One of the most exciting aspects of studying English Literature is discovering how texts communicate with each other across time. Authors borrow, transform and challenge ideas from their predecessors, creating intricate webs of intertextual connections.
Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway is a novel that thrives on these connections, weaving together themes from gothic fiction, philosophy, Shakespearean drama and modernist thought (to name just a few!).
In this essay, I explore the theme of “doubling” in Mrs Dalloway. This refers to the way characters, time and even Woolf’s sentence structures seem to mirror, repeat, and fragment upon themselves. It’s something that’s central to the novel, and a great theme to consider if you’re working with Mrs Dalloway for A Level English Literature.
Indeed, Mrs Dalloway presents a world where identity is unstable, time is layered rather than linear, and consciousness itself is deeply interconnected. But Woolf is not alone in this fascination with the double. Writers like Dostoevsky, Shakespeare and Nietzsche also grapple with fractured identities, parallel existences and characters haunted by versions of themselves.
Thinking about literature in this way—seeing how texts speak to each other—opens up fascinating new ways to analyse what you’re reading.
You might already recognise echoes of Mrs Dalloway in other books or plays you’ve studied at GCSE. For instance, how does Woolf’s use of psychological doubling compare to Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde? How does Shakespeare’s exploration of fate in Macbeth or Romeo and Juliet reflect Woolf’s depiction of time? If you’re studying Psychology or Philosophy, how might Freud’s theory of the uncanny help us understand Septimus’ hallucinations?
After reading this essay, consider how you might develop or challenge its ideas. What else do you know that could expand the discussion? Would you emphasise different aspects of Woolf’s writing? Are there other texts you would bring into the conversation?
Literature is never static—your interpretations and insights shape it just as much as the authors who wrote it. So have some fun, and see where you can go!
The Shadow Self: Doubling and Psychological Affinity in Mrs Dalloway
Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway engages deeply with the literary tradition of doubling, both in its psychological affinity between Clarissa Dalloway and Septimus Warren Smith and in its narrative structure, temporal layering and stylistic choices.
Doubling in literature often serves to expose psychological or existential tensions within a character, as seen in the gothic doppelgänger tradition (Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, The Picture of Dorian Gray) and Dostoevsky’s exploration of the fractured self in The Double: “A man possessed of two personalities… one of them frightfully absurd.” Woolf reworks this tradition through modernist experimentation with consciousness, shifting between past and present to create a fractured but interconnected portrait of selfhood. The novel’s representation of doubling functions not just as a motif but as a structural and philosophical principle, revealing the instability of identity, the inescapability of memory, and the coexistence of multiple selves within a single consciousness.
This essay will examine doubling in Mrs Dalloway through (1) the psychological mirroring between Clarissa and Septimus, (2) Woolf’s use of time as a structural doubling device, and (3) her stylistic techniques, particularly semi-colons and free indirect discourse, which blur the boundaries between distinct identities and create echoes across consciousnesses.
1. Psychological Doubling: Clarissa and Septimus as Two Halves of a Whole
In Mrs Dalloway, Septimus Smith functions as Clarissa’s psychic double, embodying the existential despair and alienation she suppresses. Both characters feel acutely the weight of mortality: Clarissa’s constant reflection on death—her fear of its embrace yet simultaneous recognition of its allure—is echoed in Septimus’ suicidal impulse, his conviction that death is both an inevitability and an escape: “He did not want to die. Life was good. The sun was hot. Only human beings—what did they want?” Their shared preoccupation with existence aligns with the doppelgänger motif found in gothic literature, where an individual’s shadow self represents their suppressed desires or fears.
The idea of the double as an alternative self is explored across literature. For instance, in Dostoevsky’s The Double, in which the protagonist Golyadkin is haunted by an alter ego who is both himself and his opposite. The notion that “Golyadkin junior” gradually usurps the original protagonist, leaving him psychologically destabilised, mirrors Septimus’ own descent into madness, as his sense of self collapses under the weight of war trauma. Like Golyadkin, Septimus perceives an external force shaping his reality: “It is I who am blocking the way,” he believes, reflecting a self-fragmentation akin to Dostoevsky’s existential anxieties about identity.
Freud’s concept of the uncanny (Das Unheimliche) is also particularly relevant here. Freud describes the uncanny as “something which ought to have remained hidden but has come to light,” an idea which resonates with how Clarissa represses the darker aspects of herself—her fears about death, isolation, and the futility of her social role—only to have them externalised in Septimus. This psychological mirroring reinforces the instability of the self, a key concern in modernist literature, where identity is often presented as fluid, relational, and contingent upon external forces.
Shakespeare’s Hamlet provides a useful intertextual lens for this doubling. Just as Hamlet and Laertes act as foils, with one hesitating and the other impulsive, Clarissa and Septimus represent two contrasting responses to existential crisis. Hamlet’s soliloquy—“To be, or not to be: that is the question”—echoes in Clarissa’s moments of introspection, as she wonders whether she has truly lived: “She felt very young; at the same time unspeakably aged.” Unlike Septimus, however, she does not act upon these thoughts—reflecting the tension between thought and action.
The shared moment of epiphany between Clarissa and Septimus—where she, upon hearing of his death, feels a strange recognition—suggests that doubling in Mrs Dalloway is not merely a symbolic device but a fundamental reality of human consciousness. Just as Jekyll and Hyde represent the duality of human nature, Clarissa and Septimus embody different responses to existential crisis: one internalised, the other externalised. But both inescapably linked.
2. Doubling Through Time: Psychological Time vs. Mechanical Time
If Clarissa and Septimus represent psychological doubling, then the novel’s treatment of time reflects a structural doubling that reinforces the idea of selfhood as unstable and multilayered. Woolf structures Mrs Dalloway around the interplay of psychological time and mechanical time, using the chiming of Big Ben as an external marker while simultaneously dissolving the boundaries of linear progression. Time, like identity, is doubled and repeated: it moves forward inexorably, yet in the characters’ minds, it folds back on itself, layering past and present into a single moment. Clarissa observes, “Did it matter, then, she asked herself, walking towards Bond Street, did it matter that she must inevitably cease completely?” as she contemplates the ephemerality of life. There’s no escaping the mechanical march of time, the continued awareness that: “Big Ben was beginning to strike, first a warning, musical; then the hour, irrevocable.”
Shakespeare’s Macbeth also plays with the instability of time, particularly in its use of prophecy and cyclical inevitability. Macbeth, haunted by Banquo’s ghost, experiences time as disjointed and surreal, much like Woolf’s characters. The famous line, “Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow / Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,” encapsulates the horror of time’s relentless march, yet within the play, time is also fluid—prophecies and hallucinations blur the boundaries of past, present, and future. In Mrs Dalloway, this same sense of temporal instability reinforces the doubling of self: the present is haunted by past versions of oneself, just as Septimus is haunted by his dead friend Evans.
3. Doubling in Style: Semi-Colons, Free Indirect Discourse, and Overlapping Consciousness
Woolf’s stylistic choices further enact doubling at the level of form, using syntax and narrative perspective to reinforce the themes of fractured identity and overlapping consciousness. One of her most distinctive techniques is the use of semi-colons, which create a rhythm that links disparate thoughts, allowing past and present, self and other, to coexist within a single sentence: “the air was in the early morning; like the flap of a wave; the kiss of a wave; chill and sharp and yet…”.
Woolf’s use of semi-colons reflects her broader modernist concern with the fluidity of consciousness. Influenced by Henri Bergson’s theory of durée, which describes time as a continuous flow rather than a sequence of distinct moments, Woolf’s syntax resists rigid separation. The semi-colon becomes a structural device that allows ideas to unfold organically, capturing the rhythms of thought in a way that mimics real psychological experience. Instead of forcing a break, as a full stop would, the semi-colon preserves movement between past and present, mirroring how memory constantly intrudes upon reality. In this sense, Woolf’s prose enacts the very themes of temporal and psychological doubling that shape the novel’s structure.
The use of free indirect discourse further dissolves the boundaries between characters, allowing the narrative to slip between different consciousnesses. The transitions between perspectives are often subtle, reinforcing the idea of doubled selves. This destabilisation of identity through shifting perspectives aligns Woolf with Franz Kafka, another modernist writer who frequently explores the disintegration of self. In The Metamorphosis, Gregor Samsa’s transformation into an insect leads to an identity crisis that blurs the boundary between self and other. Much like Woolf’s use of free indirect discourse, Kafka’s detached yet intensely personal narration amplifies this instability. Gregor’s thoughts—”Was he an animal, that music could move him so?”—suggest a consciousness struggling to reconcile its new form, just as Septimus experiences a fractured reality in which time and identity are no longer stable.
Woolf, like Kafka, forces readers to question whether identity is ever truly singular or whether it is constantly doubling and shifting.
Conclusion: The Modernist Doppelgänger
Ultimately, Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway reconfigures the gothic doppelgänger through modernist aesthetics, using doubling to explore the instability of identity, time, and perception. With fascinating links to Dostoevsky, Freud, Nietzsche, Kafka and Shakespeare, Woolf situates her novel within a broader literary and philosophical tradition that interrogates the self’s fragmentation. Doubling is not just a literary device but an inescapable aspect of selfhood, forcing characters—and readers—to confront the shifting nature of existence itself.
What are your thoughts on Mrs Dalloway and the essay above? Leave your thoughts in the comments!
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