Mrs. Dalloway- Critical Women

In class the other day we each discussed things in the novel that interested us. Somewhere along the way we started discussing the interaction between Clarissa, Miss Kilmer, and Elizabeth. I think this relationship between these three women represent the different images of women in the novel. The jealousy, the envy and the interactions reflect the way women of Woolf’s time were learning to adjust to one another. What was most interesting about the different descriptions of the women to me is the way the women are viewed through one another’s eyes, but rarely to we get a description from a man. I think this says something about the social gaze of society. The way Woolf excludes men’s perceptions reflect the way she was trying to get women from being objects and subjects of men’s thoughts to being objects of one another.
 This novel provides the reader with a description of women and their feelings, outside of what men may have thought. As a woman, Woolf is able to provide a description of what women truly feel rather than a description coming from a man. Also, Woolf uses these descriptions to eliminate the myths about women not being able to have minds and thoughts of their own. Instead of presenting a novel about women in similar positions in life, she instead chooses to focus on women and their differences. I think she ironically presents them in strange ways to challenge the ideas that women are supposed to easily transition into their newfound freedom. Instead of showing the adjustment as simple, she instead shows the struggle of a woman trying to make her own place in society. 
 I think the way Woolf chooses to create a male character in her likeness says something about the situation of man. Woolf clearly shows that mental illness weakens a man the same way it does a woman. She takes out the gender of mental illness and instead makes it a challenge of the people. She universalizes disease.