EN26210: Presentation of City Life in Woolf and Eliot Texts

This essay explores the presentation of city and urban life in Virginia Woolf's 'Mrs. Dalloway' and T.S. Eliot's 'The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.' In 'Mrs. Dalloway,' London is depicted as a bustling city marked by the constant passage of time and the lingering effects of World War I, influencing characters like Clarissa and Septimus. The rigid British culture and the characters' interactions with the urban landscape highlight themes of societal expectations and individual struggles. Similarly, Eliot's poem portrays a modern city characterized by loneliness, hypocrisy, and the disillusionment of modern life, using visual imagery of drab neighborhoods and run-down establishments to convey a sense of decay and isolation. The poem explores themes of emptiness and self-destruction, reflecting the impact of rapid industrialization and the decline of human connection. Both texts use their settings and characters to convey the complex and often alienating nature of urban existence.

Running head: LITERATURE
Literature
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Discuss the presentation of the city and urban life in any two texts studied this semester.
Virginia woolf’s “Mrs Dalloway”.
Mrs. Dalloway was the fourth novel of Woolf. The setting of the novel was London. It
begins on a Wednesday morning in the mid-June in the year 1923. The novel covers the story
of one single day. The writer uses the stream of consciousness technique in her novel.
Virginia belonged to the modern time and her novels shifted within time and space. The
intention was to highlight the failures of the social system (Thacker, 2016). Mrs. Dalloway
expressed the confusion which was the major effect of post-World War 1. She represented
the British culture that existed after the First World War. In the novel Peter Walsh was the
only man who could remove himself from the setting of London. The reason for this is he
could see himself objectively. One of the major characteristics of the urban life was the
quarrel that occurred between the people who lived in the relationship. The quarrel of
Septimus and Rezia was evident of this. On the other hand while their quarrel, Peter Walsh
could relate himself with Septimus and Rezia. Woolf portrayed a connected nature between
Peter Walsh and the couple (Squier, 2017).
The notable factor in the setting of the urban life presented in Mrs. Dalloway is the
presentation of the Big Ben watch. It is mentioned repeatedly in the novel. The London city
binds by the Big Ben watch. It acted as a reminder to the people of London, it reminded the
people that time was moving constantly and it waited for none. The significance of the clock
was the shifting memory of the characters of the novel (Larsson, 2017). The characters was
trapped in the past and the present memories. The constant toiling of the time reminds
Clarissa that she was running out of time. The time reminds the people of the time of their
life. It reminds the people that they were running of their life. The clock served as a constant

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reminder that the people resided in the city was constantly heading towards their dead (Abel,
2016).
The novel is positioned within the bounds of an urban landscape. The architectural
representations in the novel are significant with regards to the way that the characters
navigate within the city. It has been noted that there are no linkages between the great
manifestos of modern architecture and that of modernist writing. It is no link between the
architecture of the city and the way Woolf represents the novel. It suggests a wider paradigm
(Goodwyn et al., 2018). There are instances when there is a connection between the historical
references and the abstraction of the form. This is not true in the case of the cities in Mrs.
Dalloway. It can be noted that the way the characters interact with the spaces deal with the
similar themes of the negotiating a relationship to the past and the new methods that are
usually innovative and they are going forward. On the whole the city in Mrs. Dalloway has
been represented as a busy city. The city is full of crowd and it is demonstrated by the nature
of the text. The youth time of Clarissa was described to be more romantic than the city life of
Mrs. Dalloway. There was a stark contrast between the urban life of Mrs. Dalloway and the
youth time of Clarissa. The urban city was filled with busy activities and it was a mechanical
life. On the other hand the youth of Clarissa which was not in the urban set-up was a
romantic one. Clarissa’s youth was spend in Bourton and the doors at Bourton do not need to
be removed in order to contain the abundance of life within the walls. They instead opened
with, “a little squeak”. The characteristics of the urban life in the novel was portrayed
through the characters of the novel itself. The city in Mrs. Dalloway experiences the scars of
war (Kaasa, 2015).
One of the most interesting setting of the city is the historical setting that is present in
the novel. The setting of the novel is after World War 1. The readers finds the prevailing
effects of the war in the novel. It is not certain whether the husband of Clarissa acknowledges

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the scars that were left behind because of the war that happened. Septimus went to the war
with the belief that he would have good memories from the war and he will return back as a
hero. The situation was adverse. Septimus was traumatized because of the war. He was
marked in the category of insane. He ended up as a shadow of a man. This was increased to
such a level that he went to the point of committing the suicide. The City of London was
surrounded by the strict British culture (Rabinowitz, 2016). Clarissa before her marriage
suffered a privileged life. Later she had to abide by certain rules and culture. She had to abide
by the strict patriarchal standards. This was marked as the necessary social standard of the
city. She had to miss out the freedom, for which she craved. Throughout the text is noticed
that the self-destructive faith that lies in the greatness of the nation and the tradition at the
expense of the individual. Woolf used London as her setting. She does it in direct and active
way. London itself served as the context of the novel. Woolf mentioned many important sites
throughout the course of the story. She mentioned about the Buckingham Palace, the Houses
of Parliament and the Westminster Abbey. They all define the British way of life. London has
been taken as the setting of the novel not just to remind the reader where these characters are
located. The landmarks are presented in the novel to represent a particular aspect of the
novel. This aspect can include the statues of the generals and leaders in the Trafalgar Square.
The presence of the generals in this represents the importance of patriotism to the way of the
British life. The continuous chiming of the clock reminds the residents of the constant
passage of time. Like any other modern novel, this novel maintains the tradition of modern
writing and describing the hypocrisy of the city life (Haytock, 2017).
T.S Eliot’s The Love song of J. Alfred Prufrock
The loneliness of the author is narrated in the poem through the presentation of the
city life. The narrator in the poem is isolated and not sure of his life. He wished not to be a
part of the hypocrite society. The poem is the ultimate presentation of the modern life. The

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opening line itself describes the image of the drab neighborhood that are filled with cheap
hotels and restaurants. Prufrock is found to live in solitary gloom. In the first stanza the poet
placed Prufrock among many women. The readers are taken to the place in the city where the
narrator sits with his afternoon tea and there are various women around him those who are
engaged in polite gossip about Michelangelo (Brown, 2018). He was a man of creative
energy. He was different from Prufrock. The next stanza portrayed an image of dull and
damp evening when the tea party was supposed to take place. The depiction of the city life
was presented through the parties that happened often in the city. For many individuals
Prufrock epitomizes the frustration and impotence of the modern life. His character reflects
the disillusionment that was usually experienced by the modern lives. Modern city is one of
the main themes of the poem of Eliot. He was basically a poet who belonged to America. He
moved to England in the year 1915. He was influenced by the modern city. There is a
mention of the half-deserted streets in the poem. The poet describes in his poem the life in an
urban setting in which the hustle and the bustle of city life are considered to be significant
experience (Al-Widyan & Darwish, 2016). The city life was marked by the hustle and bustle
of the works. The narrator made efforts to propose to a woman whom she was unable to
approach.
The poem consists of many failed attempts at courting women. In the instance where
the poet mentioned about the deserted streets, he indicated the fact that there were people in
the streets who had no identity of their own. The people of the streets had no identity of their
own. They were hypocrites and they did not had the capability to take their own decision.
They had fake identities. Apart from this the establishments in the city are described as being
run-down by using the visual imagery (Kuna, 2016). The images of cheap hotels and the
sawdust restaurants conjure the images of the buildings that were neglected. The sawdust that
were stated represents the wear of the buildings and the slow decay of the foundations itself.

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This represented the dull and the gloomy image of the city and judging it from the other point
of view, this represents the decay of the relationships of the humans with each other. It
probably represents the decay of the society. The cheap hotels are used to take the prostitutes
just for one single night. This represents the thought of the society. Prostitution was
considered to be an illegal act in most of the countries. This is the reason it is considered to
be a thought that was so low (Mohammed, 2016).
Eliot represented the theme of emptiness in the poem. The narrator was walking aone
by the sea side aloe which indicated the loneliness that prevailed in the city life. It showed the
contamination and the pollution in the city through the yellow smoke. It was the effect of the
industrialization that prevailed during the modern period. The inhabitants of the city
represents the city in general. It gives a hint of self-destruction (Snyder, 2015). The term self-
destruction can be mentioned in this context as the creator of the machine and factories that
created pollution were humans. Therefore, the people of the society was harmful and it in
return create harm to the society. The urban and the city life in the poem was filled with
depressive nature that was derelict and lonely. This was the effects of rapid industrialization.
Eliot used the images of visual imagery to portray the cities in a view which reflected the
rapid industrialization and later it formed the Great depression (Malcuit, 2016).
It represented the decline of the society as well as the decline of the humanity as a
whole. There are some elements in the poem like the fog, smoke that are essential part of city
landscape. The corners of the evening, the window panes are all essential elements of city.
The poem gives he chance to the readers to enter into the ambiance of the world where the
modern man struggles but are unable to find a clear path for himself (Gale, 2016). The
society pins down the modern man and he is trapped in one single expected norms of the
society. It shows the lack of unity which was an essential section of the society. The modern
man is unable to do movement according to his own will. Therefore while concluding, it can

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be mentioned that the characters and the context itself serve as the important feature of the
city or the urban life of a writing piece. This is the same in case of the poem of Eliot (Ortega,
2016).

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References
Abel, E. (2016). Narrative structure (s) and female development: The case of Mrs Dalloway.
In Virginia Woolf (pp. 77-101). Routledge.
Al-Widyan, M. A. A., & Darwish, M. H. A. A. (2016). Eliot’s Approach to Ethical Poetry as
a Case Study The Love Song by J. Alfred Prufrock. Canadian Social Science, 12(11),
67-78.
Brown, A. (2018, March). A metaphorical analysis of The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
by TS Eliot. In Accounting Forum (Vol. 42, No. 1, pp. 153-165). Elsevier.
Gale, C. L. (2016). A Study Guide for" Modernism". Gale, Cengage Learning.
Goodwyn, A., Durrant, C., Reid, L., & Scherff, L. (2018). London in space and time: Peter
Ackroyd and Will Self. Routledge.
Haytock, J. (2017). Modernism, Industrial Agriculture, and Emotional Anorexia in Josephine
Johnson’s Now in November. Women's Studies, 46(2), 132-146.
Kaasa, A. (2015). Cityscapes in history: creating the urban experience.
Kuna, t. (2016). Degradation of the human soul in the poetry of ts eliot. Re-Entering Old
Spaces: Essays on Anglo-American Literature, 87.
Larsson, L. (2017). Walking in Upper-Class Westminster—Mrs. Dalloway. In Walking
Virginia Woolf’s London (pp. 107-137). Palgrave Macmillan, Cham.
Malcuit, W. Q. (2016). The Poetics of Political Failure: Eliot’s Antiliberalism in an American
Context. Twentieth Century Literature, 62(1), 75-95.

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Mohammed, M. A. N. (2016). TS Eliot’s Modernism as Exemplified in the" Waste Land"
and The Love Song of L Alfred Prufrock (Doctoral dissertation, Sudan University of
Science and Technology).
Ortega, K. B. (2016). Being New York City. Jayne Cortez, Adrienne Rich, and the Feminist
Superhero: Voice, Vision, Politics, and Performance in US Contemporary Women's
Poetics, 255.
Rabinowitz, L. K. (2016). Female Visions of the City: An Exploration of Urban Literature
Written by Women.
Snyder, M. S. (2015). " The love song of J. Alfred Prufrock" as teenaged wasteland (Doctoral
dissertation, San Francisco State University).
Squier, S. M. (2017). Virginia Woolf and London: The sexual politics of the city. UNC Press
Books.
Thacker, A. (2016). Woolf and geography. A Companion to Virginia Woolf, 94.