The imprisoned angel in the house: an analysis of Virginia Woolf's mrs Dalloway in a dramatistic and feminist perspective

Abstract

In this intimist essay, I rhetorically analyze how patriarchy could be a prison for women in Virginia Woolf’s book Mrs Dalloway in a feminist and dramatistic perspective. In Mrs Dalloway, Woolf demonstrates how women can be kept captive in their own houses and minds by showing the evanescent process of the soul of a middle-aged woman and the correlative erasement of her identity which results in a state of mourning and ideation of death. In order to reveal the strategies Virginia Woolf uses, I analyze the novel in a dramatistic and feminist perspective. Besides, I observe how essential it is to point out what the resources, values, beliefs, and ideologies that can maintain women's soul imprisoned. Lastly, I use Burke’s dramatistic tools of analysis to identify the motive behind the novel written by Virginia Woolf. The relevance of this study is discussing the underlying subjugation of the submissive women by pointing out the tools they might use to free themselves from the confinement that some of them live in.