The Quest For Self In Virginia Woolf’s Mrs.Dalloway

Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway, as one of her masterpieces, has attracted the attention from the critics ever since its publication in1925.With the film adaptation of the novel, The Hours, Mrs. Dalloway the novel and the title character become known to the public. There is a great deal of literature on the novel.The thesis is aimed at analyzing how the characters search for self so as to examine how Woolf tries to find a way out for people who have been trapped in the loss of identity and in the face of spiritual crisis. With the guidance of Freud, Jung, and Bergson’s theory on self, the paper will focus on the characters’ existential state and Clarissa’s quest for self. After a study of the setting, post-war London, we get to know the lasting pain people suffer from after the First World War. And in such an alienated society, it shows a picture of different characters’ existential states. Mrs. Dalloway’s social self is dominant in her life. The perfect hostess’s profound self or true self is hidden deep in her mind and gradually lost. Septimus, the young veteran, suffers from shell shock. His self is suppressed in the postwar society. Peter Walsh, Clarissa’s old suitor, is a solitary traveler all his life. His self is in exile. There are characters like Hugh, Mrs. Bradshaw, and Mrs. Bruton who have no introspective power and whose self is absent. But Clarissa is introspective and becomes self-aware in isolation. Clarissa is superficial, harsh and lacks emotion as Peter thinks, but she is also introspective, sensitive and passionate for life. She is a complex character afflicted with the conflict of her social self and profound self. By recollecting the old days at Bourton, Clarissa presents us the plentitude of her past. And through the death of the tragic young man, who sacrifices his life in order to convey what the center of the life is, Clarissa seems to grab something and gain the strength to live on the rest of her life.Virginia Woolf portrays the alienation and loss of self that modern people face and tries to find a way out for her characters who are trapped in their existential states. Through Septimus, Woolf satirizes the social system which is in the power of people without inner selves and suppresses people like Septimus. The author criticizes the patriarchal society which suppresses the feminine self. To readers, the process of quest for inner self reminds us what life means in the world. It is meaningful to think over the value of existence and finally find the true self in the process of quest for one’s true self. And therefore, the genuine communication will be realized and people at loss will find a way out and live positively in the alienated world.