Mrs. Dalloway

Obviously, Woolf is exploring a different literary territory than Kafka.  Instead of breaking boundaries with content, she discards the narrative forms of the past.   In a 1920 diary entry she discusses her attempt to discard the artifice of conventional narrative, with its linear progression and the limits of first person and third person point of view.  Employing the metaphor of a house to discuss her vision of fiction she wonders about writing a novel with "no scaffolding; scarcely a brick to be seen; all crepuscular, but the heart, the passion , humour, as bright as fire in the mist" (qtd. in Lehmann 47).  And that heart, passion, and humour -- or life itself -- is displayed in Mrs. Dalloway .

Looming over the novel is the shadow of the "Great War" -- World War I.   One third of all British soldiers were killed or wounded in that war (just over three million), which meant that most families in Great Britain had personally experienced a loss from the war.  The brutality of the war shocked the civilized (?) world, leading many to question the wisdom of the political leaders who accepted such bloodshed.   As Vietnam did in our time, the accepted values of honor, courage, patriotism -- even the idea of "civilization" itself were questioned, when trench warfare combined with modern weaponry to kill a total of ten million people and wound an additional twenty million.  As the American poet Ezra Pound noted bitterly in his poem "Hugh Selwyn Mauberly,"

There died a myriad,
And of the best, among them,

For an old bitch gone in the teeth,
For a botched civilization,

Charm, smiling at the good mouth,
Quick eyes gone under earth's lid,

For two gross of broken statues,
For a few thousand battered books.

For Pound, Woolf, and other modernist writers faced with the waste and wreckage of World War I, it seemed that the "civilized" world had self-destructed on the fields of Flanders.  This lead to a cynical attitude towards life and an often acerbic approach to convention -- since it was convention that both caused the war (many believed that this was a capitalist's war, started to raise profits), and ensured its high causality rate (19th century traditions -- "Charge!" -- meets 20th century weaponry -- machine guns).

Yet for all the anger at the "powers that be," the class system that had been in place for centuries in England remained.  Granted, there was some talk of enlightenment and some mingling of the classes (see E. M. Forster's Howard's End for a brilliant depiction of class tensions), but among most people, a class consciousness remained.  Those with a "name," rank, and title were esteemed; those without were, by and large, expendable, and mostly invisible to the upper classes.  An elaborate system of manners (including bearing, clothing, and accent) acted as markers, pegging people into particular classes, causing feelings of superiority and inferiority, and its attendants, condescension and envious bitterness.  And while it is true that wealth and class are not necessarily synonymous (as it is in America), the connection between the two is usually too entertwined to separate.  This means that with money and rank often failed to see the privilege that it bought them -- and those without failed to see that money and rank is not everything.

it [life] seems, is very far from being "like this." Examine for a moment an ordinary mind on an ordinary day.  The mind receives a myriad impressions -- trivial, fantastic, evanescent, or engraved with the sharpness of steel.   From all sides they come, an incessant shower of innumerable atoms; and as they fall, [. . .] they shape themselves into the life of Monday or Tuesday [. . .]; [. . .] if a writer were a free man and not a slave, if he could write what he chose, not what he must, if he could base his work upon his own feeling and not upon convention, there would be no plot, no comedy, no tragedy, no love interest or catastrophe in the accepted style, and perhaps not a single button sewn on as the Bond Street tailors would have it.  Life is not a series of gig-lamps symmetrically arranged; life is a luminous halo, a semi-transparent envelope surrounding us from the beginning of consciousness to the end.   Is it not the task of the novelist to convey this varying, this unknown and uncircumscribed spirit, whatever aberration or complexity it may convey, with as little mixture of the alien and external as possible? (qtd. in Lehmann 46).

This task, as noted above, involves approaching writing from a new perspective, one which attempts to capture the immensity of life in all its complexity.  It involved moving away from the static realism of the nineteenth century to a more elastic form which could encompass the "semi-transparent envelope" of life.  As Lyndall Gordan notes, Woolf took the theory of the Post-Impressionist painter (and friend) Roger Fry "that modern art should not seek to imitate form but to create form," and transferred this from a plastic medium to a written one (193).

Perhaps in conjunction with this desire to, as Pound dictated, "make it new," the early twentieth century saw a burgeoning interest in feminism.  In her book A Room of One's Own, Woolf argues, with tact, wit and vivid examples, that women need income and a room to fulfill their art and need to develop their own style -- write sentences that express their own thinking, and which do not merely express a male view.  One of the questions we'll be exploring is, given your experience with male authors this semester (Hawthorne, Conrad -- the two male writers we've read in their original language) and others, does her style differ?  Can it be called a gendered style?   How?

Science/Philosophy
Of course Woolf's emphasis on the unconscious is indebted to Freud, but unlike Kafka, she prefers a more "realistic" unconsciousness.  This means that instead of repression/depression leading to someone transforming themselves into vermin, they follow the usual trajectory into mental illness.  But for Woolf, this illness has distinctive artistic purposes.  Madness can be used to shape a work of art, to make the "real" strange, and thereby make it more, well, real.   Consider the following by the French critic Michel Foucault -- dense, but worth working through.

[T]hrough madness, a work that seems to drown in the world, to reveal there its nonsense, and to transfigure itself with the features of pathology alone, actually engages within itself the world's time, masters it, and leads it; by the madness which interrupts it, a work of art opens a void, a moment of silence, a question without answer, provokes a breach without reconciliation where the world is forced to question itself.   What is necessarily a profanation in the work of art returns to that point, and, in the time of that work swamped in madness, the world is made aware of its guilt. (qtd. in DiBattista 52-53)

This suggests that instead of merely presenting "madness," artists use it for specific reasons, not necessarily connected only to the character.  Foucault (who, by the way, is known for his inaccessible style -- and this is translated from the French) argues that representations of madness in art are used to call attention to the uncertainty, the ineffability of life.

Another scientific idea that influenced Modern writers is the notion of time.   Think of Salvador Dali's (a late modernist) dripping clocks and you get the idea.   The specific idea that entranced Modernist artists is that time is not linear -- time is an elastic construct ("That was the fastest hour of my life" vs. "Are we ever going to get there!") and there are different kinds of time.   For instance there is the time measured out by the tolling of a bell tower: regimented and unyielding.  There is also "mind time," which refers to the time of memory where you can move between childhood and the present in the nanosecond it takes to activate a synapse in your brain.

Given this upbringing, it is perhaps not surprising that Woolf suffered from what seems to have been manic depression for most of her life.  These mood swings usually coincided with the completion of a major work: i.e. up while writing the work, then swooping down as she finished her final drafts of the manuscript and corrected proofs.   Her depression -- and the approach of WWII (her London home and offices of her beloved Hogarth Press was bombed in the air war of Britain) -- eventually led to her putting stones in her pockets and jumping off of a bridge to her death.

But to focus on her depression is to limit her life, for she was a prolific writer and vivacious character.  Part of the Bloomsbury Group, named for the Bloomsbury area in London (where many of the "members" lived), she led an active social and intellectual life. The intellectual core of the Group, consisted loosely of Leonard and Virginia, the economist Maynard Keynes, biographer Lytton Strachey, critics Clive Bell (who married Virginia's daughter Vanessa and who wrote an early and penetrating biography of Virginia) and Desmond MacCarthy, and the Painters Roger Fry, Vanessa Bell, and Ducan Grant.  Together they made up a kind of salon which allowed them to share/test their ideas and get the opinions of other whose critical judgments they respected.

As the name of the group suggests, central to Woolf's being (and central to the novel itself) is the city of London.  A vibrant cultural, economic, political center, London represents the height of western civilization at the time.  Of course, the sun is setting on British Imperialism and dominance, but this makes it a more poignant symbol of life and loss.
  

1923 Westminster bridge with Big Ben (and the background to this page)
Double click to enlarge.

Discussion questions we'll be reviewing in class

1.     The working title of this novel was “The Hours.”  Why?  What is the significance of time in the work?  What kinds of time are there in the novel?  Are particular kinds of time associated with particular characters?

2.     And why is the novel titled Mrs. Dalloway instead of Clarissa or Clarissa Dalloway? 

3.     Why a party?  Are we meant to appreciate the social gifts, that joie de vivre of a party, or meant to sneer at the pretensions and snobbishness that it generates? Quotes please to support your answer.

4.     Compare Edna’s dinner party in The Awakening to Mrs. Dalloway’s.  How are they similar, how are they different?

5.     The phrase “that is all” occurs at least twice in the novel (11, 39).  What is “all,” and what is its significance in the novel?

6.     Woolf experiments with point of view and narrative voice throughout the novel.  Consider, for example, the section starting at the bottom of 56 and continuing through 58.  What is going on in this section?  What is being depicted?  Does it somehow fit with the narrative?  Why or why not?

7.     In a similar manner, consider the passage at the bottom of page 70 – note the jump in point of view.  Why? Why this jump at this moment?  What does it suggest?

Group Discussion #2

1.     At the flower shop, Clarissa hears an odd sound (13) – what is it?  What is the sound’s connection to the characters on next page?

2.     What is madness in this novel?  How is it defined? Consider, for example, Septimus’s musings “it might be possible that the world itself is without meaning”(88).  Or “Once you stumble [. . .] human nature is on you” (92).  Are these the thoughts of a madman?

3.     Why is Septimus married to Rezia? Why not an English girl?  How does this effect our understanding of Septimus, and how does it effect the narrative of his life?

4.     Why does Septimus recover and then commit suicide (149)?

5.     The medical establishment does not come across to well in this novel – Dr. Holmes and Dr. Bradshaw are the closest to villains in this novel.  What does Woolf suggest is their problem?

Group Discussion #3

1.     Which characters embrace the idea of “Britannica” – i.e. Britain and all of its culture as the best and brightest country?  Which do not?  What does this difference (i.e. in the characters perception) reveal?

2.     How does the novel support Clarissa’s thought that “there is a dignity in people; a solitude; even between husband and wife a gulf; and that one must respect, thought Clarissa [. . .] for one would not part with it oneself, or take it, against his will, from one’s husband, without losing one’s independence, one’s self-respect – something, after all, priceless” (120)?  How does it undercut this view (consider, for example, if she had married Peter)?  And finally, what other novel that we’ve read does this seem similar to?

3.     What is the “offering” on page 122?  Why the religious connotation? (hint – see who appears on the next page and see page 125)

4.     How does the beating down of a curtain = great party (170)? How does this simple action reflect/illustrate Clarissa’s philosophy towards life (of course you first have to decide what her philosophy of life is . . .) – and allow her to see her party as a success?

Group Discussion #4

1.     Why does the novel use WWI as a backdrop/backstory?  How does it color the events in the novel?  Why so many references (often oblique) to the war (for instance 5, 10, 25, 51, 66, 86, 115, 183)? 

2.     Intimations of mortality are threaded throughout the novel. Why?  And the biggie is, why bring up the shattered body of Septimus in the midst of Clarissa’s party?  What does Woolf suggest is a connection – or what is her purpose?  Remember that Woolf considered Clarissa and Septimus as counterpoints in the story.

3.     The characters often seem lost in a reverie (think Peter and Clarissa and Bourton), searching for something that is lost.  What role does memory play in this search?  For starters, consider bottom of page 6 and bottom of page 111.  Find at least one of specific example and describe its importance/meaning.

4.     What do you make of the ending of the novel?  Note how Clarissa fades away at the end, then returns, in a silent way, in the final lines.  Why?  Why not end with her voice?  It would make the oh-so-complete narrative circle (the novel opens with her voice), so why does Woolf end with Peter?

5.     Ask questions of your own.

The questions below are so good that I had to include them -- though you shouldn't read #8 if you like to be surprised when you read:
(from http://www.flp.com/films/mrs_dalloway/rg-fd.html)

1. In Mrs. Dalloway, Virginia Woolf combines interior with omniscient descriptions of character and scene. How does the author handle the transition between the interior and the exterior? Which characters' points of view are primary to the novel; which minor characters are given their own points of view? Why, and how does Woolf handle the transitions from one point of view to another? How do the shifting points of view, together with that of the author, combine to create a portrait of Clarissa and her milieu? Does this kind of novelistic portraiture resonate with other artistic movement's of Woolf's time?

2. Woolf saw Septimus Warren Smith as an essential counterpoint to Clarissa Dalloway. What specific comparisons and contrasts are drawn between the two? What primary images are associated, respectively, with Clarissa and with Septimus? What is the significance of Septimus making his first appearance as Clarissa, from her florist's window, watches the mysterious motor car in Bond Street?

3. What was Clarissa's relationship with Sally Seton? What is the significance of Sally's reentry into Clarissa's life after so much time? What role does Sally play in Clarissa's past and in her present?

4. What is Woolf's purpose in creating a range of female characters of various ages and social classes--from Clarissa herself and Lady Millicent Burton to Sally Seton, Doris Kilman, Lucrezia Smith, and Maisie Johnson? Does she present a comparable range of male characters?

5. Clarissa's movements through London, along with the comings and goings of other characters, are given in some geographic detail. Do the patterns of movement and the characters' intersecting routes establish a pattern? If so, how do those physical patterns reflect important internal patterns of thought, memory, feelings, and attitudes? What is the view of London that we come away with?

6. As the day and the novel proceed, the hours and half hours are sounded by a variety of clocks (for instance, Big Ben strikes noon at the novel's exact midpoint). What is the effect of the time being constantly announced on the novel's structure and on our sense of the pace of the characters' lives? What hours in association with which events are explicitly sounded? Why? Is there significance in Big Ben being the chief announcer of time?

7. Woolf shifts scenes between past and present, primarily through Clarissa's, Septimus's, and others' memories? Does this device successfully establish the importance of the past as a shaping influence on and an informing component of the present? Which characters promote this idea? Does Woolf seem to believe this holds true for individuals as it does for society as a whole?

8. Threats of disorder and death recur throughout the novel, culminating in Septimus's suicide and repeating later in Sir William Bradshaw's report of that suicide at Clarissa's party. When do thoughts or images of disorder and death appear in the novel, and in connection with which characters? What are those characters' attitudes concerning death?

9. Clarissa and others have a heightened sense of the "splendid achievement" and continuity of English history, culture, and tradition. How do Clarissa and others respond to that history and culture? What specific elements of English history and culture are viewed as primary? How does Clarissa's attitude, specifically, compare with Septimus's attitude on these points?

10. As he leaves Regent's Park, Peter sees and hears "a tall quivering shape, . . . a battered woman" singing of love and death: "the voice of an ancient spring spouting from the earth . . ." singing "the ancient song." What is Peter's reaction and what significance does the battered woman and her ancient song have for the novel as a whole?

11. Clarissa reads lines from Shakespeare's Cymbeline (IV, ii) from an open book in a shop window: "Fear no more the heat o' the sun / Nor the furious winter's rages./Thou thy worldly task hast done, / Home art gone and ta'en thy wages: / Golden lads and girls all must, / As chimney-sweepers, come to dust." These lines are alluded to many times. What importance do they have for Clarissa, Septimus, and the novel's principal themes? What fears do Clarissa and other characters experience?

12. Why does Woolf end the novel with Clarissa as seen through Peter's eyes? Why does he experience feelings of "terror," "ecstasy," and "extraordinary excitement" in her presence? What is the significance of those feelings, and do we as readers share them?

Works Cited

Gordon, Lyndall. Virginia Woolf: A Writer’s Life. New York: Norton, 1984.

Lehmann, John. Virginia Woolf and Her World. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich,

DiBattista, Maria. Virginia Woolf’s Major Novels: The Fables of Anon. Yale UP, 1980.

Images from

http://www.sara.nysed.gov/services/teachers/globalstudies/england/england_9617.htm (Westminster Bridge)

http://www.lib.udel.edu/ud/spec/exhibits/hogarth/comercl.htm (Book Jacket)

© 2002 David Bordelon