The “Queerness” of Mrs Dalloway: A Study ...

The “Queerness” of Mrs Dalloway: A Study of Sexual Fluidity and LGBTQ Identities in Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway

Author Name : Sukriti Joshi

ABSTRACT

Even though heterosexual and cis-gender characters have dominated literature, if looking closely, one can find the presence of queer characters in literature of almost any age. Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway is one such piece of literature that openly explores issues like bisexuality, homosexuality, gender fluidity and queer identity through characters like Mrs Dalloway, Septimus Warren Smith, Elizabeth and Miss Kilman. In these characters, Woolf echoes her own experiences of feeling attraction towards the same sex. Woolf's own androgyny is also revealed by her crossing the boundaries of gender in the novel, as she tackles the stream of consciousness of many characters, some of them being men. Woolf appeared to be troubled by her ambiguous sexual orientation, due to which her works often had undertones of queer themes and motifs. Mrs Dalloway is the most important character in the novel that can be seen as a victim of the patriarchal and queerphobic society of her times, due to which, she had to suppress her true sexuality. Septimus Warren Smith, another significant character in the novel, is indeed a gender-fluid person and quite possibly has a queer identity. In the case of Clarissa and Septimus, the use of language by Woolf often suggests the fluidity in their sexuality indicating that they neither fall under the category of being homosexual nor heterosexual, and further showcases that their sexuality remains in a flux. This paper attempts to further explore and understand the existence of sexual fluidity and LGBTQ identities in Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway and highlight the “queerness” present in the novel.

Keywords: Androgyny, Bisexuality, Homosexuality, LGBTQ Identities, Queerness, Sexual Fluidity