1. Read the extract.

1. While reading, underline all the verbs that introduce Mrs Dalloway’s actions and thoughts.

2. Mark at the side of the text a third person narrator is used and where interior monologue is used.

1. Focus on characterisation.

   1. Say which aspects of her personality Clarissa considers negative and which positive.

Clarissa considers negative her knowledge, because she knows nothing, but she considers positive her instinct, because she is able to know people.

1. What is her attitude to the past and the present?

She loved and loves going towards Bond Street between people and shops.

1. What contradictory aspects in her personality come out of this extract?

She says to love her present, but at the same time she hates it, because she is unhappiness. Really she would hide herself behind beauty, dresses and so on.

1. What are her feelings towards death? How is the quotation from Shakespeare that she reads in the book connected to her feelings?

She thinks that death should resolve her problems, but she is not sure. The quotation is connected to Clarissa, because she is afraid by that is around her and by her life and she hopes to find a solution.

1. Consider narrative technique and language.

   1. Focus on interior monologue. Virginia Woolf’s interior monologue is very complex. It is usually conveyed though one of the techniques listed below which often blend into one another. Find at least one example of each.

      • Free indirect thought

Her only gift was knowing people almost by instinct

• Third person narrator from inside the character’s point of view

She felt very young; at the same time unspeakably aged

• Free direct thought

I am this, I am that

• Direct questions with verb tense in indirect form

Did it matter then she asked herself, walking towards Bond Street

1. Find examples of simile and repetitions and say what function they fulfil.

Simile being laid out like a mist and repetitions very, very – she would not say…she would not say – must…must – did…did underline Clarissa’s feelings of fear and suffering and anguish.

The narrator is a third person omniscient narrator, but there is also the eclipse of the narrator, because he enters into the mind of the character adopting the interior monologue through free indirect style and direct style.

Walking towards Bond Street Clarissa thinks about her life and she is conscious to be ignorant, because she Knows nothing. She does not read, does not know language history…but she thinks her instinct positive, because she is able to know people. Besides there are contradictory aspects in her personality. Because she is happy to be along Bond Street between people and shops, but at the same time she is unhappiness. As a matter of fact she hates them, because she suffers internally and hides herself by them with beauty, dresses and so on. In addition she probably considers death as a solution for her suffering.

Besides Virginia Woolf created a very complex monologue, because she blends different narrative techniques: the free indirect style, the third person narrator from inside the character’s point of view, the free direct style and the direct questions with verb tense in indirect form. The first is when the feelings of one character are expresses in the third person, for example Her only gift was knowing people almost by instinct, while the free direct style is a direct speech without inverted commas for example I am this, I am that.

At the end there are similes for example laid out like a mist and repetitions which underline Clarissa’s feelings of fear and suffering and anguish for example very, very – she would not say…she would not say – must…must – did…did.