Doubling And Thematic Unity In Mrs. Dalloway

Mrs. Dalloway represents Virginia Woolfs first successful attempt to produce a novel in her own distinctive narrative style. With its publication, this novel has become the critics" focus and even till now it is under disputes. On one hand, some critics believe that by her treatment of the interrelationship of time, existence and the human psyche in her strikingly individual prose style, Woolf composed one of the most subtly powerful and memorable English novels of the post-World War I era. On the other hand, many adverse critics think that the novel, as a whole, represents a weak and narrow documentation of English life due to its temporal, seemingly non-plot structure and disjointed character development. In my opinion, the weakness is her greatness. It is these artistic techniques that afford Mrs. Dalloway its remarkable power and poignancy.This thesis interprets Mrs. Dalloway from a special perspective to throw some light on the juxtaposed characters: Clarissa Dalloway and Septimus Warren Smith in the novel so as to reveal its double plots and cohesion. Mrs. Dalloway has a story and some characters - by conventional standards, a fragmentary dramatic design - but the fragments of which the novel is composed would not seem related or particularly significant without another sort of connection. It is the fragments that construct many "existential moments", which can show the existence of the characters. It is about a summer day in London when two juxtaposed characters' fates develop spirally: one is the susceptible and sophisticated protagonist Clarissa's real life and psychology in twelve hours; the other is the sensitive and deranged veteran Septimus's last day in the world. Septimus" characteristics are in all essentials Clarissa's, but taken to a deadly extreme. Clarissa is thepan of life and Septimus death; the former is sane and the latter insane. The story unfolds the world that is seen by the sane and insane side by side,However, the double strands develop around the different consciousnesses of equal value, thus show us a "dialogue" which consists of different views on life and death. Septimus is just like a haunting double to Clarissa. Through foiling and juxtaposition, their rhythmic waves of consciousness flowing through the hours and places about life and death fulfill the double plots of the novel. For the structural cohesion of the presentation of the objective time, places and events, Clarissa and Septimus seem to rise out of one another. Their languages, their respective interior monologues seem, at one level, to be mirror image of each other. Also, the novel's cohesion is derived from their intermingled life as doubling.Hence, in spite of the seemingly irrelevance and looseness in the novel, the possibility of simultaneous coexistence, the possibility of being side by side or one against the other, is almost a criterion for writing Mrs. Dalhway. Juxtaposition, doubling, and cohesion are the outstanding techniques used in Mrs. Dalloway. It is the way she makes the reader to think over the connection and interaction between the characters that adds some interests or readable materials in the novel. and thus contributes greatly to the vitality and artistic brilliance of Mrs Dalloway.