When Big Ben strikes:The chimes in Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway

Abstract

Mrs Dalloway is a typical steam-of-consciousness novel by Virginia Woolf, which has earned a lot of reputation for her. This novel is considered as an experiment of time, in which Woolf represents the chronology of time through images such as Big Ben and its relentless chimes. She also utilizes chimes as an important image to help construct a narrative, build characters, and convey the theme. The theme is comprehensive and complex; it contains the struggle of women, the authority of societal norms, and the deep thoughts of death. Virginia Woolf uses chimes to tie these together.Meanwhile, she successfully collapses time and space through the symbolic chimes, as the thoughts of charac­ters can be traced back to the past or forward to the future without breaking the chronology limits. Making the most of a single ordinary day. This study attempts to figure out how chimes function in the novel, as well as the impact chimes have on narrative, characters, and themes.