LGBT Themes in Mrs. Dalloway and Their Significance

The character of Clarissa Dalloway is, in many ways, a reflection of the oppressive patriarchy of the time in which both her and her creator, Virginia Woolf, existed. In particular, her feelings towards women and men, and how she interacts with each gender, indicate a great deal about sexuality in the Victorian age.

Clarissa has followed a standard upperclass Victorian woman path, as Peter points out to her many times- while not the wife of a prime minister, she is close. She is defined as being Mrs. Richard Dalloway, and her days consistent of planning and attending parties. Clarissa exists inside of a narrow and well-defined mold, and has for her entire life. Her search for a husband can be interpreted as a part of this path, as part of the pattern that has made up not only her life and that of all women in Victorian England.

However, it is clear that, while content, she is not satisfied. There something is lacking in her relationships with men; discussions of marriage revolve around social class, around respectability, rather than love. This exclusion of any real emotional attachment is especially sharp when she discusses her feelings for women- and, in particular, her feelings about Sally Seton. These emotions are far sharper, more physical, driven not by a sense of duty but by genuine passion. Most notably, she refers to Sally kissing her as "the most exquisite moment of my life". To me, her feelings towards men clearly resemble compulsory heterosexuality- the obligation upon women to feel love for and marry exclusively men- while her feelings towards women are, simply put, love.

Because of Clarissa’s definite romantic interest in women and lack thereof for men, I believe that, in the modern day, she would have identified as gay.

Given that Virginia Woolf herself maintained a longterm lesbian affair with fellow writer Vita Sackville-West, it is certainly within the realm of possibility that she used the character of Clarissa Dalloway to express things that otherwise would’ve been taboo. Due to the extreme homophobia of the era, the mere inclusion of these themes was radical for the time- a sharp contrast from the otherwise passive and standard Victorian woman that is Clarissa Dalloway. In this way, her character is complicated; we see her as someone who, despite her best efforts, will never be able to fully live the life that has been laid out for her. This informs our ideas of her later in the book and leaves us wondering if it was not the choices she made, but the social attitudes of the time that prevented her from reaching satisfaction with her life.