Mrs Dalloway Symbolism, Imagery & Allegory

The car and the airplane (ahem, aeroplane) that Mrs Dalloway sees toward the beginning of the novel seem to be kind of a big deal. Why is that? Well, in a country so obsessed with tradition and the...

Big Ben is a major London monument, but its role in the novel is complex. It not only suggests tradition, but it also (with its constant gonging) doesn’t let anyone forget about the passage of ti...

Several references to Shakespeare are scattered throughout the novel (check out "Shout-Outs" for more on this). Both Clarissa and Septimus love Shakespeare, and words from Cymbeline haunt them both...

Clarissa’s first action in the story is to buy flowers; as she enters the flower shop, "There were flowers: delphiniums, sweet peas, bunches of lilac; and carnations, masses of carnations […]"...

Virginia Woolf sadly committed suicide by drowning herself. For this reason, it's hard to see the images of water in the novel as anything but grim. But as with Septimus' suicide, bad things don’...