Reading Virginia Woolf: Mrs Dalloway and The Years

In non-fiction texts such as A Room of One’s Own (1929) and Three Guineas (1938), Virginia Woolf voiced her feminist perspectives on women and their role in society. This course will focus upon similar ideas, but as expressed through her fiction. The two texts we will study are Mrs Dalloway (1925) which traces the progress of a society hostess on one day in June 1923 in post-World War I London, and The Years (1937) which traces the progress of three generations of women in the Pargiter family from the late Victorian era to the 1930s. How does Woolf critique the changing position of women in these novels? What is the relationship between her ideas and her chosen form in both texts?

To get the most from this course, you should read the set texts before you come to Cambridge, and expect to re-read them while you are here. In class we will undertake some ‘close reading’ in the Cambridge tradition. This technique helps us to understand in very precise ways how Woolf uses language which indicates the richness and complexity of her writing. We will consider Woolf’s work in its historical context, expanding particularly on her feminist ideas and perspectives. If you have time before you come, you might like to read other work by Woolf (especially A Room of One’s Own and Three Guineas, plus her diaries and the biographies by Hermione Lee, Julia Briggs or Michael Whitworth.