Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway - Book Report/Review Example

MRS. DALLOWAY - A 'MODERNIST' REVIEW "I meant to write about death, only life came breaking in as usual," Virginia Woolf wrote in her diary [DII, 17February 1922; p. 167] as she was writing a series of short stories on post-World War I London, which eventually expanded to become one of her greatest novels - Mrs. Dalloway. Mrs. Dalloway is suffused with life, life at its most ordinary, yet sensitively touching on almost every element of significance in life, as Woolf imaginatively portrays an ordinary day in an ordinary woman's life, in post-war London. "Dramatically mixing autobiography and history", Woolf's novel presents "a society divided between those who have profited from the war and thosewho have been destroyed by it. [Lee, 1996; p 36] Mrs. Dalloway, Virginia Woolf's fourth novel, is perhaps her first novel to reveal her mastery of the craft of novel writing. Set on a single day, the novel interweaves several narrative perspectives, organised in two parallel stories: Clarissa Dalloway's party and the suicide of her symbolic double, Septimus Warren Smith. Transiting back and forth in time and space, from interior to exterior of her central character, Mrs. Clarissa Dalloway and her double, Woolf looks at love, dreams, longings, failings, illusions, fears and frustrations in post- war London. In so doing Virginia Woolf responded to the prevailing traditions of novel writing with a 'consciously' modern novel. Discarding the usual style of time-bound story telling for a picturesque revelation of the inner thoughts and the outward expressions of her characters, Mrs Dalloway fulfils Woolf's demand of a novel as suggested in her essay 'Modern Fiction,' "Look within andexaminean ordinary mind on an ordinary day to reveal the flickerings of that innermost flame which flashes its messages through the brain." [Woolf, 1919; p. 106] Mrs. Dalloway begins when Mrs. Clarissa Dalloway, un upper-class, 'party conscious,' yet sensibly conventional English woman in her fifties, walks to the florist shop in London city on a day in mid-June 1923 to buy flowers for the dinner party at her home. On the street, Mrs. Dalloway unknowingly passes by Septimus Warren Smith, a young ex-soldier who had become insane after the tragic death of his friend in the war, and his wife Lucrezia. Henceforth, Woolf's narrative shifts back and forth between the story of Clarissa party and the story of Septimus' suicide that evening. Studying Woolf's modernist fictions John Mepham comments, "For many readers, the most puzzling aspect of Mrs. Dalloway is that it tells two unconnected stories It is as if characters from two different stories have become jumbled up by mistake" [Mepham, 1991; p.97] Yet, for Woolf, the discreet connection of her central characters, though she had fears that her novel may seem disjointed because the scenes weren't connecting well, [Mepham, 1991; p.97] was definite and well weighed: "Suppose to be connected in this way: Mrs D seeing the truth, S seeing the insane truth" [Cited Mepham, 1991; p. 94] Following the inner world of her apparently alien and separated characters Woolf silently draws parallels between her two distinctly placed characters in gender and status, connecting them to the readers through a stream of their consciousness to the imageries such as exciting airplane writing in the sky overhead, the terrifying sound of a motorcar, and the tick of the Big Ben clock as it strikes the hour. Even as the novel seems disjointed, E.M Forster suggests the inevitable speculation on whether "the societified lady and the obscure maniac are in a sense the same person," [Forster, 1967; p.124] perhaps a dual representation of Woolf herself. As an ordinary upper class woman, Mrs. Dalloway prefers the conventional choices in life. Clarissa's marriage to Richard Dalloway, an insipid Conservative Member of Parliament isn't ideal in any romantic sense and is influenced by her desire for stability in life. She had refused to marry Peter Walsh, her ex-lover, because she thought him to pompously unconventional, to the level that she was horrified of "the moment when some one told her at a concert that he had married a woman met on the boat going to India!" [Woolf, 1925] Yet, her conventional choices have a streak of unconventionality - she believes that "in marriage a little licence, a little independence there must be between people living together day in day out in the same house." [Woolf, 1925] Reflecting on her choices, Mrs. Dalloway is happy that Richard and she had given each other that little license and independence. Despite her decided conventionality and its assumed predictability, Clarissa is unsure about the choices in life -She isn't sure of her feelings towards Peter Walsh. Though she judges him a "failure," and unfit for marriage, Peter is a constant presence in her thoughts, as she is aware of living in him: "she survived, Peter survived, lived in each other." [Woolf, 1925] On the day of the party, "so surprised she was to see him, so glad, so shy, so utterly taken aback to have Peter Walsh come to her unexpectedly in the morning!" [Woolf, 1925] And as she greets him elatedly she asks herself "why did I make up my mind-not to marry him she wondered, that awful summer" [Woolf, 1925] Yet, as Peter informs her of his new love and the due divorce proceedings she realizes it was time to move on in life with her obvious choices. Mrs. Dalloway is also uncertain of her own feelings towards her husband Richard Dalloway, whom she thought as dependable, signifying security and stability. she is vaguely, at times conspicuously dubious of Richard, -- "Fear no more the heat o' the sun; for the shock of Lady Bruton asking Richard to lunch without her made the moment in which she had stood shiver, as a plant on the river-bed feels the shock of a passing oar and shivers: so she rocked: so she shivered." [Woolf, 1925] She is vainly aware of shallowness and emptiness shrouding her life - " this body, with all its capacities, seemed nothing-nothing at all." [Woolf, 1925] She is also doubtful of her daughter Elizabeth's love for her, who was inseparably close to Miss Kilman, her older friend dismissed from school during the War. Still, guided by her characteristic conventionality, she continues to accept and go on with life, resolving her identity as "being Mrs. Dalloway; not even Clarissa ..Mrs. Richard Dalloway." [Woolf, 1925] While she doesn't consider herself "clever, or much out of the ordinary," [Woolf, 1925] in mind, Mrs. Dalloway is a highly sensitive woman, as "she sliced like a knife through everything, at the same time was outside, looking on." [Woolf, 1925] Even as Clarissa assumes the character of a perfect hostess, in tune with Woolf's fascination for what she calls 'party consciousness,' preparing for the party as the fresh day begins, standing at the open window, she feels that "something awful was about to happen." [Woolf, 1925] Her feelings in a way foreshadow the casualty in Mrs. Dalloway-- the suicide of Septimus. Clarissa herself contemplates death walking through Bond street: "all this must go on without her. death ended absolutely" [Woolf, 1925] But she is sane and positive to the "Oh if she could have had her life over again! she thought, stepping on to the pavement, could have looked even differently!" [Woolf, 1925] Later in the day also thoughts of death haunts her, until finally the news of death reaches her, "[H]ere is death, in the middle of my party." [Woolf, 1925] Even as death passes her by, life breaks in as she prepares herself to address the unfamiliar task of getting old with her characteristic conventionality. Virginia Woolf, who imagined writing about war and death, accomplishes it through the character of Septimus Warren Smith. Though links can be traced between the two characters, Clarissa and Septimus, it is through the final connection - death of Septimus in the middle of Clarissa's party - that Woolf directly connects the two stories within the novel. Woolf suggests the preordained connection of her characters: "The idea is that the caves shall connect & each comes to daylight at the present moment" [DII, 30 August 1923; p. 263] Clarissa, who "always had the feeling that it was very, very dangerous to live even one day" [Woolf, 1925] immediately identifies with Septimus sensitivity, despondency, and inner resolve, yet doubtful of his choice of committing suicide. "But this young man who had killed himself - had he plunged holding his treasure" [Woolf, 1925] prompts the reader to review the character of Septimus, as a double of Mrs. Dalloway. In a way Septimus represents "an all but indescribable second self, or rather a parallel, purer self,"[Cunningham, 1999; p. 34] as Cunningham observes in "The Hours," a commentary on Virginia Woolf's life, her madness, and her words, by the same working title that Virginia adopted for Mrs Dalloway. Mrs. Dalloway, the sane self, and her symbolic double Septimus Warren Smith, the insane self relate to their worlds in similar ways - their wavering perceptions of impending death and the surge of time, their views and approach to marriage, their subtle joys of living in the moment in a world with no meaning, the feeling of guilt that shrouds their existence and the like present comparable paradigms. Yet, they react to their choices in distinct ways -- Clarissa chooses conventionality and largely succeeds in living by it; Septimus Warren Smith is crushed by the demands of conventionality. While Mrs. Dalloway's sanity guides her through her choices in life, Septimus, who has lost his mental sanity following the experiences in war, is unable to cope with life and eventually commits suicide. Virginia' troublesome experiences of war comes to life through Septimus. Septimus, a troubled soldier suffering shell shock after the First World War, returns from war only to discover that voices of his dead comrades continue to haunt him, and that "the world itself is without meaning." [Woolf, 1925] Unlike Clarissa, he cannot succumb to the idea of starting afresh in a New World "now that it was all over, truce signed and the dead buried." [Woolf, 1925] On the day of Clarissa's party, Septimus realizes that his marriage was on the verge of collapse and is convinced of the inevitability of death, as he finally commits suicide. "In this book I have almost too many ideas. I want to give life and death, sanity and insanity; I want to criticize the social system, and to show it at work, at its most intense," Virginia Woolf wrote as she was working on Mrs Dalloway. [DII, 19 June 1923; p. 248] Pitting the world of the sane and the insane side by side, and assessing the futility of conventionality in addressing life's choices in a world that has no meaning, Woolf's "modernist" novel imaginatively examines the superficial conventionality of post-War English society, exploring the ordinary mind on an ordinary day. Bibliography 1. Cunningham, M. The Hours. London: Fourth Estate Ltd, 1999 2. Forster, E.M. "The Early Novels of Virginia Woolf" 1925. In Forster E.M. Abinger Harvest: Collection of Essays London: Penguin Books Ltd, 1967 3. Lee, H. Virginia Woolf New York: Vintage Books, Random House Inc, 1996 4. Mepham, J Virginia Woolf: A Literary Life London: The Macmillan Press Ltd, 1991 5. The Diary of Virginia Woolf: Vol. II (1920-24) Ed. Anne Oliver Bell. London: The Hogarth Press, 1978. 6. Woolf, V. Mrs. Dalloway. 1925. The University of Adelaide Library Electronic Texts Collection. Available at http://etext.library.adelaide.edu.au/w/w91md/ Accessed 25/11/05 7. Woolf, V. "Modern Fiction" in Collected Essays Vol. II .1966. London: The Hogarth Press, 1919 Read More