Attitudes toward death differ according to time and space. The First World War, which ended
in 1918, had an impact on those attitudes in populations of the whole world, mainly in the
countries involved in the conflict. Virginia Woolf's novel Mrs. Dalloway, published in 1925,
brings in its protagonists, Clarissa Dalloway and Septimus Warren Smith, samples of the
attitudes toward death present in the English society of their time. The research aims to
understand how the attitudes toward the death of oneself and of the other are represented in that
novel, taking into account the socio-historical context in which it was produced. First, a
bibliographic review is brought up regarding the socio-historical context in which the novel is
situated, punctuating aspects regarding the current attitudes toward death at that time; then, the
novel is analyzed based on its protagonists, verifying their reflections and attitudes regarding
the death of themselves and of other people and their consonance with the context of the novel's
production. It is noticed that the protagonists present similar views about death, but different
attitudes. At the end of the novel, both unite the death of themselves and the death of the others
in different ways, Septimus through suicide and Clarissa through a new beginning.
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