Politics in Mrs Dalloway (1925) with Mark Hussey
‘To criticise the social system’: Politics in Mrs Dalloway (1925)
Woolf wrote in her diary in April 1923 that in the novel she was writing she wanted to ‘criticise the social system, & to show it at work, at its most intense’. This lecture will explore how Woolf set about realising this goal in Mrs Dalloway. What did ‘politics’ mean to her at the time? In what sense is Mrs Dalloway what we would now call a ‘political’ novel?
Leonard Woolf said that his wife was ‘the least political animal to have lived since Aristotle invented the definition’ (Downhill All the Way), but he knew that she was deeply engaged with and attentive to politics as he practised it (as an advisor to the Labour Party, for example). Nevertheless, he would have been surprised to hear her fiction characterised as ‘political’.
Peter Walsh’s observations about Richard Dalloway’s ‘public-spirited, British Empire, tariff-reform, governing-class spirit’ are the most overt approaches to what is traditionally understood as ‘politics’, and, indeed, the political situation in postwar Britain is an important element of Woolf’s novel, as we will see. Beyond that understanding, though, the lecture will explore how Woolf demonstrates in Mrs Dalloway that politics is a system of power relations in which all of its characters are caught, from Clarissa to Septimus, Miss Kilman to Peter, Rezia to Elizabeth.
Live online lecture and seminar with Mark Hussey, retired Professor of Pace University
Sunday 24 August 2025
18.00-20.00 British Summer Time
19.00-21.00 Central European Summer Time
Morning in the Americas
Please check the time for your time zone.
Lecture fees
£33.00 full price
£28.00 students on a low income
£28.00 CAMcard holders
£28.00 Members of the Virginia Woolf Society of Great Britain
Prices include VAT at 20%
‘To criticise the social system’: Politics in Mrs Dalloway (1925)
Woolf wrote in her diary in April 1923 that in the novel she was writing she wanted to ‘criticise the social system, & to show it at work, at its most intense’. This lecture will explore how Woolf set about realising this goal in Mrs Dalloway. What did ‘politics’ mean to her at the time? In what sense is Mrs Dalloway what we would now call a ‘political’ novel?
Leonard Woolf said that his wife was ‘the least political animal to have lived since Aristotle invented the definition’ (Downhill All the Way), but he knew that she was deeply engaged with and attentive to politics as he practised it (as an advisor to the Labour Party, for example). Nevertheless, he would have been surprised to hear her fiction characterised as ‘political’.
Peter Walsh’s observations about Richard Dalloway’s ‘public-spirited, British Empire, tariff-reform, governing-class spirit’ are the most overt approaches to what is traditionally understood as ‘politics’, and, indeed, the political situation in postwar Britain is an important element of Woolf’s novel, as we will see. Beyond that understanding, though, the lecture will explore how Woolf demonstrates in Mrs Dalloway that politics is a system of power relations in which all of its characters are caught, from Clarissa to Septimus, Miss Kilman to Peter, Rezia to Elizabeth.
Live online lecture and seminar with Mark Hussey, retired Professor of Pace University
Sunday 24 August 2025
18.00-20.00 British Summer Time
19.00-21.00 Central European Summer Time
Morning in the Americas
Please check the time for your time zone.
Lecture fees
£33.00 full price
£28.00 students on a low income
£28.00 CAMcard holders
£28.00 Members of the Virginia Woolf Society of Great Britain
Prices include VAT at 20%
‘To criticise the social system’: Politics in Mrs Dalloway (1925)
Woolf wrote in her diary in April 1923 that in the novel she was writing she wanted to ‘criticise the social system, & to show it at work, at its most intense’. This lecture will explore how Woolf set about realising this goal in Mrs Dalloway. What did ‘politics’ mean to her at the time? In what sense is Mrs Dalloway what we would now call a ‘political’ novel?
Leonard Woolf said that his wife was ‘the least political animal to have lived since Aristotle invented the definition’ (Downhill All the Way), but he knew that she was deeply engaged with and attentive to politics as he practised it (as an advisor to the Labour Party, for example). Nevertheless, he would have been surprised to hear her fiction characterised as ‘political’.
Peter Walsh’s observations about Richard Dalloway’s ‘public-spirited, British Empire, tariff-reform, governing-class spirit’ are the most overt approaches to what is traditionally understood as ‘politics’, and, indeed, the political situation in postwar Britain is an important element of Woolf’s novel, as we will see. Beyond that understanding, though, the lecture will explore how Woolf demonstrates in Mrs Dalloway that politics is a system of power relations in which all of its characters are caught, from Clarissa to Septimus, Miss Kilman to Peter, Rezia to Elizabeth.
Live online lecture and seminar with Mark Hussey, retired Professor of Pace University
Sunday 24 August 2025
18.00-20.00 British Summer Time
19.00-21.00 Central European Summer Time
Morning in the Americas
Please check the time for your time zone.
Lecture fees
£33.00 full price
£28.00 students on a low income
£28.00 CAMcard holders
£28.00 Members of the Virginia Woolf Society of Great Britain
Prices include VAT at 20%