Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf is stylistically modern, most notably by being written from the perspective of a female main character. While superficially Mrs. Dalloway appears to be the ideal Victorian housewife, Woolf describes her every passing thought throughout the day, most of which aren’t particularly noble. This challenges the “angel of the house” ideal, which assumes that women must always be thinking virtuous thoughts.
Woolf’s experimental stream of consciousness writing style attempts to precisely capture the way people really think, creating a realistic and relatable character. The plot is also nonlinear. Woolf purposely eschewed traditional literary conventions, expressing frustration with their limitations in her essay “Modern Fiction.”
There is no particular moral of the story that Woolf attempted to convey in the novel, though the ubiquitous modern theme of disillusionment is ever-present. Mrs. Dalloway’s disappointment with her marriage reflects this, as well as the description of an airplane: “The sound of an aeroplane bored ominously into the ears of the crowd. There it was coming over the trees, letting out white smoke from behind, which curled and twisted, actually writing something! Making letters in the sky! Everyone looked up.” Yet a scene that seems so promising ends up simply being an example of modern consumerism, as the airplane writes an advertisement for toffee in the air.
The only traditional aspects of Mrs. Dalloway are superficial, such as her conventional lifestyle. She seems to be only going through the motions, however. Beneath the exterior, Mrs. Dalloway is quirky, skeptical, introspective — far from being a traditional woman.
Sophisticated Innocence 