Writing as a Trauma Therapy Tool in Virginia Woolf’s Novel, Mrs. Dalloway

Abstract

Recent research in psychoanalytic criticism and therapeutic literary studies highlights the significant role of writing as a healing practice that enables individuals to externalize trauma, regulate emotions, and reconstruct meaning after psychologically distressing experiences. In Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway, writing serves as a subtle yet powerful narrative device that intertwines the novel’s structure with the psychological wounds carried by its characters, particularly in relation to memory, consciousness, and inner fragmentation. Written in the aftermath of World War I, the novel depicts a world deeply marked by emotional scars, presenting writing as a central mechanism through which characters reassemble their identities and negotiate the passage of time.

This dynamic is evident in Clarissa Dalloway’s reflective consciousness, where the stream-of-consciousness technique becomes a form of narrative self-writing that helps her reinterpret past events. It is also visible in the psychological turmoil of Septimus Warren Smith, who suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder; for him, writing attempts to impose order on his chaotic internal world, even though his trajectory ends tragically. Structurally, Woolf’s modernist techniques-fragmented temporality, interior monologue, and fluid shifts in perspective-mirror the cognitive patterns of trauma survivors, thereby transforming the narrative itself into a therapeutic space.

This study examines writing in Mrs. Dalloway as a trauma therapy tool, drawing on insights from Writing Therapy, Trauma Studies, and modernist narrative theory. It explores how Woolf represents the interdependence between writing and healing, and how narrative expression enables characters to convert psychological distress into comprehensible meaning. The study concludes that the novel provides a pioneering model for understanding writing as a pathway to emotional recovery, while simultaneously acknowledging the limitations of this process for certain characters - positioning Mrs. Dalloway as a foundational text in the intersection between literature, trauma, and healing.