Virginia Woolf's Intentions

When processing interpretations of Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway, you have to keep in mind her intentions in writing this novel. The major point that invalidates a large amount of arguments about the meaning of Mrs. Dalloway is that Woolf's goal was to create a novel that perfectly portrayed the natural human being down to the smallest specks of detail. Even though this idea may not completely invalidate arguments about the purpose of the novel, it is pertinent enough that people should keep it in mind when reading critiques. Ideally, if Woolf's true intentions for the novel were somewhere else, the plot, setting, and characters can definitely be said to not be ideal. In fact, the factors that make up Mrs. Dalloway are exactly right if you evaluate her writing as a depiction of the true state of the mind.

This argument against the many critiques of Mrs. Dalloway is in no way completely correct, nor is it negligible. But sometimes it makes me wonder whether or not people are extrapolating too deeply into novels of which the author's actual intentions are plain as day.