Isolation is a unique feeling. Unlike anger or sadness, isolation is not an emotion, but rather, a lack of one. Many people understand this. However, few could articulate it as well as the 20th Century author, Virginia Woolf. Woolf grew up in a time that did not encourage women to pursue academics, but that didn’t stop her from becoming an author — in fact, it encouraged her. She wrote first as a childhood passion, then to cope with depression, and later as a way to push the boundaries of the medium. Yet, above all else, she wrote because of one thing: Tradition.
Woolf deplored repressive traditions. Especially as a woman in the early 20th Century, she was a victim of many oppressive cultural boundaries. For instance — unlike her brothers …show more content…
As a child, she wrote for her own family newspaper, and enjoyed her family’s connections to academics. As a teenager and young adult, she suffered from depression after coping with the loss of her mother, in 1895; her half-sister Stella, in 1987; her father, in 1904. Soon after, she lost the motivation to write. However, after her brother Thoby died in 1906, Woolf used writing as a way to cope. Though she couldn’t go to a university, she was free to study independently when her family moved to Bloomsbury. From there, Woolf went on to explore non traditional writing techniques in the academic Bloomsbury Group, wed Leonard Woolf, and publish experimental authors in the Hogarth Press — which she co-owned. However, this would not last because after her major writing period in the 1930s, Woolf committed suicide by drowning herself in a …show more content…
That is, Woolf’s focus is on how Clarissa relates to each of these characters. In Septimus’ case, it is about how Clarissa relates to his suicide. Initially, Clarissa is upset at Sir William for telling her guests about Septimus. Later, she decides she envies him. Doing Sir William’s treatment would have made Septimus like Clarissa, who lives for the approval of others, and not herself. The point of this all is that Woolf uses the theme of isolation to make the story about Clarissa. More specifically, her thoughts. Woolf uses this to emphasize that Mrs. Dalloway is not just about what Clarissa does, but rather about her as a person,