THE EXPERIENCE OF LIFE IN LONDON THROUGH LITERARY NARRATIVE IN VIRGINIA WOOLF’S MRS DALLOWAY

Year 2018, Volume: 3 Issue: 2, 38 - 45, 01.12.2018

Salome Kolo Zeynep Tuna Ultav

Abstract

This study aims to establish the relationship between literature and the urban environment of London in terms of the role the city plays the human mind. In this respect, it aims to answer the following questions, using Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway, published in 1925, as the main textual source: How is literature as a narrative tool used to create connections between the urban environment and urban events, and how does the city serve as a means of exploring and integrating various areas of experience? In her approach to narrative, Virginia Woolf considered humanistic details and their relationship with everyday life and urban experience. In Mrs Dalloway, Woolf examines the physical description of London that defines the class and gender of the city’s inhabitants, and also distinguishes between past and present events. By following the journeys of the protagonist and other characters around London, the reader gets a sense of their every thought. This paper offers literary clues to the experience derived from London based on the story’s main observers Clarissa and Peter Walsh . It also provides descriptions of Woolf’s narratives of the urban context of London after the First World War, giving the reader a glimpse of the city at the time. Since awareness of the city as a complete and living entity did much to shape social life, one of the principal lines of analysis is the evolution of an urban self-consciousness and its influence on the development and experience of London. As such, emotional responses to its form and content are possible, and these play a fundamental role in the shaping of urban experience

Keywords

literature, urban experience, flâneur, Virginia Woolf, Mrs Dalloway, London

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