This document provides an analysis of the key themes in Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf, including communication vs. privacy, sanity vs. insanity, and the struggle to find balance. It discusses how characters like Clarissa and Septimus grapple with the collapse of British traditions after World War I and the oppressive social norms of religion, science, and patriarchy. Time is a major motif in the novel, with death seen as always imminent, as aging represents inevitable change.

1. Mrs Dalloway

2.  Communication vs Privacy
 Realization
 Fear of Death
 Oppression
 Sanity vs Insanity (Depression)

3.  EspeciallyClarissa and Septimus
 Struggle to find the balance
 Parties vs InnerWorld of Clarissa
 Inner world : fragmented

4.  WWI –The invincible British Empire?
 Falsified
 Those who still believe that : Aunt Helena,
Lady Bruton, Richard  OLD!!!
 Clarissa, Peter, Septimus  traditions
collapsed
 Richard  wants to write about British
Military Family THE PAST!!!

5.  Clarissa, Septimus, Peter...
 Clarissa  goes paranoid sometimes
  praises death through Shakespeare
 «Fear no more the heat o’ the sun / Nor the
furious winter’s rages.» (Cymbeline)
  seen a lot of deaths, family members
  thinks living is dangerous

6.  Clarissa and Septimus, social oppression
 Religion, science, social traditions
 Miss Kilman – Religious oppression – wants to
convert everyone, kill Clarissa (for a moment)
 SirWilliam – Scientific oppression – his
conception of the world  never to be
challenged
 Patriarchal English Society

7.  Clarissa vs Septimus

8.  Time
 Doubling
 Shakespeare

9.  Very important motif
 Big Ben (symbol) – sounds – death any
moment
 Aging – change
 The woman in Regent’s Park
 Humans know no boundaries of time
 Singls like eternally
 Time is circular

10.  Hopeful way of addressing death

11.  The Prime Minister – old ways
 Peter’s pocket knife - indecisiveness
 OldWoman in theWindow – privacy,
loneliness, independence