Essay Database

''When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford.'' --Samuel Johnson In "Mrs. Dalloway", Virginia Woolf uses the setting of the city of London to effectively show the vastly different emotional responses of the characters. The city of London, in June, is the primary location in which three of the novel's characters are placed; although they inhabit the same period of …

…his or her own life experiences. Virginia Woolf uses the city of London with its streets, parks, and sounds as a means of unifying the plot in Mrs. Dalloway by intersecting the lives of Clarissa, Septimus, and Peter throughout the day. As the threads of their lives are woven in and out of a common environment, we see a rich tapestry of life in London from the point of view of these three disparate characters.