A Study of Female Identity Anxiety in Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway from the Perspective of Female Gothic

Female Gothic—first defined by Ellen Moers in 1976—uncovers women’s predicaments and resistance under patriarchy, with rich gender-political implications. Adopting this framework, this paper examines female identity anxiety in Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway via protagonists Clarissa Dalloway and Lucrezia Warren Smith. It explores how patriarchy and war trauma erode female identities through Gothic elements: enclosed spaces, spectral imagery and self-division. Woolf internalizes Gothic horror into women’s psychological reality, laying bare gender repression and identity crisis. Their ambiguous attempts at identity reconstruction reflect the inherent tension between resistance and compromise in Female Gothic.