“As a woman I have no country. As a woman my country is the whole world.” 

“For most of history, Anonymous was a woman.” 

Virginia Woolf

VIRGINIA WOOLF(JANUARY 25, 1882 – MARCH 28, 1941)

was an English novelist and essayist regarded as one of the foremost modernist literary figures of the twentieth century.

denied the formal education allowed to males

Her father, Leslie Stephen, edited the huge Dictionary of National Biography.

the third of their four children1904-Virginia's decision to write took hold

her first novel, The Voyage Out (1915)

suffers through three major mental breakdowns

In March 1941, Woolf left suicide notes for her husband and sister and drowned herself in a nearby river.

MOST NOTABLE PUBLICATIONS “Night and Day”“The Mark on the Wall”

“Jacob's Room”“Monday or Tuesday” “Mrs. Dalloway” “To The Lighthouse” “Between the Acts”

“Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers

herself.”

MRS DALLOWAY In Mrs. Dalloway, published in 1925, Woolf discovered a new literary form capable of expressing the new realities of postwar England. The novel depicts the subjective experiences and memories of its central characters over a single day in post–World War I London. Divided into parts, rather than chapters, the novel's structure highlights the finely interwoven texture of the characters' thoughts.

Mrs Dallowa

y

London, England

Modernist novel

May 14, 1925 in

Sussex

Omniscient narrator

Free indirect discourse

A day in mid-

June, 1923.

Clarissa Dalloway

Many flashbacks

Third-person singular

pronouns

MAJOR CHARACTERS:

Clarissa DallowayRichard DallowayElizabeth Dalloway

Peter WalshSally SetonSeptimus Warren Smith

Lucrezia Warren Smith

SUMMARY

MAJOR THEMES

The sea as symbol of lifeDoublingThe intersection of time and timelessnessSocial commentaryDisillusionment with the British Empire

The Fear of Death

MOTIFS & SYMBOLS

Time Shakespeare Trees and Flowers The Prime Minister Peter Walsh's Pocketknife and Other Weapons

The Old Woman in the Window