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Woolf's MRS DALLOWAY.(Virginia Woolf)(Critical Essay)

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From: The Explicator
Date: 20010101
Author:HOFF, MOLLY

Much of the comic effect of Mrs Dalloway is costumed in the see-through rags of pre-existing literature. The understated Attic comedies of Aristophanes are prominently situated in this lapful of odds and ends as a device to outwit or chasten various characters with ridicule. Fragmentation suggests that some assembly will be required.

For example, the high noon encounter between Clarissa Dalloway and her husband Richard concludes with the refabrication of a scene from Aristophanes' Lysistrata, a staple in Women's Studies. The pacifist sex-strike by the women of Athens is ...

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