Gender and conventional conceptions of femininity are present throughout Mrs. Dalloway. Clarissa’s external life seemingly lives up to the middle-class societal expectations of what it meant to be a woman at the time, but her internal life presents a struggle between a desire to adhere to the expectations placed on her and a rich inner life that contradicts feminine norms.
First-wave feminism took place throughout the 19th and 20th century and mostly focused on legal issues, such as securing the right to vote. Woolf’s essay A Room of One's Own is one of the foremost writings that explicitly explored women’s needs for independence, and she also addressed the link between militarism and the patriarchy.
I am very curious about the intersection of the rise of first-wave feminism and Woolf’s writing about women, and especially look into the limits of her view of feminism, as she included accessibility in her discussions of mental health and illness, but surely did not consider all intersectional facets of female oppression and liberation. I am also interested in the ways her portrayal of the female experience converge with other aspects of her identity, such as her class, sexuality, and writing career.