Adeline Virginia Stephen (she became ‘Woolf’ later) Woolf was born into the late Victorian intellectual aristocracy in Hyde Park Gate, London, 1882. Her father, Sir Leslie Stephens, was the founder of the Dictionary of National Biography. Her mother, Julia Duckworth, was a widow with three children when she married Leslie Stephens Stephen in 1887. Virginia was the third of the four children of the marriage. ‘She was a nervous and delicate child, and, with her sister, was educated at home, mainly by her parents. Woolf's youth was shadowed by series of emotional shocks - her half-brother, Gerald Duckworth, sexually abused her and her mother died when she was in her early teens. Stella Duckworth, her half sister, took her mother's place, but died a scant two years later. Leslie Stephen, her father, suffered a slow death from cancer. After her father's death, in 1904, she, her sister Vanessa, and her brothers Adrian and Thoby moved to Bloomsbury, then a bohemian section of London.

From 1905 she wrote for the Times Literary Supplement . This was the first time she had ever held intellectual discussions with her social inferiors. In 1912 she married the political theorist Leonard Woolf. Virginia Woolf, her husband, her siblings, and their friends became known as the Bloomsbury Group. Although Virginia was not sexually interested in men, she hoped to have children. Leonard consulted doctors and was told it was inadvisable because of her health. Leonard Woolf cared for her during her bouts of mental illness and gave her the stability that enabled her to write. In 1914, she was depressed, had delusions, developed a resistance to food and attempted suicide.

INTRODUCTION
1 „Mrs. Dalloway“ 5
1.1 Clarissa Dalloway 10
1.2 Septimus Warren Smith 13
1.3 Peter Walsh 15
1.4 Sally Seton 17
1.5 Richard Dalloway 18
2 The picture of English society 19
2.1 The social critique 19
2.2 A feminist perspective on the patriarchal English society 21
2.3 The consequences of the World War I 24
CONCLUSION 28
REFERENCES 29