The Voice of an Ancient Spring Spouting from the Earth: The Myth of Demeter and Persephone in Virginia Woolf's Mrs Dalloway

The tendencies in literary criticism after World War I brought about the need for the application of innovative literary methods, with the aim of structuring the form and meaning of the text in a different way. The novels of Virginia Woolf certainly have their place in the reexaminations of myth, offering a specific view of some mythological concepts. One of these novels, Mrs. Dalloway (1925), is the focus of this paper. The novel follows a day in the life of the main character Clarissa Dalloway and her reflections on her life choices, wrong decisions, and irreversible past. One of the classical myths significant for the interpretation of this novel is the myth of Demeter and Persephone, based on which various relationships can be interpreted, the most important being the relationship between mother and daughter, as well as other female characters, but also between women and men. In this paper, we will attempt to locate the ways in which the basic archetypal patterns of the Demeter ‒ Persephone myth are depicted in the novel, especially when it comes to the relationships among characters who carry the strength of the mythical.