Narrative peculiarities in Virginia Woolf’s “Mrs Dalloway”

This essay (that I would rather consider as an analysis) will deal with the narration, narrator and narrative techniques of V. Woolf’s “Mrs Dalloway”.

V. Woolf – the voice of women in modernist narration. Virginia Woolf probably is one of the most famous women writers – mostly because of her ability to reflect the inner world of a woman. And “Mrs Dalloway” is a typical work dealing with women's difference from men. (If we already might go into detailed examples, one such but not the only is Mrs Dalloway’s relationship with Sally. When she recalling it, Mrs Clarissa Dalloway admits to herself: “It was not like one’s feeling for a man. It was completely disinterested, and, besides, it had a quality which could only exist between women” (page 39 ). She appreciates Sally’s presence in her life as a present, “a diamond, something infinitely precious”, for a moment giving her the “religious feeling!”, feel of revelation (what revelation?) and men in this case (Peter Walsh and old Joseph) break in and destroy their companionship.) Yet, not only womanly thoughts and emotions themselves are important – what really differentiates this writi

Unreliable narrator(s) / gender differences. Probably it could be said that most of Virginia Woolf’s characters are quite unreliable as narrators; they might be omniscient, yet that is what makes them so subjective; they can not look upon things from a distance. (Interestingly, but some consider all narrators as unreliable while they are fictions; thus it would be imprecise to refer to a narrator that offers a coherent, consistent view of his or her world “unreliable” merely because he or she has a bias or a personality that differs from yours. But generally by the term “unreliable narrator” one understands a narrator whose judgments about the world are internally contradictory, flawed somehow, such that the reader is meant to mistrust his or her perspective.)

One more peculiar detail: after studying both the author’s life and personal views and her work I came to a conclusion that the distance between the man and the woman (in a sense of world understanding) she really sees as immeasurable. A man would never fully understand the woman; their world perception is so different that we might find the aspect of subjectivity and thus – “unreliability” even within the differences of those two ways how a man and a woman see the world. (I.e., if we rely on what a woman tells us, or trust her feelings, we never get the full objective picture.)

Finally, the aspect of Time within the narration. Not taking into account the defragmentated pieces of thoughts the characters express, the whole narration of the novel consists of fragments, characters’ flashbacks, memories. I think that defragmentation of the narration is one of the most significant qualities that separate a modern novel from its predecessors: modernist narrative deals with such reconstruction of the past through present experience and memory – the way in which the past is refracted into the present, and how consciousness shapes the experience of self and culture.

Thirdly, what is the tone, language, etc. of the narrator?

Some topics in this essay:
Virginia Woolf’s, Study Guide, Gender Narration…”, Virginia Woolf, Definition Narrator, Maisie Johnson, Literature Network’s, Queen Dalloway, Dorothy Richardson, Warren Smith, “mrs dalloway”, --> page, stream consciousness, virginia woolf, impressionist painting, “the gender, woolf’s novel, virginia woolf’s, “literary terms narrative, unreliable narrators, wife lucrezia, “mrs dalloway” actually, page 29 lucrezia, indirect style discourse, woolf’s “mrs dalloway”,