a little bit of their personalities and lives into their writing, making it more relatable to their readers and more marketable to publishers. 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