My attempt with this project was to display the themes represented in Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway regarding marriage, sexuality, and gender roles through series of photographs. I have used quotes from Mrs. Dalloway , in which Woolf is writing during a time period with vastly different views regarding these issues; however, by taking pictures within a far more modern context I was also able to incorporate several themes found within Michael Cunningham’s “The Hours” as well. To visually represent the quotes I selected, I attempted to incorporate the frequent images appearing within the novels of trees and water. In addition, I also added more traditional creative methods such as color and body language / placement to relay the emotion behind Woolf’s statements. Individual interpretation is definitely welcome!

It seemed so fitting—one of nature’s masterpieces—that old Miss Parry should turn to glass…

She had the oddest sense of being herself invisible, unseen, unknown; there being no more marrying, no more having of children now, but only this astonishing and rather solemn progress with the rest of them…this being Mrs. Dalloway; not even Clarissa anymore; this being Mrs. Richard Dalloway.

In those days a girl brought up as she was knew nothing, but it was her manner that annoyed him; timid; hard; arrogant; prudish. “The death of the soul”…the death of her soul.

Text from Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway

Pictures by Chelsea Nattrass, Deserea LaDelfa,

and Zack Arno.