Rhetorical Analysis of Virginia Woolf's novel Mrs. Dalloway

Virginia, a British novelist, editor, and critic Stephen Woolf is regarded as one of England's most dependable authors between the First and Second World Wars. Woolf went down her experimental path after becoming dissatisfied with the novels of the well-known, real, and obvious. Along the way, the author discovered a more intimate, subjective view of life experience, which is mirrored in many of her artistic works. It is also worth noting the influence of popular personalities like Henry James, Marcel Proust, and James Joyce on her work. Mrs. Dalloway can be considered Woolf's one of the most famous and successful novels, which was written in 1922. Any literary text is characterized by the certain features of its compositional and stylistic structure. At the same time, the specificity of the organization and interaction of graphic means of text forms its "face," revealing a leading, dominant trait. The rhetorical analysis of Virginia Woolf's novel Mrs. Dalloway using the aspects of ethos, pathos, and logos, allows the reader to follow the main principles of the text and understand the uniqueness of its stylistic, syntactic and other structures.

Woolf employs the use if ethos to illustrate the credibility of the piece to the audience. The rhetorical appeals in literature function to persuade the audience to agree with the perspectives presented by the author. Ethos is a rhetorical device used in literature to illustrate credibility of a character or the author. The appeal allows the author to illustrate credibility to the target audience (Wilder 25). The popularity of the author makes the entire piece align with the rhetorical appeal of ethos. As stated earlier, the British novelist, critic and essayist Virginia Stephen Woolf is considered one of the most authentic writers of England in the period between the First and the Second World Wars. Her works are quite popular and have been used in the teaching of literature in most academic institutions. Walking along this path, the writer discovered a more internal, subjective interpretation of life experience, which is reflected in all of her creative works. It is also worth mentioning about the impact of such famous people such as Henry James, Marcel Proust, and James Joyce on her work. Mrs. Dalloway can be considered Woolf's one of the most famous and successful novels, which was written in 1922. Therefore, the popularity of the works of the author makes Mrs. Dolloway credible and hence employing the rhetorical appeal of ethos.

Woolf employs the use of pathos to appeal to the emotions of the audience in regards to the characters. The rhetorical appeal of pathos puts into perspective the issue of emotions whereby the author uses content to influence the emotions of the audience. It entails establishing an identity with the audience such the audience empathizes with the characters (Wilder 29). Some of the associated emotions include pity, love, care and fear. In Virginia Woolf's novel Mrs. Dalloway, the rhetorical appeal is clearly illustrated with the struggle of different states of the soul of one person: "All this must go on without her; did she resent it; or did it not become consoling to believe that death ended absolutely?" (Woolf 71). Moreover, these states relate to the specific characters and are explicated as the syntactic and lexical means, such as the expressive word order, numerous repetitions, interjections, fragmentation, inappropriate punctuation and much more: "Food was pleasant; the sun hot, and this killing oneself, how does one set about it, with a table knife, uglily, with floods of blood, – by sucking a gas-pipe?" (Woolf 142). Throughout the novel, Woolf draws the reader's attention to the inner world of her characters, which means that the usual descriptive is not peculiar here. Moreover, "the frame of ascent and descent has a prominent place because it expresses the rising and falling moods of Clarissa's day" (Guth 18). The author does not just describe the world around her, its parts and actions of people – she uses the complex, sometimes abstract symbols with which she conveys the mood and feelings of her characters. By representing multiple perceived worlds or ‘realities’ alongside one another, the novel "breaks with traditional modes of representation and other pre-existing, conventionally ‘realist’ novelistic forms" (Smoley 199). That is why a particular attention should be paid to a space of time in the novel. Only one day can show the whole life. As a result, it can be argued that Woolf has introduced a temporary perspective, which is significantly different from any metrical regularity. This type of time created by the writer may also be called psychological time, "Moments like this are buds on the tree of life. Flowers of darkness they are" (Woolf 88). In other words, the time of the novel represents something like a flowing river of images and memories. This endless stream of human experience consists of a continuous mix of each other memory elements, doubts, prejudices, and desires. Also, it is also necessary to take into consideration the fact that the novel has the unity of time, place and action, which also affects the perception of what is happening.

Woolf employs the use of logos to justify the experiences of the characters in regards to the setting of the story. The rhetorical appeal of logos puts into perspective the issue of facts whereby the author uses certain facts to support an argument or opinion. It entails a claim being followed by proof such that the audience can view the perspective of an author (Wilder 31). Woolf employs the use of Logos in describing the issue of disillusionment with the British Empire. Wool asserts;

“Something so trifling in single instances that no mathematical instrument, though capable of transmitting shocks in China, could register the vibration; yet in its fulness rather formidable and in its common appeal emotional; for in all the hat shops and tailors’ shops strangers looked at each other and thought of the dead; of the flag; of Empire” (Woolf 109).

Mrs. Dolloway takes place in 1923 when the ancient British Empire is in its final stages of leadership in addition to the disintegration of its values. Septimus, Clarissa and Peter and other English citizens are saddened with the downfall of the empire such that they align the fall with their individual failures. The individuals that support the English tradition are the old people; people such as Lady Bruton and Aunt Helena. Aunt Helena is perceived to almost becoming an artifact. Richard, on the other hand, plans to put down the history of the Bruton's that were perceived to be the empire’s great military army when looking forward to the disintegration of the rule of the Conservative Party. The disintegration of the social order leaves the empire on weak spots.

Also, the novel does not contain rising action and interchanges, major or minor action, and as a result, the sequence is lost. Most of the actions are devoid of the ordinary logic, the causal structure. The smallest details, happy or sad memories that arise by association slide over one another; they are fixed by the author and define the content of the book. Therefore, people trying to interpret skywriting in Mrs. Dalloway becomes "a model of how “Virginia Woolf’s disaffection from the heavily bonded forms of English society often expresses itself paradoxically . . . As affection and play.”" (Fernald 26). In her novel, Woolf uses the third-person narration, which can also be called neutral. It focuses primarily on account of the author's thoughts and feelings of the characters. This allows the author to introduce the internal monologs, public confession, and excerpts from diaries, letters, dreams, visions, and so forth. Woolf transfers the feelings, emotions, and moods through the creation of internal monologs. This occurs mainly via the internal construction features of the speech. A "stream of consciousness" can be considered one of a kind of internal monologue, which is used in the novel Mrs. Dalloway: "Her voice, her laugh, her dress (something floating, white, crimson), her spirit, her adventurousness; […]; she startled a hen; she laughed; she sang" (Woolf 116). Thus, the text analysis allows seeing the way the story, which is in the first person, often turns into an internal monolog. It seems to "endorse the idea of a private consciousness" which was free of the constraints and conventions of a "mechanized, regimented mass society" (Whitworth 121). The novel's text, its style and methods of presentation point to its high complexity. From this it follows that the author counted on a mature, thinking audience. The complexity of this novel creates difficulties for its holistic perception. Also, the reader should understand that Woolf's novel was quit experimental for its time. Woolf passes the narrative initiative to the various persons, whose points of view become the leading narrative at the certain moments: "As we are a doomed race, chained to a sinking ship, as the whole thing is a bad joke, let us, at any rate, do our part" (Woolf 129).

The language of the novel is close to the poetry because of its rhythm, which is felt in the compositional, semantic, syntactic and lexical levels: "It was awful, he cried, awful, awful! Still, the sun was hot. Still, one got over things. Still, life had a way of adding day to day" (Woolf 118). The abundance of metaphors and vivid images, symbols fascinates the reader. In this work, Virginia Woolf attempted to break down the barrier between the reader and the characters thought the depiction of their inner world more fully through the associative flow of thoughts. The very text of the novel can be called a verbal painting. Characteristically, "reviewers contrasted the sordid, base, or a dirty word of the obscene writer against ‘higher,' more beautiful and spiritual things" (Whitworth 91). The novel's text is very poetic and original. Virginia Woolf rarely took into account the traditional, classical dichotomy between the reason and emotion. The novelty of the product consisted in that transfer of the powers of the text creation to the reader. The psychological subtext in the novel Mrs. Dalloway is a statement of the facts that are compressed to hint, in which lack of information is offset by the concentration of latent expressivity: "For the young people could not talk. And why should they? Shout, embrace, swing, be up at dawn..." (Woolf 214). The associations, which can be represented by the heard stories or memories, often spontaneously arise in the minds of the characters of the novel. Particular attention should be paid to the use of parenthesis, which plays a crucial role in shaping the stream of consciousness. Woolf's use of stream-of-consciousness and her imagistic style throughout the novel serve as "a foil for the deft self-fiction that is erected under cover of self-awareness and deflect from a realization that Clarissa's images" (Guth 23). Also, the parentheses of the novel contribute to the process of creating dialogues; they dramatize the narrative and make comments on the characters' habits and interests. The parentheses that comment on the content of a gesture or a look of any character are crucial here. Such parentheses make it clear what the mind can hide behind a gesture or a glance: "But the clock went on striking, four, five, six and Mrs. Filmer waving her apron (they would not bring the body in here, would they?) Seemed part of that garden; or a flag" (Woolf 190).

As stated earlier, the rhetorical analysis of Virginia Woolf's novel Mrs. Dalloway using the aspects of ethos, pathos, and logos, allows the reader to follow the main principles of the text and understand the uniqueness of its stylistic, syntactic and other structures. Virginia Woolf's novel Mrs. Dalloway can be considered the most interesting and complex modernist novels. In the novel, the juxtaposition and struggle become the main stylistic principles. This struggle takes place in the minds of the core characters, but at the same time, the reader can capture every feeling, gesture or emotion hidden from the eyes. The author uses the third and first-person narrative, which soon turns into a stream of consciousness. Woolf uses the parentheses in the very process of simulating the flow of consciousness of her characters to point to the most intimate details of the characters' lives. The novel was probably intended for a mature, thinking audience, and was some complicated psychological experiment.



































Works Cited

Fernald, Anne E. Virginia Woolf: Feminism and the Reader. Palgrave Macmillan, 2006. ProQuest ebrary, site.ebrary.com.proxy.chamberlain.edu:8080/lib/chamberlain/reader.action?docID=10158081. Accessed 30 January 2017.

Gay, Jane de. Virginia Woolf's Novels and the Literary Past. Edinburgh University Press, 2007. ProQuest ebrary, site.ebrary.com.proxy.chamberlain.edu:8080/lib/chamberlain/reader.action?docID=10156364. Accessed 30 January 2017.

Guth, Deborah. "'What A Lark! What A Plunge!': Fiction As Self-Evasion In Mrs Dalloway." Modern Language Review vol. 84, no. 1, 1989: 18-25. Academic Search Complete, web.a.ebscohost.com.proxy.chamberlain.edu:8080/ehost/detail/detail?sid=c9e26b80-31fe-4e74-960a-5d67ce2acadd%40sessionmgr4008&vid=0&hid=4204&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ%3d%3d#db=a9h&AN=17589498. Accessed 30 January 2017.

Smoley, Christine. "Mrs Dalloway's Dialogic Discourse And The Function Of The Written Fragment." Transcultural Studies: A Series In Interdisciplinary Research vol. 11, no. 2, 2015: 199-215. SocINDEX with Full Text, web.a.ebscohost.com.proxy.chamberlain.edu:8080/ehost/detail/detail?sid=9d92a87f-c3cb-4bfd-a4bf-ff01c17bd948%40sessionmgr4007&vid=0&hid=4204&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ%3d%3d#AN=115875473&db=sih. Accessed 30 January 2017.

Whitworth, Michael. Oxford World's Classics: Virginia Woolf: Authors in Context. OUP Oxford, 2005. ProQuest ebrary, site.ebrary.com.proxy.chamberlain.edu:8080/lib/chamberlain/reader.action?docID=10271505. Accessed 30 January 2017.

Wilder, Laura. Rhetorical Strategies And Genre Conventions In Literary Studies. 1st ed. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2012. Print.

Woolf, Virginia. Oxford Worlds Classics: Mrs Dalloway. Oxford Paperbacks, 2014. ProQuest ebrary, site.ebrary.com.proxy.chamberlain.edu:8080/lib/chamberlain/reader.action?docID=10469433. Accessed 30 January 2017.

























Self –Reflection

The thesis of the basic argument of the rhetorical analysis is: “the rhetorical analysis of Virginia Woolf's novel Mrs. Dalloway using the aspects of ethos, pathos and logos, allows the reader to follow the main principles of the text and understand the uniqueness of its stylistic, syntactic and other structures’. It gets a rating of 10/10 as it gives an adequate summary of the entire analysis. The focus of the essay is to analyze the use of rhetorical appeals and other significant stylistic devices that contribute to the good structure of the piece. The significance of the rhetoric appeals is to persuade the audience or rather allow the audience to empathize with the views of the author. Woolf takes the audience to the nature of the British Empire in addition to its fall. It can be perceived that the basic argument of the essay is the effect of the rhetorical appeals in the structure of the text.

The topic sentence used in the second paragraph of the analysis focuses on the aspects of ethos. It receives a rating of 10/10 as it identifies what ethos is, and its effect when used by the author. An example of ethos is also used to back up its use in the story. From a general perspective, ethos is used in literature to illustrate credibility of a character or the author such that there is trust between the author and the audience. In our case, Woolf is a well-known writer and hence justifying the credibility of her piece when employed in the field of literature. In other words, the audience can easily go for any of her work because of credibility. The topic sentence of the sentence paragraph is “Woolf employs the use of pathos in order to appeal to the emotions of the audience in regards to the characters”. It receives a rating of 10/10 as it identifies what pathos is, and its effect when used by the author. The analysis then indicates the use of the appeal which is to illustrate the struggle of different states of the soul of one person. A good example is the assertion "All this must go on without her; did she resent it; or did it not become consoling to believe that death ended absolutely?" (Woolf 71). Several quotes have been incorporated to show the use of the appeal in the story such that the author uses content to influence the emotions of the audience. Another example is the assertion "Moments like this are buds on the tree of life. Flowers of darkness they are" (Woolf 88) to illustrate the mood of the characters. In other words, the analysis of the pathos appeal is blatant in demonstrating its significance in the story.

The topic sentence used in the third paragraph of the analysis focuses on the aspects of logos. It receives a rating of 10/10 as it identifies what logos is, and its effect when used by the author. Logos focuses on facts whereby claims are supported by evidence. The analysis indicates the use of the appeal whereby the author uses the facets such as the fall of the British Empire and the Conservative Party to show the impact that the disintegration had on the English people. A quote is also incorporated in the analysis to support the given view.

The topic sentence used in the fourth paragraph puts into perspective other factors that influence the structure of the story. It states, “In addition, the novel does not contain rising action and interchanges, major or minor action, and as a result, the sequence is lost”. The analysis puts into perspective the use of third person narration, and internal monologue for the purpose of connecting with the audience. Therefore, the paragraph receives a rating of 10/10 as it gives a reflection on the structure of the essay in regards to the rhetorical appeal of the whole piece.

The quotes are integrated using colons that separate the quotes from the perspectives of the writer. The quotes are integrated with their explanations either before or after and hence adequately incorporated in the essay. A good example of the most persuasive quote is: "All this must go on without her; did she resent it; or did it not become consoling to believe that death ended absolutely?" (Woolf 71) to illustrate the personal struggle of individuals. A good example of the least persuasive quote is the statement: Such parentheses make it clear what the mind can hide behind a gesture or a glance: "But the clock went on striking, four, five, six and Mrs. Filmer waving her apron (they would not bring the body in here, would they?) seemed part of that garden; or a flag" (Woolf 190).

In regards to transitions, the analysis follows the order laid out in the thesis statement and hence allowing the flow of ideas. From a personal perspective, the analysis is quite comprehensive and informative as it puts into perspective the use of rhetorical appeals by Woolf in Mrs. Dalloway. The analysis allows one to understand the context of the novel, the experiences of the characters and the themes projected by the author.