Mrs Dalloway critic quotes

Woolf - modernism

'In or about December 1910, human character changed'

Woolf - intention

'I want to criticise the social system and show it at work at its most intense'

Woolf - doubles

Septimus and Clarissa are 'entirely dependent on each other'

Hebron

'throughout the novel the traditional images of power are undermined'

Hewitt

'Clarissa Dalloway embraces the past, Peter Walsh wallows within it, and traumatised Septimus smith tries his utmost to repel it'

Foucalt

'homosexuality was now a species'

Showalter

Woolf 'captures the fitful, fretful rhythm of women's daily life'

Carey - marriage and Clarissa

'the death of Clarissa's soul began the moment she married Richard Dalloway'

Carey - doubles

'two sides of the coin in this sanity and insanity'

Rose - Clarissa’s choice

‘clear-cut opposition between stability and adventure'

Rose - coverture

'the name of the husband is one of the strongest insignia of patriarchal power'

Heilbrun

'after youth and childbearing are past, they have no plot'

Bowlby

'a positive sign of women's progress…readily returns…a good civilised daughter'

Gilbert and Gubar

Clarissa is 'a kind of queen who…regenerates the post-war world'

Ronchetti

Clarissa is a 'recessed homosexual victimised by patriachal culture'

Lee

'Woolf's fascinated dislike of the world…in which powerful men talk a great deal of nonsense and the woman's place is decorative'

Zwedling

A woman is 'a laminated personality’

Coote

'traditional systems of religious belief were undergoing considerable scrutiny’

Groover

'Clarissa's private retreat is a way of exercising freedom and power in the face of constraining circumstances'

Mitchell

women must 'have as domestic a life as possible'

Whitworth

'The danger of solitary work may be seen as conceit to develop insanity'

Harrison

'sally's story ends in marriage rather than death, the result is still a form of loss and diminishment's'

Schroder

'through the figure of the female, political and patriarchal hegemony is overthrown'

Gourd - dislike for septimes

‘Septimus is an uncomfortable reminder of the war that people would rather forget’

Gourd - power of C and S

‘most instinctively able to appreciate the interconnected nature of things’ through ‘isolation'‘

Sutherland and Hislop

‘what proportion and conversion really amount to is coercion’

Zwedling - class mingling

‘her integration is horizontal’

Carey - threat to Clarissa

Kilman ‘is the counterpart of the doctors…they are after Septimus’ soul; she is after Clarissa’s’

Fulton

‘Miss Kilman searches for human connection in a world which has rejected her’

Abel - Rich lesbian continuum

Love for sally is ‘equivalent in absoluteness to a daughter’s earliest bond with her mother’