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Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway and the Rise of Modernism

In response to new theories of the human mind, early twentieth-century writers developed stream-of-consciousness techniques revealing the thoughts and experiences of characters without the consistent direction of a conventional narrator. We will study Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway (1925) as an influential work in this literary movement termed Modernism. Taking place on one day in post-World War I London, the novel examines the thoughts and responses of Clarissa Dalloway and other characters. The novel invites readers to explore how one ordinary day can embody the whole of an individual's life—its possibilities as well as its disappointments and terrors. With a refrain from Shakespeare's play Cymbeline, the novel urges us to "fear no more" as we live our lives.

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