For the majority of the nineteenth century, the British Empire had been considered by most people to be one of the greatest empires in history. Their navy was virtually undefeated and the English people felt a great deal of pride in what was seen as “English might”. However, all of this pride was burst in the bloodbath that was the first world war. For the first time in a hundred years, the British people had a real reason to fear a possible invasion of their own land. The allies were slaughtered during the war, the British in particular saw almost an entire generation of young men slaughtered and or maimed. Suddenly, the great British empire no longer felt so indestructible.This started to cause people to question the empire and also question how it was that life happened. This is the world in which we find the characters in the novel Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Wolf. Wolf was a writer who was known to enjoy what is known as “stream of consciousness” writing. A style that can be seen in another one of Wolf’s works a short story/essay that she wrote entitled “A Room of One’s Own”, as well as in various other authors of the period such as T.S. Elliot and James Joyce. The authors wrote in a way that was fragmented and often showed that people were often unsure of things, that life was not just a single well-written narrative. This the leftover trauma from the brutal and bloody war that England had just suffered from. The first world war saw death of a scale that had never been seen before in human history. This violence often seemed rather pointless and random. So, this became reflected in English society. We see that characters are nostalgic, they want to go back to a time when things seemed easier. This was a common feeling. After the war, much of England was in ruins both literally and emotionally. Many people wanted to go back to before the war when life seemed more orderly and had more purpose. However, they like the characters are also going to eventually have to come back to the present and forge on into the future facing whatever may come. https://www.britannica.com/event/World-War-I/Killed-wounded-and-missing
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