Otuđenje, izolacija i ponovno uspostavljanje identiteta u britanskom modernističkom romanu

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce and Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf are modernist novels exploring the quest of an individual for his/her identity at the beginning of the twentieth century. They explore the sense of alienation and isolation that come with the social, political, and technological changes in the new century. James Joyce in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man lists environment as the main influence in identity’s development, as well as the main cause of an individual’s alienation and isolation from the society. He points out religion and politics as the most important influences on the development of the character of Stephen Dedalus. Virginia Woolf in Mrs. Dalloway shows the position of a woman in the century of changes, as well as the mistreatment of a mentally ill person. Through Clarissa Dalloway Woolf depicts limiting patriarchal social frame for a woman, and by creating Septimus Smith she depicts the horrors of war and criticizes regressive medical treatments of mental illnesses. Both Joyce and Woolf criticize the society’s mistreatment of individuals who try to search for their identity outside the social frame, who consequentially remain alone and isolated from it