The aim of this thesis is to analyze women's images depicted by Virginia Woolf in Mrs. Dalloway. Women in Mrs. Dalloway are described as depending on men under patriarchal society. At the same time Woolf in her essays, A Room of One's Own and Three Guineas, explains further the real situation of women in the society and family and also of the necessary conditions for women to be writers.
She reveals in the above essays that women have lacked material conditions when they were compared with men: money and rooms. In addition Woolf insists that women have to have not only the opportunities of education and job but also Shakespeare's androgynous mind in order to write, to have successful career, to be influential enough to stop wars as independent persons.
In Mrs. Dalloway the women Woolf describes are deprived of education and jobs. Therefore, except very few women such as Miss Kilman, women have to rely on their marriage for their security in terms of money and space. In case of Clarissa, who exists only as Mrs. Dalloway, not as Clarissa, tries to help others in her own way. Her party is her way of contributing to her society by connecting people who lead lonely lives. Her party is possible by the material help of her husband. She considers her party as an “offering”, her own creative work. On the other hand, Lady Bruton who has wealth and position tries to take part in state affairs by writing a letter to the male editor of The Times by help of men. But her participation in state affairs in this way cannot be imitated by other women who never have means enough to do so. Another woman, Sally, a very close friend of Clarissa in her youth claimed that if Clarissa had married Richard or Hugh, typical men in patriarchal society, she would have been a “mere hostess”. But at Clarissa's party, it is Sally who appears as the very epitome of a “mere hostess”. She simply shows how women change through marriage in a patriarchal society. In case of Miss Kilman, after she is fired from school during the War, she has a grievance against the English society and Clarissa. But her grievance becomes an obstacle to her happiness. On the other hand, Lucrezia tries to overcome her difficulties even though she cannot be happy in her marriage because of her husband's mental disease. Besides these women who cannot be free from the prejudices of patriarchal society as women, Woolf seems to create a new generation of women by describing Elizabeth Dalloway's potential as an independent woman. By doing so Woolf clearly suggests a vision of new women who are leading their own lives without help of men.