2。Literature Review

Mrs。 Dalloway is recognized as a breakthrough in literature。 About the novel, scholars study it from different angles。 Most essayists start out here from the artistic technique and then analyze the exquisite technique which is known as stream of consciousness。 Foreign scholars like Cunningham study it so as to speak highly of Virginia Woolf and her classic novel Mrs。 Dalloway。 He wrote The Hour not only to have a pity on those women who were suppressed by the society which was mainly controlled by men but also to present the point of view towards the relationship between men and women that they should live together in peace rather than struggle with each other。 Marlies de Vos, tries to illustrate the complex relationship between Virginia Woolf's Mrs Dalloway and Michael Cunningham's The Hours by focusing on how time is used in both novels。 What’s more, it explores the role of time in Modernism and attempts to discover how the techniques used in Modernism apply to both Mrs Dalloway and The Hours and how they get in touch with the novels。 Chinese scholars, like Li Wei and Zhao Juan, study it from the eco-feminist perspective to explore the close connection between women and nature。 Hu Xinmei explores the damage to humans especially women caused by the war。 Shen Dan analyzes this novel from the postcolonial perspective so as to give a new angle of reading Mrs。 Dalloway, which she thinks not only reveals the British Empire’s oppression on its colonies but also predicts the disillusionment with the empire。 So, we can obviously find that studying Mrs。 Dalloway can help us bring out the deep meaning of the novel。 

3。 A Brief Introduction of Feminism

Feminism, which is arisen from the conflict between the patriarchy and the inpidual trend of the society, can be defined as a movement that seeks to enhance the status of women。 It not only demands that women should be treated as autonomous subjects, and not as passive objects but also seeks to realize equality between men and women from the economic, social, moral, and political field。 We pided the society into two parts: the private and public world。 The private world implied that women should stay at home and were forbidden to work or learn。 If we consider Woolf ’s work in the context of feminist politics, we find that one of the most important contributions to feminist thought is itself directly concerned with context: A room of One’s Own (1929) puts the case for the development of private and public contexts conductive to the flourishing of women’s writing。 In Woolf’s key feminist essay ‘Professions for Women’ (1931), a paper she read to the National Society for Women’s service, Woolf insists on the writer’s necessary suppression of a traditional submissive。 A room of one’s own, which is undoubtedly seen as Woolf’s most important contribution to literary criticism and theory, draws a lot of debates on feminism。

Female consciousness, which is different from feminist consciousness, is a recognition of what a particular class, culture, and historical period expect from women。 It not only creats a sense of rights and obligations that provides motive force for actions different from those feminist theory generally try to explain but also centers upon the rights of gender, social concerns and survival。

Virginia Woolf, who is known as an excellent English novelist and important precursor of modern feminism literary criticism of the twentieth century, is famous for her unique female consciousness which makes her differ from the traditional female consciousness and is out of the ordinary。 Reviewing female literary history, Woolf finds that the reason why hundreds of women began to make translations or write novels is to make a living or support their families。 It is the fact that women could make money by means of writing rather than rely on men absolutely。 But as we all know, women’s social status was extremely inferior in history not only because the pressure of livelihood forced them to lose the freedom of thinking and studying but also the inferior social position forced them to lose the chance of receiving formal education。 At that time, men believed that the only place what women should stay was home and they should be educated to become ‘the Angles in the House’。 Many writers made great contributions for women to have their own language and express their own feelings freely。 Woolf puts forward an idea that what a woman needs to do is to have economic capability and her own room if she wants to write fiction。 (Woolf 506) But by analyzing the contemporary conditions of women’s writing and discussing the outer conditions and inner state of ideal women’s writing, she finds that women don’t have proper writing atmosphere。 Up to the early nineteenth century, only a single room can be offered for women in the middle-class family。 There were no separate space for women writers for writing。 So as to complete their writings, they should stay in the sitting room and their train of thoughts was interrupted time and again。 Everything should be noticed carefully during the process of writing。 Their writing abilities were limited by the narrow life experience and most of them never went to another place for travelling。 So the themes of their writings only related to the domestic affairs。文献综述