The Portrayal of Mental Disorders in The British Modernist Novel “A comparative study between Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway and Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis”

Abstract

Modernism, as a literary movement, was shaped by a radical shift on the structure and the themes of the literary works, mainly on the construction of the novel. This change was shown in the appearance of new narrative techniques such as stream of consciousness, interior monologues, fragmentation, etc. In fact, these techniques were employed by the modernist writers as Virginia Woolf and Franz Kafka, as an emphasis on the role and the power of the human psyche and internal realm of the individuals, applying Freud’s psychoanalytic theories. In this regard, the combination between conscious and unconscious led them to stress on the theme of madness and mental disorders as shell-shock, schizophrenia, paranoia, etc. Virginia Woolf, in her psychological novel, Mrs. Dalloway, projects the mind of a traumatized, shell shocked war veteran who commits suicide in order to escape from his unhelpful modernist society. In a similar way, Kafka, in his novella, The Metamorphosis, pictures the meaningless life of a salesman, called Gregor Samsa as he transforms into a giant bug, revealing the theme of insanity. Moreover, in these modernist works, the theme of madness in presented in parallel with subthemes as self and identity, androgyny, and the absurdity of existence.