Virginia Woolf and Mrs. Dalloway

Mrs. Dalloway Virginia Woolf (For M.A II Sem English Paper IV) Prof. Sunita Murmu

Virginia Woolf (1882 1941): Life Virginia Woolf was born in 1882, the daughter of the literary critic and biographer, Leslie Stephen, and his wife Julia Duckworth. She was married to Leonard Woolf, the founder of the Hogarth Press. She along with her husband was a member of the Bloomsbury s Group, an informal group of associated English writers, intellectuals, philosophers and artists in the early 20thcentury in Bloomsbury, London. To this group belonged Vanessa Bell (her sister) and her husband Clive Bell, the art critic. Other members included Duncan Grant, E.M. Forster, Roger Fry, John Maynard Keynes and Lytton Strachey. The group held radical views and outlook in their attitudes towards relationships, marriage and sexuality. They had contempt for nineteenth century morality, for conventional ways of thinking and feeling and looked for new ways of representation in literature and the arts. With the death of her mother in 1895, she suffered a nervous breakdown. Depressed by the war (World War I) and her continuing mental illness she committed suicide by drowning in the river in 1941.

Major Works of Virginia Woolf Virginia Woolf wrote during the inter war period- the period between the Worid War I (1914-1918) and World War II (1939-1945). Mrs. Dalloway is her fourth novel. Her other well known works are: The Voyage Out (1915), Jacob s Room(1922), To the Lighthouse (1927) Orlando (1928), The Waves (1931) The Years (1937) Between the Acts (1941). A Room of One s Own (1929), her well known book length essay is an important feminist text. It talks about the existence of a private space and private income as a prerequisite for the development of a woman writer s creativity in a male dominated literary tradition.

Mrs. Dalloway Mrs. Dalloway (1925): Some Facts Woolf originally called the novel The Hours. The novel evolved from two short stories called Mrs Dalloway in Bond Street and The Prime Minister . The novel is often thought to be a response to Joyce s Ulysses. Michael Cunningham later retrieved the earlier title to write the novel The Hours which was published in 1998 and also won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1999.The plot focuses on three women of different generations (where one woman is Virginia Woolf) whose lives are interconnected by the novel Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf. In 2002, the film The Hours was made based on Cunningham s novel, directed by Stephen Daldry and the screenplay is by David Hare.

Plot Overview The novel chronicles the events of a single day in the life of the protagonist, Clarissa Dalloway as she walks through her London neighbourhood to prepare for the party that she will host that evening. On the way she happens to meet an old friend Hugh Whitbread. After she returns from flower shopping, an old friend and suitor Peter Walsh drops by unexpectedly. Clarissa had refused Peter s marriage proposal and had instead chosen Richard Dalloway who is now a Member of Parliament. Clarissa is given to introspection and reflects on her past, her life at Bourton and her decision to marry Richard. Peter Walsh still seems obsessed with thoughts of Clarissa s refusal. She also cherishes her friendship with Sally Seton. The point of view then shifts to Septimus Warren Smith, a shell- shocked war veteran who has witnessed the horrors of World War I. He now suffers from depression and has hallucinations of his friend Evans who was killed in the War. His Italian wife, Lucrezia takes him around Regent Park as they wait for an appointment with Sir William Bradshaw, a well known psychiatrist.

Plot Overview (Contd) Before the War, Septimus was a budding young poet and fond of Shakespeare. He had enlisted in the military for patriotic reasons but the experiences of War have left him traumatized and made him suicidal. Meanwhile, Richard Dalloway has lunch with Lady Bruton and Hugh Whitbread, members of high society. When Richard comes home with a bunch of roses for Clarissa, he intends to tell her that he loves her but cannot bring himself to say that. Clarissa dislikes Miss. Kilman for her domineering influence over her daughter. Elizabeth. In fact, the dislike is mutual. When Dr. Holmes arrives at the apartment to take Septimus to be shifted to the asylum, he jumps from the widow and commits suicide. Most of the important characters arrive at Clarissa s party and so does the news of Septimus death. Clarissa retreats to the privacy of her room to contemplate on Septimus death and feels she can relate to his suicide. As the guests leave the party, Clarissa re-enters the room and her presence fills Peter with excitement.

Major Themes Privacy and Communication Mrs. Dalloway depicts the subjective experiences and memories of its central characters over a single day(in June) in post World War I, London. The novel chronicles the finely woven texture of interior thoughts of most of the characters. Clarissa Dalloway constantly struggles to balance her internal life with the external world. Even as she takes a keen interest in the surface appearance of things, she keeps her private self safely locked away. She seldom shares her feelings with anyone. Clarissa, Peter, Septimus and others struggle to strike a balance between communicating and keeping their privacy. Even while Clarissa values private space as vital within marriage, she can sense the feeling of void within her marriage. She finds it disturbing that Richard doesn t know everything about her. Clarissa even sees Septimus act of suicide as an attempt to communicate.

Major Themes (Contd) Insanity/ Sanity Septimus Warren Smith is shown as Clarissa s double. His story runs parallel to Clarissa s story. The two characters never meet but their thoughts intersect and intertwine. Apparently these two characters are dissimilar but we see that they both share and think in much the same way. Both are alienated minds. Clarissa speaks the sane truth while Septimus the insane truth. Septimus sees the world as threatening and finds little hope, while Clarissa keeps her composure and accepts the society she lives in. She often withdraws into her private self, reflects and contemplates. Septimus, however, sees and hears things that are not there. He hallucinates and even talks to his friend and officer Evans. He remains detached from the world while Clarissa communicates with the world outside by throwing parties. Clarissa has the ability to draw her fragments together while Septimus cannot. He is unable to bring the internal and external aspects of his experience together, to form a whole self. Virginia Woolf thus blurs the categories of sanity and insanity. Woolf does not argue for a unified ego but suggests that the difference between balanced and unbalanced is the ability to draw the fragments of self together for social interactions. Moreover, it is people like Sir William Bradshaw and Dr. Holmes who use violence and coercion to impose what they consider to be unified/ stable self .

Major Themes (Contd) Critique of War( World War I) No actual warfare takes place in the novel but we see the aftermath and damages of war. Septimus is thirty years old and it s now five years since he has returned from the war. Septimus symbolizes the consequences of war and the traumatic experiences of those who survived the war. The soldiers responded to their call of duty towards their country only to return as madmen instead of heroes. While many had championed the War to uphold the ideals of the British Empire, Septimus wasted life proves those ideals to be hollow and absurd. Septimus shell- shock is a shameful expression of what the War did to the young men. A sensitive individual, fond of poetry is left disoriented because of the war.

Major Themes (Contd) Death Ideas of death are directly brought to us through the story of Septimus. Not only is Septimus unable to overcome the death of Evans, he becomes suicidal and chooses death over life. It is ironic that Septimus who is in shell-shock, considered a coward who fears death ultimately takes his own life. He cannot bear to have his soul destroyed by the doctors. His only way of defeating the world represented by William Bradshaw is to kill himself. Woolf raises questions against a masculine culture that demands war and death. Clarissa on the other hand goes on with her everyday activities and takes pleasure in buying flowers. The opening lines of the novel are significant: Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself. Nevertheless, there are undercurrents of thoughts of death as Clarissa goes about making preparations for her party that evening. There is a constant refrain of Shakespeare s lines from Cymbeline: Fear no more the heat of the sun/ nor the furious winter rages. The line celebrates death as providing comfort after a difficult life. When the news of Septimus dramatic yet tragic death reaches Clarissa s party, she is able to accept her own choices of living even though she has always felt that living even one day is dangerous.

Major Themes (Contd.) Construction of Gender Identities and Sexuality Virginia Woolf appears to blur the constructions of strict gender divisions of masculinity and feminity and of male or female behaviour. Her strategy appears to fuse male and female identities and argue for hybrid identity. There is a manly side to Clarissa and a womanly side to Septimus. Septimus displays madness that was usually associated with women and lacks what one may call manly courage. According to the prevailing society, he shows effeminate behaviour and cowardice in the face of war and its consequences. Woolf does exactly this, she subverts the society s commonly held idea of the soldier as an epitome of social masculinity and depicts Septimus as having feminine sensibilities. Critics have also suggested that that Septimus admiration for Evans may actually be an erotic homosexual love. Similarly, Woolf takes the reader back to Clarissa s past, to her youth at Bourton and her intimacy with Sally. Clarissa thinks of the moment when she felt like a man. On reflecting on her relationship with Sally Seton, Woolf through the character of Clarissa seems to suggest other sexual possibilities.

Major Themes (Contd.) Critique of an Oppressive Society Both Clarissa and Septimus feel that they live in an oppressive society. Septimus feels the social pressure to conform. William Bradshaw is oppressive in that he subdues whoever challenges his conception of the world. As is perceived by Clarissa, Miss. Kilman, Elizabeth s history tutor is oppressive as she tries to impose her belief system on Clarissa s daughter. Clarissa too finds the English social scene very oppressive where she must conform to the patriarchal social norms and the social conventions of marriage. Her identity remains as the wife of Richard Dalloway as Mrs. Dalloway who must adhere to the upper class social graces and host parties.

Major Themes (Contd.) Time In the novel time is superficially constructed around the divisions of the clock. The novel was initially titled The Hours and the characters in the novel are connected by the intrusion of public time. Mechanical time is also presented as oppressive as it intrudes on the consciousness of the characters through the sounding of the Big Ben. The internal mental time of the characters when they recall their memories are interrupted by shared time. However, it is public time that connects people across space. For example, twelve o clock struck as Clarissa laid her green dress on the bed and Septimus Warren Smith walked down Harley Street. Time is shown to connect as well as intrude and oppress. Time is also construed in terms of gender. Women connecting while men dividing.

Narrative Technique Mrs. Dalloway is an example of Modernist fiction. The novel is written in what is commonly called the stream of consciousness technique . Virginia Woolf uses the strategy of reinventing a form rather than content. She evolves a new fictional form out of a representation of the myriad impressions which daily impose themselves on the human consciousness. The phrase stream of consciousness was coined in 1890 by the American philosopher and psychologist William James (1842-!910) as a description of the flow of thought within the waking human mind. The novel is divided into parts rather than chapters and the novel s structure highlights the finely interwoven texture of the characters thoughts. Woolf uses the interior monologue (a device often used in the stream of consciousness technique) to present to the reader the course and rhythm of consciousness precisely as it occurs in the characters minds. As Mrs. Dalloway is given to so much introspection and often reflects on her past decisions, her preference to marry Richard and not Peter Walsh, we construct the character of Mrs. Dalloway through her memories and introspection. Similarly, the other characters are also drawn through their thoughts, memories and experiences. Also we see the different characters from several points of view and perspectives. The novel thus chronicles the interior thoughts of the characters with much pause or explanation. Thoughts of the characters sometimes criss-cross and sometimes they do not, creating some form of a pattern. Virginia Woolf does not describe one narrow individual, a stable ego or Victorian realist character, but as many sides as possible to creating a character or capturing a moment. She patterns the novel in a manner where one can draw parallels between a shell-shocked soldier and a repressed woman in a male dominated society. Using modernist techniques, she blurs categories of identity, sexuality and sanity/insanity. She also does away with the realist traditions of representation like plot, character, theme, time and space.

Narrative Technique ( Narrative Technique (Contd Contd) ) James Joyce and Virginia Woolf s comparison of the use of Stream of Consciousness technique Both differ in their methods in the use of stream of consciousness technique. Woolf uses tags such as he thought or she wondered. The style of Woolf s interior monologue is similar from character to character. Sentences, vocabulary and syntax do not alter as much as they do in Joyce s prose; and this helps to connect characters. Woolf uses past tense for interior monologue, to stress the importance of personal history. Where Joyce uses epiphany an intense experience or insight, Woolf has moments of being or the moment . Often considered the same, but Woolf s term describes a physical feeling while Joyce s term describes a spiritual insight.

Narrative Technique (Contd) Tunnelling- is Woolf s unique method of constructing characters. She describes this method in her diaries during her writing of the novel, Mrs. Dalloway. By this method, she would burrow into the characters past in order to unearth their history. Her characters are thus revealed as split beings living in the past as well as the present. While the current thoughts of the characters tell us who they are, their memories of the past reveal what shaped their present.

References Childs,Peter. Modernism. London: Routledge, 2000. Parsons, Deborah. Theorists of the Modernist Novel. Abingdon: Routledge, 2007. Woolf, Virginia. Mrs. Dalloway. Hertfordshire: Wordsworth Classics, 1996.