Rhetorical Analysis Essay: Mrs. Dalloway

Tian Hang
Professor Amanda
Writing 39B
7 August 2014
Rhetorical Analysis Essay
Mrs. Dollaway provides readers with one of the significant books for those seeking to understand both literature and the history of the world war. Mrs. Dollaway provides exciting literary allusions that drive readers through history, language and other linguistics devices. In this novel, Woolf explores the conventions of realism. The novel captures realism through the world war and the effects of the war on the society. In addressing these issues, Virginia Woolf uses different exciting characters.
Above all, the main focus for Virginia Woolf in this novel is to show other novelists how to write “good” novels that reflect the true life of human beings in the society. Although there were many different writers before Woolf, most of them never wrote about realism. For the few that wrote about realism, they wrote it differently using humor and exaggerations. During this period of writing this novel, many writers had been engaged in a debate about realism. Some argued that in writing about realism, a good novel is one that is interesting to the reader, while others argued that a “good essay” should have at least one major theme that addresses challenges facing people in the society (Bennet, 7). Most of the novelist put more emphasizes on the choice of characters that any other writing device. However, Virginia Woolf had a different opinion. Although she liked the aspects of the description and psychological analysis in writing, she hated whirls of obscenity that was present in many stories. She believed in fluidification of a realistic structure and humanization of characters in her novels. She believed in creating characters whose inner life was easy to penetrate.
In this novel for instance, she creates characters whose outside look is responsible for concealment of their inner characters. She also expresses continuity of the individual characters. Through this novel Woolf explains that although the choice of character is important in writing any novel, it is important for any writer to understand the context in which these characters live. From the choices of characters, the readers can connect to various themes in the book.
Woolf builds his convections of realism through tunneling the experiences of her characters. This helped change the kind of books she was writing through building a unique philosophy of writing. She develops a philosophy of “modern novel” that she goes ahead to write in a fictitious manner. In this novel, she explores the inner life of most of her characters in a great depth. From the introduction, we are introduced into the life of Clarissa and her thoughts. She makes Clarissa a primary point of view. She represents her characters’ thoughts as a connection that moves rapidly through her joy. In creating realism, Woolf writes what she perceives as an impression of the minds gathering. Through these impressions and use of rush images, Woolf focuses on the vivid life. She goes beyond the ordinary style of writing and gets into life itself. She believes that trough meaning of writing resides not form the exterior characters or interior, but through interaction of the two characters.
In writing this novel, Woolf had the intentions of revealing to the reader various events that occurred during the world war and the postwar period of the 19th century. There, she chose to use characters conversations and use their simple language in the conversations in order to make a “good novel." The 19th century was faced with many challenges. War was one of the major catastrophes of the 19th century. The 19th century was also the onset of the industrial revolution. The industrial revolution led to various social issues including the introduction of social classes.
In order to bring these themes together and develop a free-flowing plot, the writer chose to use Clarissa as one of the main characters to reveal all this events through her conversations. Through this character, and other supporting character, the major ideas and themes of the novel are revealed to the reader in a systematic manner (Klenotic 51). Among the ideas embroiled in this novel is the argument about the responsibilities of novelist in the 19th century. Like in her other essay “Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Brown” Virginia Woolf observes that during the 19th century “human character changed”. As the characters engage in their conversations, we can see the truth behind this statement. Therefore since human character has changed, the novelist ideas must also change to present a true picture in the society. The ideas from “Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Brown” are widely expounded in this novel as a writing of sensibility. In this novel Woolf seems to continue the argument that “So if you allow me, instead of analyzing and abstracting, I will tell you a simple story which, however pointless, has the merit of being true ….” (Woolf, 1924 pg. 6“Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Brown”) . Woolf emphasizes on the need to write true stories that readers can easily understand and reflect in their own life.
Woolf plays with the novel’s proportions through the characters of Septimus and use of think tools and phrases. Septimus is a mentally ill ...