Commentaire Mrs Dalloway

« Commentaire Mrs.Dalloway After the first World War , there was a collapse of certainties, of known values and mores, then a real search of identity occured after this slaughtering cataclysm.

The artistic answer to all of this, was a breaking away from established form and traditions, ushering a period of experiments upon form and style.

Modernism is the name given to this cultural movement expressing fragmentation and disorder. Indeed, Mrs Dalloway is the ultimate example of modernist literature.

This novel was published in 1925 and written by the well-known English modernist author Virginia Woolf.

Just like another finest modernist work, James Joyce’s Ulysses, this novel is set over the course of one day, in June 1923 in the life of Clarissa Dalloway, organizing a reception. In the excerpt under analysis, Elizabeth Dalloway enters the room where her mothers is resting.Elizabeth told her that with Miss Kilman, they were going to the Army and Navy surplus stores .

Miss Kilman stood outside the door, and was waiting – her hatred for Clarissa only growing.

What must be underlined is that one of the major objectives of Virginia Woolf is to demonstrate through her novel, how life has drastically changed after the war.

Thus, leading to the following question : To what extent does the deep hatred that Miss Kilman and Mrs.Dalloway share for each other, can be a witness to the social sphere of the postwar period? Firstly, we will consider Mrs Dalloway's and Miss Kilman's aversion as the embodiment of a multi-faceted war.

Second of all, I shall focus on religion, and how it is depicted as the “ way of reason”.

Finally, we will examine how Elizabeth Dalloway is introduced as the object of all desire. From the very beginning of the excerpt there is a strong insistence on the feeling of hatred : “despised her from the bottom of her heart” / “Bitter and burning”/ “the hot and turbulent feelings which boiled and surged in her” / “hot and painful feelings boiled within her,” / “ this hatred of Mrs.

Dalloway”.

Indeed, we clearly understand from the outset that Miss Kilman can’t bear Mrs Dalloway, and that this violent feeling of hatred gnaws at her from the inside and even burns her.

It can refer to the theory of humors, with the excess of the yellow bile which explains this feeling of heat and burning and causes this intense anger and hate.. »