Virginia Woolfs Mrs. Dalloway - Essay Example

Mrs. Dalloway Is the self a constituent of an individual or is an individual defined in the context of the society? Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway explores a day in the life of Clarissa Dalloway, an aristocratic English woman. Married to Richard Dalloway, a Conservative Member of Parliament, Clarissa seems to live the good life in London. Even so, this is on the surface, because in reality, she in search of individuality and personality, and the search for self-identity. Social forms and sexual expressions riddle the storyline and experiences of Clarissa. Woolf erratically interweaves and rearranges the past and the present to explain the experiences of the characters. She fragments her attention from Clarissa to Septimus, to Walsh to Mrs. Kilman, and other characters to depict their personalities. Through their interactions, Woolf highlights the differences and resemblances of the characters. Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway significantly highlights the theme of self-identity and individuality. The protagonist, Clarissa searches for her lost identity. Her agonizing loneliness arises from the fact that she is sexually repressed and her actions are confined to societal norms. According to Woolf, she has “the oddest sense of being herself invisible; unseen; unknown” (14). Clarissa’s agony is because she is not free to enjoy her existence as an individual. She does not think she belongs to the society. “She belonged to a different age, but being so entire, so complete, would always stand up on the horizon, stone-white, eminent, like a lighthouse marking some past stage on this adventurous, long, long voyage, this interminable --- this interminable life” (Woolf). Although she is beautiful and intelligent, another missing factor troubles her life. She engages in what she terms ‘a religious ceremony’ when she marries Richard, in order to conform to societal norms that require marriage between a man and woman. Hoff says, “Marriage is a ritual of the initiation variety that entails a death and rebirth with a new identity and a name change” (Hoff 35). Her marriage provided a new identity. This is despite the fact that she is sexually unfeeling to men, and the restraints of decency make her unable to realize her love towards Sally entirely (Hjersing 1). She rummages through the different relationship prospects, Richard and Sally, in search of her individuality and identity. In the end, she resigns to organizing parties in order to assert her social prominence and recreate her self-identity. As she looks at herself in the mirror, she sees different images of herself: a host, a woman, and the self. Similar to Clarissa, Septimus Warren Smith, a working-class clerk, lacks individuality throughout the story. Woolf characterizes Smith as an insane outsider who is unsure of his masculinity. Although he is a strong soldier, he is weak and lonely inside. Virginia Woolf famously quoted “It is fatal to be a man or woman pure and simple: one must be a woman manly or man womanly”. Smith Septimus depicts this because he is a shy person with a feminine self, which delineates him from the normal social norms. He desperately tries to uncover his individuality in the course of the story, and his behavior is at times insane (Hjersing 3). War, as a modernist topic and another central theme associated with individuality, disturbs Septimus in his search for identity. Woolf posits, “So he was deserted. The whole world was clamouring: Kill yourself, kill yourself, for our sakes. But why should he kill himself for their sakes? Food was pleasant; the sun hot; and this killing oneself, how does one set about it, with a table knife, uglily, with floods of blood, - by sucking a gaspipe? He was too weak; he could scarcely raise his hand. Besides, now that he was quite alone, condemned, deserted, as those who are about to die are alone, there was a luxury in it, an isolation full of sublimity; a freedom which the attached can never know” (Woolf). He does not seem to enjoy life or be at peace with himself after the damage he endured at war. He seems troubled, and is only alive physically, but his soul is nonexistent because he can no longer differentiate reality from his visions. Both Clarissa and Smith Septimus engage in internal arguments on their individuality and societal perception, although they are of different sexes, and Septimus is twenty years younger. They are both self-conscious, in terms of thoughts and actions, and believe that death can deliver them from their tribulations. “Clarissa is portrayed as the sane female and Septimus as the sane male” (Hjersing 3). Septimus jumps out of the window and commits suicide during a psychiatric evaluation. Later, when Smith Septimus commits suicide, Clarissa says, “She felt somehow very like him, the young man who had killed himself. She felt glad that he had done it; thrown it away.” The failure to gain individuality and identify the ‘self’ results in his suicide, and Clarissa also contemplates the same as a form of deliverance. She mutters, “Did it matter then, she asked herself, walking towards Bond Street, did it matter that she must inevitably cease completely? All this must go on without her; did she resent it; or did it not become consoling to believe that death ended absolutely?” (Woolf). She thought of death as a reprieve to her miserable condition and believed that she would have no more problems if she inevitably ceased completely. The crises of identity arises from both the masculine and feminine viewpoint, in which Septimus represents the male characters while Clarissa represents female characters. Woolf’s contrast of the two characters forms a basis for the theme of individuality. While Smith Septimus is a homosexual attracted to Evans, Clarissa is a lesbian attracted to Sally. In a society that abhors such behavior, the two fail to identify themselves in terms of gender. Their lack of individuality determines their isolation and interactions with others in their society. For Clarissa, “Half the time she did things not simply, not for themselves; but to make people think this or that; perfect idiocy she knew for no one was ever for a second taken in” (Woolf). Clarissa never did anything for herself. All her actions were about what people thought, or what they would think about her. In the end, their confused feelings results in poor choices that haunt their existence. For instance, Septimus engages to Lucrezia out of panic. Similar to Clarissa’s affection to Sally, Miss Kilman’s has a sexual interest in Elizabeth. All these characters lack individuality, because the society requires them to show attraction and affection to the opposite sex, while their feelings are different to social norms. This confusion about identity is what triggers the torturous discord of knowing the ‘self’. Mrs. Dalloway questions whether individuals in the society are able to understand themselves. Although Woolf penned the story in 1925, it still mirrors the current society in which people struggle with individuality and a sense of identity. A reflection of oneself is necessary to identify individuality. Septimus confirms this when he says, “Once you fall, Septimus repeated to himself, human nature is on you. Holmes and Bradshaw are on you. They scour the desert. They fly screaming into the wilderness. The rack and the thumbscrew are applied. Human nature is remorseless” (Woolf). In Mrs. Dalloway, Woolf uses the society as a symbol of oneself, to reflect a person’s actions, and inform them of who they are, and societal demands. Carissa and most of the characters in Mrs. Dalloway sees themselves through the eyes of the society. Just as a mirror reflects the large reality, so does the society reflects a person’s self. The society determines their behavior and interactions with others, and their personal judgment on whether society accepts their individuality. Through Woolf, the characters evidence that it is difficult to understand identity unless the society does the reflection. This is the central argument that Woolf tries to explain in relation to identity. Even so, the society only provides small segments of reflection, which an individual must coalesce and interpret before they form an identity. This is true in the story, because although the characters in the story do not know each other well, they still base their identities on the perception of the society. The lack of familiarity with others in the society is emphasized by the question, “…for what can one know even of the people one lives with every day?” (Woolf 188). The choice of one to digest and assimilate the reflections of society defines the ‘self’. As seen in the novel, Clarissa develops her identity as she interacts with different people in the society. In conclusion, the concept of self, which one can also construe in terms of identity and individuality, is evident in Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway. Everyone has a multi-faceted nature owing to the lack of identity. The party figuratively presents Carissa with a chance to portray all of her personalities. Her interactions with guests reveal the different personalities that each guest has about her. In the end, she realizes who she is as she mummers, “It is Clarissa, he said.  For there she was” (Woolf 190). Through her characters, Woolf proves that society only perceives the outward self, but rarely pierces into the inner self to uncover a person’s identity. Apart from the character that dies, all the others seem to uncover their identity as the novel ends. As a result, it is a symbolic lesson that only an individual knows the self, and social norms should not determine or shape personal behavior. Works Cited Hjersing, Charlotte. Representations of Clarissa and Septimus in Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway- a deconstructive approach combined with aspects of feminist and psychoanalytical criticism. Spring, 2009. Hoff, Molly. Virginia Woolf ’s Mrs. Dalloway Invisible Presences. Clemson University: Digital Press. 2009. Tseng, Ching-fang. The Flaneur, the Flaneuse, and the Hostess: 1 Virginia Woolf’s (Un)Domesticating Flanerie in Mrs. Dalloway. Concentric: Literary and Cultural Studies 32.1, January 2006: 219-58. Woolf, Virginia. Mrs. Dalloway. New York: Interactive Media. Read More