TITLE:
Through the Lens of Hannah Arendt and Michael Sandel: On Justice and Politics in Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway
AUTHORS:
Catherine Yi Wang
KEYWORDS:
Mrs Dalloway, Hannah Arendt, Michael Sandel, Plurality, Natality, Common Good, Narrative Identity, Justice, Gendered Politics
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Social Sciences,
Vol.14 No.7,
July
10,
2026
ABSTRACT: This paper uses the political philosophies of Hannah Arendt and Michael Sandel to analyze Virginia Woolf’s novel Mrs Dalloway. Specifically, Arendt mainly offers two concepts: plurality and natality. Plurality means that different people view the world from different perspectives; for something to be real, one should count all perspectives. Natality suggests that every human being can initiate something new in the public sphere through actions. Then, Sandel focuses on the common good and narrative identity. The common good asks how we can live well together. Narrative identity means our lives are stories rooted in family and community. Through the lens of Arendt and Sandel, this paper looks at five parts of Mrs Dalloway. First, Clarissa’s party creates a small shared world, but it silences the poor, the traumatized, and the odd. Second, Septimus kills himself for protesting against a doctor who uses utilitarian justice. That doctor sacrifices individual dignity for social stability. Third, Clarissa hears of Septimus’s death. She feels a deep moral connection to him. This awakens her own capacity to begin again. Fourth, a car backfires on a London street. People gather but do not speak to each other. This shows “faked publicness”—they are spectators, not actors. Fifth, Clarissa is called the perfect hostess, but she is trapped in the private home. Men run politics without her. This reveals how politics is gendered. In the end, the novel teaches that true politics is not about power. It is about building a shared life with dignity. That requires discussing public events, facing pain, respecting differences, and hearing silenced voices.