2. Marriage

About this Lecture

Lecture

In this lecture, we explore the theme of marriage in Mrs Dalloway. As with narrative style, the novel departs from Victorian norms; the novel neither culminates in a marriage (like Sense & Sensibility or Jane Eyre) nor does it represent the death of a wife (like Madame Bovary or Anna Karenina). Instead, we see a marriage which is passionless - but also stable, secure, and fulfilling. Many readers of Mrs Dalloway see marriage in the novel presented in an overwhelmingly negative light; in this lecture, it is argued that the novel allows for plenty of positive of aspects of marriage as well.

Course

In this course, Dr Sowon Park (Oxford University) explores two key themes in Virginia Woolf's Mrs Dalloway. In the first module, we look at the narrative style of the novel - arguing that the narrative style in Mrs Dalloway represents a radical departure from the narrative style of the Victorian novel, and allows Woolf to "record the atoms as they fall upon the mind in the order in which they fall". In the second module, we explore the theme of marriage in the novel, suggesting that while many see the portrayal of marriage in the novel as overwhelmingly negative, many of the characters do speak of marriage in a positive light.

Lecturer

Dr Sowon S Park is Lecturer in English at Corpus Christi College, University of Oxford where she teaches Victorian literature, Modern British literature and Literary theory; previously she was Alice Tong Sze Research fellow in English at University of Cambridge and University lecturer in English at Ewha University, Seoul. Her publications include articles on Virginia Woolf; world literature; politics and aesthetics; and British suffrage literature, and she has jointly edited Women’s Suffrage Literature vol 1-6 (Routledge).