ABSTRACT
This chapter attempts to interpret Mrs. Dalloway using Gadamer’s analysis of hermeneutic ontology. In this novel, meaning and understanding are shaped by the intermediate space that exists between people as well as the change and movement that belong to the passage of time. Mrs. Dalloway is the story of several different individuals on a June day in London. The titular character is, naturally, at the center but the other characters are essential to the impact of the novel, providing a kind of context, a means of framing. Each character gives the reader a sense of the moment, of the meaning of that particular day and that particular place and particular society. Almost all were raised in the same milieu, with varying degrees of homogeneity. These people were conditioned to understand and think the same, to value the same things. Yet, at the same time, they are different. In Mrs. Dalloway, Virginia Woolf explores this intermediate space, an in-between that resonates with Gadamer’s emphasis on dialogue: a commonality and difference that proves decisive as each individual experiences the passage of time-a series of moments which are meaningful yet temporary, moments that change who one is and challenge who one is.
