Mrs. Dalloway: An Analysis Based on a Feministic View, Essay Example

Apart from being a novel about life-perceptions and self-identity, the story of Mrs. Dalloway’s life revolves around common modern feminist ideals. The emergence of such ideals creates connections which make it necessary to closely analyze their relation to both Woolf’s plot and story and the political, philosophical, and social effects of the feminist movement, especially the connections of concepts of identity, status, and worth.

Mrs. Dalloway knows the conditions of her worth and adapts accordingly. Her decisions and her dream direct each other toward a common goal: the realization of a lifestyle beyond her current reach and standing. She accomplishes this in one of the few methods left to women of her time, through a marriage to a prominent man, and she quickly adjusts to her new social importance and wants to rise even higher. Having already used the greatest card that a woman in 1920’s London possesses, Mrs. Dalloway searches for another way. At the same time women in England and America gained rights that they had never had before and sometimes did not seem to know what to do with. Immediately after achieving a goal filled with rights and freedoms, both Mrs. Dalloway and the feminists struggle to find completion, “…the part of us which appears, are so momentary compared with the other, the unseen part of us… even haunting certain places after death.” (Woolf)

Women in the 1920s were accustomed to living within the status of their husbands without much choice in the matter and without identity. Their identity could either be questioned or fully accepted based on the identity that their husbands carry with their own character only considered if they brought shame to their husband’s name, creating doubt around a man who does not control his own wife, as they saw it in the 1920’s. Mrs. Dalloway hosts a party at her home, trying to better her position by making a good impression on her husband’s friends, but they are accustomed to living in their higher social class. Her very desperate need to fit in with them shows that she will never really belong any higher, because she will always want more and be more out-of-her-league. This is the reason why Clarissa [Mrs. Dalloway] was considered to have a distinct reservation on showing who she really was or what she really wanted to be; she refers to such matter as a distinct manner by which she hides that person and hope that somehow, the hidden person survives time. Her hunger for status, her own personal apparition, travels with her through her marriage and parties. The women of the 1920’s experienced the same identity crisis, dealing with getting the first of their demands, wondering what was possible, and questioning where the finish line lay. Even as they reached the early goals of voting rights, women soon turned to more protection from violent men, throwing themselves into the male legal area, and some threw off the household altogether.

As a woman, she feels the need to become accustomed to such way of living. Not only does her gender keep her from the possible chances of realizing who she really is as a person, it also puts her in a situation where she needs to control her desires and her other skills or talents to make sure she does not turn her ally, her husband and only link to status, against her. To keep herself from pushing such an identity which could immediately put an end to her relationship, she needs to keep her real self hidden under a pleasant mask which she wore as she moved through this new high-class society.

Whether the reader agrees or disagrees with her goals or with her ways of gaining a better life, Mrs. Dalloway shows great courage, intelligence, and determination in making the best of the situation of her relative female powerlessness. Such elemental factors make the character more heroic through her refusal to live a life that she could simply settle with because it is what was comfortable for her and not necessarily the right one for her. Mrs. Dalloway accepts the strings attached to her role as an important married woman but refuses to accept it as her personal destiny or as the way it would always be. This, of course, represents women in 1920’s London but also the feminist movement as a whole. Women today recognize this problem but have more choices. Mrs. Dalloway’s courage could be recognized her distinct actions: how she tries to survive the sadness brought about by the need to live a life that she does not want and how she accepts the consequences of her decisions and gives up the person she really hopes to love. That sort of hopeless sacrifice takes courage, which she needs throughout her story, as one compromise after another takes her further from what she truly wants.  Mrs. Dalloway always survives by looking to the future- even when that means she must leave love to the past.

Feminists believe that there is nothing more irritating or degrading for a woman than having to live a life or an identity that is not actually hers—the ability to live a free and satisfying life is everyone’s right. Mrs. Dalloway also had the right. However, the 1920’s valued privilege more than justice and rights, especially for women. Despite the emergence of such idealism, it became hard for the women to make a name for themselves, a name that they wanted, a name that they deserved. Clinging to the name recognition of their husbands indicated  the lesser social value that women had against men. Feminism has not stopped. Today, during the age of liberalization, these ideals get more support. Women finally have the chance to embrace a relative identity that they deserve, something that they could make an impact on with their own effort, personality, and skills- and not just in the bedroom, the kitchen, the parlor, or at house parties. Women make their own name.

In the 1920’s, women often still had fewer rights than property. Women at the time could be seen to have the same attitude as that of Mrs. Dalloway. Woolf’s writes about the rejection and confusion of the time:

 “For Heaven only knows why one loves it so, how one sees it so, making it up, building it round one, tumbling it, creating it every moment afresh; but the veriest frumps, the most dejected of miseries sitting on doorsteps (drink their downfall) do the same; can’t be dealt with, she felt positive, by Acts of Parliament for that very reason: they love life.”

This line further points out the fact that the women then believed that there are things they simply need to accept, matters that they cannot change because they are the basic elements of life. The fact that men controlled these rules of life made no difference because there was nothing to do at the time. The rights of a group of people evolve, but the common thread of these movements during and after the 1920’s is that one’s ability to try to make a life that can satisfy is an important human need.  It the primary basis of one’s being—no matter if that person is a man or a woman.

In this reading, the utilization of feminism as a relative source of analysis for the character creation that Mrs. Dalloway is noted for provides a distinct impact on redefining how the society used to see womanhood and its personal worth to individuals as well as how such recognition on womanhood has changed through the years. To note, it could be understood that the utilization of the reflection on the changes of social perception on individual worth among men and women makes the reading on Mrs. Dalloway more relatively connected to the real value of gender roles that has been redefined through time.

Through this analysis, it is shown how particular readings on classical ways of living provides a distinct indication on how social changes had made it possible for modern understanding of the value of feminism to be developed in recognition of the need of women to be given the chance to live their lives according to their own desires and become more capable of living an identity that is basically identifies their real being and not a being that they need to pretend along with. The effective presentation of how women were treated in the past provides a good contrast on how modern living has changed the way women are seen and are given better chances of realizing the real values of their life and their character.