SILENCE AS RESISTANCE IN VIRGINIA WOOLF’S MRS. DALLOWAY: A FEMINIST LINGUISTIC APPROACH

Abstract

This paper will look at how Virginia Woolf utilizes silence in Mrs. Dalloway in a feminist approach (language) in that the use of silence actually serves the purpose of resistance to societal standards and patriarchal norms. Woolf uses the silence in her narrative as a strategic approach in breaking gender stereotypes and the balance of power existing in the setup of socio-cultural issues facing the post-World War I England. The paper adopts a feminist approach to discourse analysis to find out how the women characters including Clarissa Dalloway and Septimus Warren Smith adopt silence as their form of agency as both a protection and to react to external factors. Using close reading as a means of analyzing prime moments in the novel, the research demonstrates how the play with sound and silence in the novel by Woolf is a commentary upon the patriarchal systems, especially about the restrictions applied towards the women voices and bodies. The results prove that throughout Mrs. Dalloway the silence is not a passive freedom but rather a space of resistance. This paper will add to feminist theory of literature because it will provide a linguistic analysis of the use of silence as a subversion tool.