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Personification
Definition of Satire
Satire is the use of humor, irony, sarcasm, or ridicule to criticize something or someone. Public figures, such as politicians, are often the subject of satire, but satirists can take... read full definition
Satire is the use of humor, irony, sarcasm, or ridicule to criticize something or someone. Public figures, such as politicians, are often the subject of... read full definition
Satire is the use of humor, irony, sarcasm, or ridicule to criticize something or someone. Public figures, such as politicians... read full definition
Section 7
Explanation and Analysis—The Ramrod:
In its satirization of 1920s upper-class British society, Mrs Dalloway frequently focuses on Lady Bruton and highlights her sense of self-importance. Lady Bruton has invited Richard Dalloway and Hugh Whitbread for lunch, but she gets impatient because she wants to stop talking about what she sees as "trifling" matters so that she can get to what she really wants, which is for Hugh to write a letter about emigration to the London Times on her behalf. The narrative uses a metaphor to both show how important the issue of emigration is to Lady Bruton and to poke fun at her obsession with a topic that isn't all that pressing:
She was getting impatient; the whole of her being was setting positively, undeniably [...] upon that subject which engaged her attention, and not merely her attention, but that fibre which was the ramrod of her soul, that essential part of her without which Millicent Bruton would not have been Millicent Bruton; [...]
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Explanation and Analysis—Stuffing and Bunkum:
Mrs Dalloway satirizes the polite, well-mannered ways that upper-class Britons present themselves, poking fun at just how vapid even the most highly respected people can be. For example, when the charming but shallow Hugh Whitbread helps Lady Bruton write a letter about emigration, Richard Dalloway thinks the end result is practically nonsensical, even if it sounds good. But Lady Bruton, who’s supposedly so devoted to the issue, loves the letter, and this suggests that she cares more about the idea of having a cause than actually advancing that cause in an effective way:
Unlock with LitCharts A+[…Hugh] read out ‘how, therefore, we are of opinion that the times are ripe…the superfluous youth of our ever-increasing population…what we owe to the dead…’ which Richard thought all stuffing and bunkum, but no harm in it, of course, and Hugh went on drafting sentiments in alphabetical order of the highest nobility, […] until, finally, he read out the draft of a letter which Lady Bruton felt certain was a masterpiece. Could her own meaning sound like that?
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Explanation and Analysis—Broad and Simple:
Mrs Dalloway satirizes the superficial nature of the British upper class in the 1920s. The novel particularly focuses on privileged and rather vapid characters like Lady Bruton, who is extremely self-important and cares about the way she's perceived more than anything else. Because she wants to be seen as an influential wealthy woman who contributes to society, she has devoted herself to a cause, which is why she invites Hugh Whitbread and Richard Dalloway over to lunch, hoping they'll help her draft a letter to the London Times outlining the importance of her work. But the cause itself isn't, in reality, all that important or noble—Lady Bruton has devoted herself to helping young Britons emigrate to Canada.
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Explanation and Analysis—The Flowering Tree:
After the psychiatrist Sir William Bradshaw insists that Septimus should go by himself to convalesce in the countryside, Lucrezia privately promises her husband that, regardless of what Bradshaw has said, she will come with him. She also refuses, when Septimus asks, to burn the papers containing many of his wild, hallucinatory writings, saying that some of them are actually quite beautiful. Filled, it seems, with appreciation, Septimus then sees her as a beautiful tree:
Unlock with LitCharts A+She was a flowering tree; and through her branches looked out the face of a lawgiver, who had reached a sanctuary where she feared no one; not Holmes; not Bradshaw; a miracle, a triumph, the last and greatest. Staggering he saw her mount the appalling staircase, laden with Holmes and Bradshaw, men who never weighed less than eleven stone six, who sent their wives to Court, men who made ten thousand a year and talked of proportion; [...]
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Section 9
Explanation and Analysis—The Prime Minister:
When the Prime Minister arrives at Clarissa Dalloway's party, he's not nearly as impressive as one might expect him to be. Given how much importance everyone seems to imbue him with, it's ironic that he himself doesn't seem very important at all:
Unlock with LitCharts A+One couldn't laugh at him. He looked so ordinary. You might have stood him behind a counter and bought biscuits — poor chap, all rigged up in gold lace.
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