The Unity Of Theme And Form

The beginning decades of the 20th century witnessed a change in the history of English literature. It is generally believed that it was during that period that the literary trend labeled as modernism was taking shape. Creative writers that were to exert lasting influence for the remaining period of the century were mostly reaching the culmination of their brilliant careers, as many of the masterpieces that were significant in literary success were being produced.Virginia Woolf's Mrs Dalloway was such a literary work that was to inspire generations of writers with its unusual treatment of both the subject matter and the techniques involved. Acclaimed as a huge success, Mrs Dalloway combined the benefits of T. S. Eliot's The Wasteland and James Joyce's Ulysses by adopting both the theme of social criticism and the single day time frame to express a woman's revisionist view of criticism on the spiritual wasteland after the First World War. Moreover, as a feminist forerunner, Virginia Woolf cut herself as an outstanding novelist in her unusual perspective towards women as well as their destiny as a whole. She explored deeply in Mrs Dalloway what it meant to be a woman exposed to a society with various forms of conflicts. On the other hand, as a writer enthralled in experimentation on new possibilities for fiction writing, Virginia Woolf resorted to techniques exclusively thought of as her own in order to give life to a host of characters existing during that period.This thesis aims to have a critical review on Mrs Dalloway, focusing mainly on its theme of confrontation and the host of techniques that were employed by the writer to achieve the purpose of fleshing out the theme of confrontation. They include the stream of consciousness, the tunnelling process, the moments of being, the montage technique, echoes of Shakespeare's lines and symbolism. These means exist in abundance throughout the novel, and the adoption of them has undoubtedly added success to the book.