Wandering Souls in London: Urban Travel and Self-Identity in Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway
Abstract
Mrs. Dalloway is Virginia Woolf’s most representative modernist novel. Centered on a single day in Clarissa Dalloway’s life as she prepares for a party, the novel presents women’s self-identity and Identity exploration through depictions of urban landscapes of iconic London locations such as Fleet Street, as well as shifts in perspective among different characters including Clarissa, Septimus Warren Smith, and Peter Walsh. Meanwhile, the extensive interweaving of memories and reality in the work embodies the fluidity of the characters’ identity consciousness. Taking Henri Lefebvre’s “Spatial Theory” as its theoretical framework, this paper explores the interactive relationship between the flow of urban space and the flow of identity consciousness in Mrs. Dalloway, analyzes the pressures and contradictions faced by women in different space, and reveals the multiple possibilities of urban travel in identity exploration. The research aims to demonstrate that urban travel is not merely a physical movement across space, but more importantly, a profound reflection on an individual’s social role and gender identity. It is hoped that this paper will enrich current academic research on travel literature in the literary field and provide valuable references for it.
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