Cultural Disenchantment in a Postwar Climate Illustrated...

One of the principal themes in Virginia Woolf’s novel Mrs. Dalloway is the English people’s collective loss of confidence in the state of the British Empire after the First World War. Set in London in the June of 1923, the novel opens at the close of a global war that lasted only four years but cost the United Kingdom more than 100,000 lives and permanently shifted the political boundaries and social world order of its people. Each of the novel’s many characters represent a different aspect of the English citizens’ disenchantment with established, presupposed cultural values and worldview brought about by the unexpected lack of glory in victory or dignity in the dead and wounded multitudes. The world Woolf creates in Mrs. Dalloway is†¦show more content†¦The frequent references to Big Ben, the houses of Parliament, London, the Prime Minister, and the Queen of England within Clarissa’s stream of consciousness connect the reader, through i conic images of England in the height of its bureaucratic and social greatness, to her world unsullied by the grit and horror of war. The Queen, who to many became a symbol of an outdated political class system and a dying monarchy, is still to Clarissa a figure of â€Å"the majesty of England, of the enduring symbol of the state† (Woolf, 16). Clarissa’s struggle with self-realization and retrospection correspond closely with England’s own eroding national identity, and her grand party is the culmination of decades’ worth of wilted aspirations and undelivered promises. Formerly the greatest empire in the world with colonies on every continent, a flourishing intercontinental economy, and a reputation for being invulnerable on land and sea, England saw horrific losses in resources as well as and cultural integrity on the field of battle. It is both a difficult and necessary struggle for Clarissa in coming to terms with her country’s failures; she is forced to reevaluate her life and place in an England that can be enthrallingly beautiful while propagating unprecedented death and devastation on its own soil. The death of Septimus Smith, a