Ideology In Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway And To The Lighthouse

Virginia Woolf has long been labeled as an immured aesthete in the temple of art solitary and out of touch with the life of her time, whose novels are relegated as the "personal novel" by Raymond Williams. Since 1980s, the political and social elements in her life and works have begun to be recognized and understood. As for these two seemingly "poetic and personal" novels-Mrs. Dalloway (1925) and To the Lighthouse (1927), criticism on the socio-political aspects of them has not been frequently discussed.The focus of this thesis is on the social and political visions of Woolf's two novels. And the notion of "ideology" will be introduced as a theoretical basis for the analysis of the novels from a social and political perspective. It is proposed to challenge the prejudiced view that her novels are apolitical and indifferent to social issues.The thesis will be organized in three main parts. A general development of the notion of "ideology" is first discussed in Chapter One. Generally, the term can be construed as having two main fields of meaning. One is a politicized version mostly informed by the political theory of classical Marxism. According to this line of thinking, ideology is a systematic representation manipulated by a particular social group or class. The other notion of ideology, largely reflective of Althusser's structuralist Marxism, tends to be manifested in the imaginary relationship of individuals to their real conditions of existence. And to make the conceptual formulations of the notion meaningful to a study of the two novels, it is proposed to classify ideology into two categories, political ideology and ethical ideology, contextualized in the realities of the early 20th century. These two aspects of ideology will provide practical and specific perspectives for a detailed analysis of Mrs. Dalloway and To the Lighthouse. Chapter Two focuses on political ideology around class conflict, change of social structure and attitude towards the war, which in text are embodied by criticizing the governing class to examine the social system, theemergence of the working-class woman symbolizing the change in the structure of social orders, and the awareness of anti-war. Through the operation of political ideology as it is implicated in text, the socio-political changes at that time can be informed. Chapter Three dwells on the three aspects of ethical ideology, family life, gender relation and marriage, to reflect the differences between two generations, and to illuminate the change in values at the turn of the 19th century and the 20th century. They are involved in the bonds of Victorian family life, the sexual polarization of Victorian family life and the reflection of Victorian marriage. It reflects English life at a time of historical rupture of very significant social and cultural change.The thesis will show there is ample socio-political content as an important element in Woolf's two novels, which are revealing of the workings of political ideology and ethical ideology in the early 20th century. It is expected that this can offer a new angle and a better understanding of Woolf's novels and her position as a social critic.