Mrs. Dalloway Revised: The Sense of Change and Disillusionment

Abstract

Mrs. Dalloway (1925) by Virginia Woolf is an acknowledged modernist novel which includes the sense of change and disillusionment as modernist elements. Woolf provides readers with illustrations of characters highlighting illusional reality and disillusionment throughout the novel. Although Clarissa Dalloway is not depicted as a disillusioned character within previous studies, both Clarissa Dalloway and Septimus Warren Smith represent disillusioned individuals in a modernist society. Thus, the aim of this article is to analyze the sense of change and disillusionment in Mrs. Dalloway via examining Clarissa Dalloway and Septimus Warren Smith as disillusioned characters who share similarities. To this end, the issues of social approval, marriage, war and trust towards institutions as products of civilization are discussed within the scope of this article.

Keywords

• Virginia Woolf
• Mrs. Dalloway
• modernist literature
• disillusionment.