Is Woolf's Treatment Of Mental Illness In Mrs Dalloway A Realist

One keeps turning to the point that Woolf is a realist; the new method is to represent the real world as it is perceived in a culture which is a state of flux following the Great War. Woolf’s motive in writing this novel wasn’t just to present to us the confined life of a high-society housewife, or to explore homosexuality or feminism, but to take the reader on a psychological journey that takes postmodernism and realism to a new level which hadn’t been portrayed in Victorian novels. She helped to pioneer the writing style known as stream of consciousness, and this technique is present in the text of Mrs. Dalloway. This technique is characterized by the thoughts of the main character and the dialogue taking place weaving seamlessly together to give the narrative a dream-like quality. Woolf implements several techniques in order to achieve this goal, including long, …show more content…
Woolf did not hesitate to publicly criticize the treatment of mental illnesses in post-war London. In Mrs. Dalloway, Woolf uses Septimus’ character to show medical professionals who dismissed or ignored the speaking the outcries of mentally ill and shell shocked patients. This was Woolf’s way of publicly speaking about the treatment of the mentally ill in London during this time. Joan Bennett has pointed out : “within the book there is a poetic pattern, probing to that deeper level at which the mind apprehends timeless values, as well as the prose pattern wherein the reader is given a picture of the modern world with its destructive forces of class struggle, economic insecurity and war.