On Virginia Woolf's Artistic Treatment Of Time And Focalization In Mrs. Dalloway

Mrs. Dalloway is one of representative novels of stream of consciousness by Virginia Woolf, who was the great novelist and critic in the 20^th century. This novel carries on the plot within a single day and introduces the major characters like Clarissa Dalloway, Septimus Warren Smith and Peter Walsh. The novel reflects the changes of these characters in mind and life. It also gives a vivid description of the British Society after WWI.This thesis analyzes the novel from the angle of the time treatment and focalization. Through the disordered stream of consciousness of the characters and the complicated perspectives, this thesis has rearranged the time sequence and focalization in a clear and ordered way. With the abundant examples, the thesis discusses the technique of time treatment (the interrelationship among temporal order, temporal duration and temporal frequency), the intricate focalizations and how the two help to understand the themes of the novel. In addition, the originality of this thesis relies on the means of diagrams and tables, by which the characters are positioned in time, space and social life under the combined angle of the time treatment and focalization.