Virginia Woolf - Mrs. Dalloway.

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The role of time and space is not only connected with the style, but at the same time they serve as unifying devices. All the actions of Mrs. Dalloway takes place during one day in London. Humphrey calls this unity of place and time a “focal point”[15] which helps the reader to navigate through the stream of thoughts of the characters who in their mind cover period of eighteen years and move from London to India, Bourton and France. The third unifying device Humphrey mentions is centering the narrative around two major characters Clarissa Dalloway and Septimus Smith.[16]

Naremore calls the unity between Clarissa and Septimus “cosmic”[17] mostly because the two of them never actually meet. They are both solitary people searching for escape, but only Septimus is unhappy to such extreme that it forces him to commit a suicide. Naremore states that the emotions of Clarissa were not as intense and therefore instead of dying she “seems to absorb Septimus’ experience, and as a result she comes to terms with death.”[18] Similar opinion about their unity is stated by Leon Edel in his essay The Novel as a Poem where he calls Clarissa and Septimus “each other’s double”[19]. Edel mentions Woolf’s first intention to let Clarissa die at the end of her party; this she later changed and created Septimus to show the world from the insane perspective in contrast with Clarissa’s sanity. Edel summarizes the unity between them: “Both are incapable of establishing a meaningful relationship with the emotional texture of life,”[20] Clarissa escapes from her loneliness by putting on the mask of perfect hostess and Septimus by creating his own world of hallucination and irreversible death. Both Naremore and Edel agree that the bond between Clarissa and Septimus is something that unifies the narrative; however, A. D. Moody in his work Virginia Woolf states a different opinion. For him not only Septimus, but also doctor Bradshaw, who is partially to blame for his death, is double of Clarissa. It is the connection between these three characters Moody sees as the biggest flaw of the dramatization of Clarissa’s inner life: “Bradshaw and Septimus are not brought home directly enough really to touch her own complacent image of herself.”[21] The problem with Moody’s criticism is that he reads Mrs. Dalloway as “melodrama”[22] and he tries to apply Aristotle’s principles of dramatization on the structure of the story. The unity of the novel, however, is given by other factors.

Motifs, symbols and metaphors are often present in Woolf’s poetic language and it is possible to perceive them as unifying devices of her novel. The sound of Big Ben is probably the most important motif of Mrs. Dalloway and also the one which reoccurs the most. Humphrey states that the symbol of Big Ben gives “the needed coherency of pattern” in Woolf’s fiction. Very thorough analysis of the symbol of Big Ben in Woolf’s novel is given by Reuben Brower in his essay “Something Central Which Permeated”. He analyses the strikes in connection with word “solemn” and thus shows “the interconnectedness of the whole novel”[23] Brower notices that the strikes are often described as “solemn” in the novel and they carry the meaning of “the fear of a suspense, of a pause in experience”[24]. When Big Ben strikes it reminds the listeners not only of the irrevocable passing of time, but also of the fact that one day the happy times may end. William Troy in his essay “Virginia Woolf: The Novel of Sensibility” talks about the Woolf’s emphasis of Big Ben’s strikes as of something that supplies the rhythm of the consciousness and of the novel as a whole: “The symbol of Big Ben, since it sets the contrast between physical time and the measureless duration of the characters’ inner life, serves as a sort of standard or a center of reference.”[25] However Troy admits that since the symbol of Big Ben is outside the characters, the unity achieved is only decorative; “corresponding to no fundamental organization of the experience.”[26] Nevertheless all three authors agree that motifs and symbols are very important for unifying Woolf’s novel. Brower also stresses the heavy use of metaphors and finds something he calls the central metaphor of the novel: “the exhilarated sense of being a part of the forward moving process and the recurrent fear of some break in this absorbing activity”[27] which this time not only refers to the symbol of Big Ben, but tries to summarize the main idea behind Clarissa’s narrative. For Brower metaphor is the main unifying device.

Virginia Woolf in her novel Mrs Dalloway does not follow the conventional pattern of fiction: motive-action-result. Therefore her work is often criticised for lacking motives strong enough to justify its conclusion. It is necessary, however, to look deeper in the novel’s structure, the interconnectedness of signs and symbols and most importantly feel the rhythm of the stream of thoughts of Woolf’s characters. The narrative is disrupted but at the same time there is unity in every corner of the characters’ mind.

Bibliography

Brower, Reuben. “Something Central Which Permeated.” Virginia Woolf: A Collection of critical essays. Ed. Claire Sprague. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1971. 51-62.

Edel, Leon. “The Novel as a Poem.” Virginia Woolf: A Collection of critical essays. Ed. Claire Sprague. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1971. 63-69.

Hilský, Martin. Modernisté. Praha: Torst, 1995.

Humphrey, Robert. Stream of Consciousness in the modern novel. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1926.

Marsh, Nicolas. Virginia Woolf: The Novels. London: Macmillan, 1998.

Moody, A.D. Virginia Woolf. Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd, 1970.

Naremore, James. The World Without Self. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1973.

Sprague. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1971. 26-39.

Troy, William. “Virginia Woolf: The Novel of Sensibility.” Virginia Woolf: A Collection of critical essays. Ed. Claire

Woolf,