Rethinking privacy and publicity: Reading the spatial reflections of gender through Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway

Abstract

This article deciphers socio-spatial characteristics of the London scene inthe early twentieth century. Analyzing excerpts from Mrs. Dalloway(1925), a novel written by one of the prominent modernist and feministwriters, Virginia Woolf (1882-1941), the literary space analysis aims toascertain how the narrative elucidates the relation between assignedgender roles and spatial practices of the protagonist Clarissa Dalloway.Revealing the abundance of socio-spatial information hidden in literaryfiction, the three-partite spatial analysis that examines Mrs. Dalloway’sliving environment within the contexts of private (domestic) space, publicspace, and ‘internal’ space highlights new layers of textual meaning. Thus,the study exposes the spatial hints of Woolf that guide readers tounderstand the confined social position of a high society lady. Touchingupon controversial issues that nurtured the private-public dichotomy, thestudy broadens the discussion of gendered space, discussing Woolfianspace as a challenge to patriarchal codes. Excerpts examined throughoutthe article reveal that the author's critique on unequal power relationsbetween men and women reveals itself in spatial portrayals in the novel.Therefore, scrutinizing Mrs. Dalloway allows rediscovering,reinvestigating, and rethinking privacy and publicity in the early twentiethcentury through modern fiction.