Characterization in Jacob’s Room and Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf :A comparative analysis of Jacob Flanders in Jacob’s Room and Clarissa Dalloway in Mrs Dalloway.

Abstract

This thesis takes a look at how Virginia Woolf uses her writing-style to build up characters in two different books. Woolf is famous for her use of the Stream of Consciousness-technique in several of her works, and the works chosen for this analysis is Jacob’s Room from 1922and Mrs Dalloway from 1925, two consecutively publishedworks in her bibliography. That specific pairing for analysis works well for several reasons. Many people have analyzed Virginia Woolf, but fewpeople have compared these two novels. Since they are published consecutively, it gives us a chance to see Woolf’s development from the first to the second book. The most important reasonis the great contrasts between how the main character is presented in both works, with one being shaped mostly by external forced and one being shaped by mostly internal forces. By comparing both works, one could tell that even though they are presented differently, they needed some of the same elements to function. Both Jacob Flanders in Jacob’s Room and Clarissa Dalloway in Mrs Dalloway are built up by the use of stream of consciousness, mostly from external forces, but more internally in Mrs Dalloway. Memory plays also an important role in the last novel.