Question

Virginia Woolf has created many characters other than Miss Mabel with great skill. Write a character sketch of any one of them.

Answer 1

Mrs. Dalloway, a novel by Virginia Woolf, was first published in 1925. Clarissa Dalloway, who has been introduced in this chapter as the woman who hosted the party that Mabel attended, is the protagonist of Mrs. Dalloway. This novel by Woolf also follows the stream of consciousness narrative.

Character Sketch of Mrs. Dalloway
Clarissa Dalloway is a pale and delicate upper-class lady in her fifties. She is a smart, loving, compassionate, and vibrant woman, who likes to host parties and thinks of her parties as a ‘gift’ to the society. As a woman with high social standing, she conducts herself in a way that is expected of her. Though she seems superficial, Clarissa is actually quite thoughtful and appreciates the little joys of life. She is sceptical and full of melancholy as she lives each day being fully aware of death and the darkness that surrounds her life. Married to a politician, Richard Dalloway, she questions whether she made the right choice all those years ago, when she rejected Peter Walsh to marry Richard, so that she could enjoy the perks of the high society, something that Peter could have never offered her. She even thinks about her attraction towards her friend Sally Seton thirty years ago. She lives her life dwelling on the past and thinks about how her decisions have shaped her life. This constant obsession with her history in regards to Peter and Sally overshadows her happy memories. In her youth, she was a lively and free-spirited girl, but with age she has become restrained and conventional. A complicated woman, who treasures her independence and loves her relationships, Clarissa Dalloway is the perfect example of ‘still waters run deep’