Society, Class, and Conflict the Social Criticism of Virginia Woolf

1943 Words4 Pages

Virginia Woolf offers interesting analysis of social pressure and social class in Mrs. Dalloway and The Years. Understanding Woolf’s message about society demands a certain amount of sensitivity and decoding on behalf of her reader. Her social criticism in both texts can be easily overlooked because she keeps it subtle and implicit, hidden in the patterns and courses of her characters’ trains of thoughts. Yet upon such close reading, the essential importance of conflict between the individual and society in Woolf’s work becomes clear. While Mrs. Dalloway critiques the mental consequences of socialization, self-restraint, and the subsequent regret, The Years examines the relationship between the upper classes and the lower classes and the physical consequences of their respective places in society. Virginia Woolf’s stream-of-consciousness style of narration is essential to her method of providing social criticism. Instead of forcing extreme physical situations or conflicts into her text, Woolf instead offers nuanced observations through her characters’ patterns and trains of thought. Virginia Woolf said of Mrs. Dalloway, “I want to criticise the social system, and to show it at work, at its most intense” (Zwerdling), a statement that may surprise some readers. However, allowing the reader to witness each individual thought of the characters as they are linked together helps provide insight into how the social system influences their thoughts, memories, and ultimately their identities. The strength of Woolf’s social criticism comes from her ability to infer judgment in this fashion and presents interesting perspectives on class conflict, socialization self-restraint, regret, and coming to terms (or rejecting) with the conditions ... ... middle of paper ... ...s assuming particular identities and suppressing their desires. Through Rose, Woolf shows us that rebellion against this social order comes at a cost. Meanwhile, through Clarissa the reader learns of the the regret that must accompany assuming a social role for the sake of material success. Instead of focusing on the technological and economic progress of her time, Woolf highlights the psychological consequences of social change. As societies grow more complicated and intense with their development, her stream-of-consciousness style provides her readers with insight into the individual costs that we all must pay. Works Cited Woolf, Virginia. Mrs. Dalloway. Orlando: Harcourt, 1981. Print. Woolf, Virginia. The Years. Orlando, FL: Harcourt Brace & Company, 1937. Print. Zwerdling, Alex. "Mrs. Dalloway and the Social System." PMLA 92.1 (1977): 69-82. Print.

Show More
Related

  • Muted Women in Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own and Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Aurora Leigh

    2772 Words  | 6 Pages

    In the predominantly male worlds of Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own and Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s “Aurora Leigh (Book I)”, the women’s voices are muted. Female characters are confined to the domestic spheres of their homes, and they are excluded from the elite literary world. They are expected to function as foils to the male figures in their lives. These women are “trained” to remain silent and passive not only by the males around them, but also by their parents, their relatives, and their peers. Willingly or grudgingly, the women in Woolf and Browning’s works are regulated to the domestic circle, discouraged from the literary world, and are expected to act as foils to their male counterparts.

    Read More

  • College Meals

    545 Words  | 2 Pages

    Throughout Virginia Woolf’s writings, she describes two different dinners: one at a men’s college, and another at a women’s college. Using multiple devices, Woolf expresses her opinion of the inequality between men and women within these two passages. She also uses a narrative style to express her opinions even more throughout the passages.

    Read More

  • Death Of The Moth Rhetorical Analysis

    1636 Words  | 4 Pages

    Woolf’s pathos to begin the story paints a picture in readers minds of what the

    Read More

  • A Woman Breaking out of Society and it’s Norms: Virginia Woolf's To The Lighthouse

    902 Words  | 2 Pages

    In Virginia Woolf’s “To the Lighthouse”, the struggle to secure and proclaim female freedom is constantly challenged by social normalcy. This clash between what the traditional female ideologies should be and those who challenge them, can be seen best in the character of Lily Brisco. She represents the rosy picture of a woman that ends up challenging social norms throughout the novel to effectively achieve a sense of freedom and individuality by the end. Woolf through out the novel shows Lily’s break from conventional female in multiply ways, from a comparison between her and Mrs.Ramsey, Lily’s own stream of consciousness, as well as her own painting.

    Read More

  • Social Oppression in Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway

    1475 Words  | 3 Pages

    The physical and social setting in "Mrs. Dalloway" sets the mood for the novel's principal theme: the theme of social oppression. Social oppression was shown in two ways: the oppression of women as English society returned to its traditional norms and customs after the war, and the oppression of the hard realities of life, "concealing" these realities with the elegance of English society. This paper discusses the purpose of the city in mirroring the theme of social oppression, focusing on issues of gender oppression, particularly against women, and the oppression of poverty and class discrimination between London's peasants and the elite class.

    Read More

  • Memory in Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway

    1972 Words  | 4 Pages

    Clarissa Dalloway and Peter Walsh are defined by their memories. Virginia Woolf creates their characters through the memories they share, and indeed fabricates their very identities from these mutual experiences. Mrs. Dalloway creates a unique tapestry of time and memory, interweaving past and present, memory and dream. The past is the key to the future, and indeed for these two characters the past creates the future, shaping them into the people they are on the June day described by Woolf. Peter and Clarissa’s memories of the days spent at Bourton have a profound effect on them both and are still very much a part of them. These images of their younger selves are not broad, all-encompassing mental pictures, but rather the bits and pieces of life that create personality and identity. Peter remembers various idiosyncracies about Clarissa, and she does the same about him. They remember each other by “the colours, salts, tones of existence,” the very essence that makes human beings original and unique: the fabric of their true identities (30).

    Read More

  • Class in Virginia Wolf´s Novel Mrs. Dalloway

    1110 Words  | 3 Pages

    Class is something that is stressed in the twentieth century. Class is what identified someone to something. These classes could have been money, love, having a disability and many others. In Virginia Woolf’s novel Mrs. Dalloway there are many different types of relationships. In the novel, the reader learns that Clarissa’s husband Richard and her party planning is dominating her, as where Lucrezia’s husband, Septimus, is dominating her. The domination seen in these two ladies is love. Love is an overwhelming power that can influence someone to do something they might have not thought about all the way through, which can ultimately affect their life in the future.

    Read More

  • Existential Crisis In Mrs Dalloway

    781 Words  | 2 Pages

    The extensive descriptions of Mrs. Dalloway’s inner thoughts and observations reveals Woolf’s “stream of consciousness” writing style, which emphasizes the complexity of Clarissa’s existential crisis. She also alludes to Shakespeare’s Cymbeline, further revealing her preoccupation with death as she quotes lines from a funeral song. She reads these lines while shopping in the commotion and joy of the streets of London, which juxtaposes with her internal conflicts regarding death. Shakespeare, a motif in the book, represents hope and solace for Mrs. Dalloway, as his lines form Cymbeline talk about the comforts found in death. From the beginning of the book, Mrs. Dalloway has shown a fear for death and experiences multiple existential crises, so her connection with Shakespeare is her way of dealing with the horrors of death. The multiple layers to this passage, including the irony, juxtaposition, and allusion, reveal Woolf’s complex writing style, which demonstrates that death is constantly present in people’s minds, affecting their everyday

    Read More

  • The Hours by Michael Cunningham

    1441 Words  | 3 Pages

    By exploring the various queer references in The Hours, I have untangled some, but hardly all, of the queer references that Cunningham wove into his novel by adopting, and adapting, Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway for his own purposes. He was able to transform the reader’s view of literature and of queer narratives by reviving an old work and giving it a modern spin – replacing World War I with AIDS and exploring the sexuality of Mrs. Woolf, Mrs. Brown and Mrs. Dalloway through their respective eras.

    Read More

  • Female Relationships in Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway

    1447 Words  | 3 Pages

    Clarissa's relationships with other females in Mrs. Dalloway offer great insight into her personality. Additionally, Woolf's decision to focus at length on Sally Seton, Millicent Bruton, Ellie Henderson, and Doris Kilman allows the reader to see how women relate to one another in extremely different ways: sometimes drawing upon one another for things they cannot get from men; other times, turning on one another out of jealousy and insecurity. Although Mrs. Dalloway is far from the most healthy or positive literary portrayal of women, Woolf presents an excellent exploration of female relationships.

    Read More

  • Virginia Woolf

    413 Words  | 1 Pages

    Virginia Woolf, in her novels, set out to portray the self and the limits associated with it. She wanted the reader to understand time and how the characters could be caught within it. She felt that time could be transcended, even if it was momentarily, by one becoming involved with their work, art, a place, or someone else. She felt that her works provided a change from the typical egotistical work of males during her time, she makes it clear that women do not posses this trait. Woolf did not believe that women could influence as men through ego, yet she did feel [and portray] that certain men do hold the characteristics of women, such as respect for others and the ability to understand many experiences. Virginia Woolf made many of her time realize that traditional literature was no longer good enough and valid. She caused many women to become interested in writing, and can be seen as greatly influential in literary history

    Read More

  • Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway - A Modern Tragedy

    3726 Words  | 8 Pages

    The narrative of Mrs. Dalloway may be viewed by some as random congealing of various character experience. Although it appears to be a fragmented assortment of images and thought, there is a psychological coherence to the deeply layered novel. Part of this coherence can be found in Mrs. Dalloway's psychological tone which is tragic in nature. In her forward to Mrs. Dalloway, Maureen Howard informs us that Woolf was reading both Sophocles and Euripides for her essays in The Common Reader while writing Mrs. Dalloway (viii). According to Pamela Transue, "Woolf appears to have envisioned Mrs. Dalloway as a kind of modern tragedy based on the classic Greek model" (92). Mrs. Dalloway can be conceived of as a modern transformation of Aristotelian tragedy when one examines the following: 1) structural unity; 2) catharsis; 3) recognition, reversal, and catastrophe; 4) handling of time and overall sense of desperation.

    Read More

  • The War is Over: Post World War I in Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway

    1672 Words  | 4 Pages

    Alex Zwerdling states that “Woolf gives us a picture of a class impervious to change in a society that desperately needs or demands it. She represents the governing class as engaged...

    Read More

  • Women And Creativity In Virginia Woolf's A Room Of Ones Own

    1533 Words  | 4 Pages

    Rich writes, “It is in the tone of a woman almost in touch with her anger, who is determined not to appear angry, who is willing herself to be calm and detached, and even charming in a roomful of men where things have been said which are attacks on her very integrity...she is acutely conscious-as she always was-of being overheard by men” (Rich 20). Rich articulates that Woolf, even while writing about women in fiction, was not able to free herself from male criticism. Her attempts to appeal to women but not displease men lead her essay to be less effective than it could have

    Read More

  • Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own: Women and Fiction

    1151 Words  | 3 Pages

    Throughout her life Virginia Woolf became increasingly interested in the topic of women and fiction, which is highly reflected in her writing. To understand her piece, A Room of One’s Own Room, her reader must understand her. Born in early 1882, Woolf was brought into an extremely literature driven, middle-class family in London. Her father was an editor to a major newspaper company and eventually began his own newspaper business in his later life. While her mother was a typical Victorian house-wife. As a child, Woolf was surrounded by literature. One of her favorite pastimes was listening to her mother read to her. As Woolf grew older, she was educated by her mother, and eventually a tutor. Due to her father’s position, there was always famous writers over the house interacting with the young Virginia and the Woolf’s large house library.

    Read More

More about Society, Class, and Conflict the Social Criticism of Virginia Woolf

Open Document