The Novel Mrs. Dalloway

It is Clarissa's relationship with Richard that best illustrates the inborn conflicts that she battles. Woolf explains that Clarissa's decision to marry Richard was rooted in the fact that he could offer a stable and secure life history, save the consequences of that survival of the fittest now hit her (Di Battista 134). Indeed, Clarissa does not finger passion at heart her marriage:

[S]he could not dispel a virginity preserved finished childbirth which clung to her like a sheet. Lovely in girlhood, abruptly there came a moment? when, through some abbreviation of this cold spirit, she had failed him" (Woolf 31).

While she acts like the proper wife of a Parliament member, playing the perfect party hostess, Clarissa does not feel an emotional connection to that life. She is still caught up in memories from her young, when she lived more(prenominal) honestly and passionately (Di Battista 133).

Most of these memories center on her relationships with jibe and Sally, who both are critical of her because she married Richard. Clarissa remembers that gumshoe predicted a life as a socialite for her: "She would marry a ground Minister and stand at the top of a stair fashion; the perfect hostess he called her (she had cried over it in her bedroom), she had the makings of th

Clarissa's feelings for Sally, in fact, are highly meaningful in terms of the dual-nature of her character. While Clarissa may have harbored homosexual feelings for Sally, there was no way for her to act upon them because society would not have accepted it. Instead, Clarissa married Richard, which was not only socially-accepted but actually served to increase her social rest as well. As Sally only sees Clarissa's surface actions, she does not realize the way in which Clarissa has struggled with her decisions.

The reader, on the other hand, is aware of Clarissa's conflicted feelings, and thus views her in a sympathetic light (Fleishman 97).

Apter, T.E. Virginia Woolf: A Study of her Novels. newfound York: New York UP, 1979.

e perfect hostess, he said" (Woolf 7). When Peter visits before her party, however, Clarissa is caught up in her old feelings for him. Seeing him again, she observes, "?he's enthralling! perfectly enchanting! Now I remember how insufferable it was ever to make up my mind - and why did I make up my mind - not to marry him? she wondered, that direful summer?" (Woolf 41) Clarissa chose a life of security and social standing over her heart's desires, and now she has only regret to cling to.

In her novel Mrs. Dalloway, Virginia Woolf presents a heroine who projects an outward image that often conflicts with her interior(a) thoughts and feelings. Indeed, Clarissa Dalloway is torn between the life that she has chosen for herself as the upper-class wife of a Parliament member and the sentimental memories of her youth that she clings to. Ultimately, Clarissa is able to resolve her two selves, as she comes to accept her life as
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