The logic of visualization in Virginia Woolf’s "Mrs Dalloway"

Abstract

The article analyses the way in which Virginia Woolf shows the importance of the visual in the social space of London in the third decade of the 20th century, which she represents in her novel “Mrs. Dalloway”. The analysis draws on the terminology and theory developed by Henri Lefebvre, who claims in “The Production of Space” that one of the main characteristics of the social space of modern society is the logic of visualization. According to Lefebvre, this logic has two aspects: metaphoric, which treats writing and visual signs in general as focal points of human life, and metonymic, which transforms the visible into totality. The article argues that Woolf shows in her novel how the logic of visualization in both its aspects is used as a mechanism helping to implant proper models and values in members of society and how it is responsible for the emptiness of human life which is limited to its surface value.