Mrs Dalloway critic quotes

Woolf

'In or about December 1910, human character changed'

Woolf

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

Woolf

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

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

Carey

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

Rose

Clarissa's 'preference for Richard over Peter is structure as a clear-cut opposition between stability and adventure'

Rose

'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

'Elizabeth's imaginative venture…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'

Meisel

'under the rubric 'Clarissa'… her memories of Bourton, her relationship with Peter Walsh, her sexual fascination with other women and…under 'Mrs Dalloway' her marriage to Richard, her daughter Elizabeth, her role of hostess.'

Zwedling

A woman is an 'essentially a laminated personality…she has both conformist and rebellious sides'

Wharton-Smith

The car 'symbolises a faceless power…and the blind obedience indicative of those who uphold certain imperial values

Coote

'traditional systems of religious belief were undergoing considerable scrutiny…no longer could European faith, be seen as unique or even necessarily useful revelation'

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'