Virginia Woolf, <Mrs Dalloway>
I finally did it. I read Ms Virginia Woolf at last. Yes, I finished Mrs Dalloway. It was never an easy task to adapt to the stream of consciousness of an individual other than myself. Not only the novel style but the words themselves! The sentences are beautifully structured, yet they consist of words, and for a reader to comprehend, sympathise, and discover via et veritas et vita, on the primary level, one must know what those words mean! Every page there were at least one word which could not be found in my vocabulary list. Perhaps that could be one reason for reading a classic in English - I am a native Korean: to study. However, I did not choose that path. My purpose solely lay on the joy of reading, especially literature, which readily becomes interrupted and tarnished by the impatient desire to search up the meaning of an unfamiliar or recondite word. That being said, Mrs Dalloway required me of tremendous energy and indomitable concentration. The experience was very one of a kind. If you ever had the dizzy feeling after reading - let’s pray it certainly was not due to the reclination of your head, because you were so into the text that the most ordinary scenes depicted, even the air, surround you, then I bet the titillation is not inherent to me.
The plot of Mrs Dalloway spans short: a day. Think of other novels of similar length - for example, The Great Gatsby, as it stands right beside Woolf’s on my bookshelf. In them usually a story of more than two or three days is narrated. Then, it becomes evident how rigorous Woolf had been to transcribe the internal voices of distinct individuals into visible - and also legible - medium. The author quite necessarily employs a third-person omniscient narrator. Therefore, she capitalises on her choice to vocalise every single character in the novel. A man named Scrope Purvis appears only once, even before the plot is developed to a point of exposition, merely to descirbe the impression Clarissa Dalloway imbues upon strangers: “a touch of the bird about her, of the jay, blue-green, light, vivacious, though she was over fifty, and grown very white since her illness” (4). The audience gets only scant amount of information about Mr Purvis that he somewhat regularly encounters Mrs Dalloway as a Westminster-neighbour. Yet, even he is granted a chance to express his thought. In other words, Woolf never becomes content with the conventional style of omniscient narration. She makes everything natural, as if there does not exist a recess in which a supernatural being can, or needs to interfere. Nevertheless, the reader has the access to the inner space of a character through the sayings and reflections of other characters as in the case of Purvis contemplating about Dalloway. Isn’t it so clever? As New Yorker commented, it is “one of the few genuine innovations in the history of the novel.” By refusing a touch of artificiality, Woolf has created a complex yet somehow linear, forward-moving network of Londoners by interweaving their privacies. Thus, her writing itself demonstrates that the world is connected, i.e., the world is not a random union of independent events. Rather it should be defined as the prolonged intersection of contexts.
To summarise the plot of the novel can be done shortly. Clarissa Dalloway, now fifty-two, throws a party one summer night in London (this is actually enough). She witnesses a car accident while buying flowers for the party. Just a few steps away from her, a veteran of World War I named Septimus Warren Smith, who became a lunatic apparently suffering from PTSD, is also present at the scene. Mrs Dalloway then returns home, unexpectedly reunites with her old love, Peter Walsh who just came back from India, mends her favourite green dress by Sally Parker. At the same time, her husband, Richard, joins the luncheon at Lady Bruton’s with his and his wife’s old friend Hugh Whitbread. Meanwhile, Peter Walsh, after leaving Clarissa’s house, wanders around London and encounters the Smiths in Regent’s Park - see, this novel is basically a progression of numerous encounters. The Smiths finally have “perfectly happy” time together until Dr. Holmes climbs up the stairs to their room, to check his patient (160). Septimus, captured by a conspiracy that his doctors are trying to manipulate him, throws himself outside the window as the revenge against Dr. Holmes. The news of the suicide reaches Clarissa at her party by the wife of Sir William Bradshaw, the other physician of Septimus. Clarissa gives it a thought, “Oh! … [I]n the middle of my party, here’s death,” then with assumed insouciance, “[goes] on, into the little room where the Prime Minister had gone with Lady Bruton” (201). Lots of prominent figures come and go at the Dalloways’ and their party seems to be a success. At the end of it, when Peter Walsh is also about to end his waiting for Clarissa, there she comes back to the drawing room, “fill[ing] [Peter] with extraordinary excitement” (213). The End.
Well, the summary was not ‘short’ as I promised, but still it can be abridged in one sentence: Clarissa Dalloway prepare for her evening party and her fellow Londoners do their stuff, then attend the party. Mrs Dalloway is a type of novel which is extremely difficult to give a succinct yet satisfying summary. There are a few reasons for it. First, as previously underlined, multiple events take place simultaneously within a very compact time frame. Even though Clarissa is at the centre of attention, and her party functions as the climax as well, a number of characters cope with their own matters, which are ostensibly separate. In the end, of course, as if Woolf substantiates fame for her literary genius, everything comes together. Thus, none of the events are of little significance. Second, the plot per se becomes trivial compared to the characters acting upon it. In other words, Woolf put a lot more effort in describing what the characters feel and think. Even on the same incident - for instance, the old days at Bourton, when Clarissa was not Mrs Dalloway but Miss Perry, each character - Clarissa, Peter, Richard, and Sally Seton - reminisces differently. The divergence might confuse the readers at first. Used to the typical narrative in which each stage of plot is clearly divided, we initially feel awkward towards Woolf’s structure where the same episode and object, such as the Big Ben ringing the hour and the sound of heartbeat translated as “fear no more the heat o’ the sun,” are recited multiple times without a clear sense of ‘flow’ (10). Nonetheless, time flows from the early morning to the late night, and the readers get to know more about the characters as each one’s side of story is unveiled. Since the emphasis is on delving into the human psychology, the mere summary will not suffice to either introduce or praise Mrs Dalloway.
One day I was walking down the street in the US Army Garrison Humphreys. It is unusual for me to go outside my room, but I wanted to cut my hair. It was evening, and a few days after having finished Mrs Dalloway, then I saw a beautiful winter sky, the rays of the Sun filling every corner of the frosty canvas on which blue mingled with the reddish hues of orange and light scarlet was beginning to succumb to the darkness. At the very moment, I suddenly recalled the novel. The feeling of life, more precisely, the bliss that I am alive, living in the moment, overwhelmed me. I believe this ecstasy was what Peter Walsh felt when he saw Clarissa entering the dining the room. The prevailing gratitude. Although Woolf discusses various topics in her novel, life-death seems to be the most important theme. Two characters of the opposite background and disposition - Clarissa Dalloway and Septimus Warren Smith - lead the narrative. Their lives progress on the parallel lines, but at one point, the lines startle and eventually cross each other. Both of them incessantly look back upon one’s past and are on the verge of life and death. For Septimus, it is easy to understand how he had gone mad. Once “a pink innocent oval” who came to London with “vanity, ambition, idealism, passion,” Septimus fought in the war, saw and caused numerous deaths, survived, only to become “a face lean, contracted, hostile” who could no longer feel (92, 93, 92). Woolf acknowledges that civilisations have positives. However, the same humanity also destroyed, betrayed, and exploited others. The case of Septimus illustrates the often neglected repercussion of the civilisation. He lost the most celebrated mentality that belongs to the human species: feelings. Woolf depicts the loss as follows: “His wife was crying, and he felt nothing; only each time she sobbed in this profound, this silent, this hopeless way, he descended another step into the pit” (99). Thus, to Septimus, death was the only way to save himself from the pit. Clarissa, albeit she had not as physically suffered as Septimus, also wonders whether the world has meaning. She keeps companies around her, yet the old days in which she could be true are gone. Consequently, she occasionally feels that Clarissa is dead and only the self as Mrs Dalloway continues on (and this is why feminist approach to the novel seems worthwhile though Woolf does not stress out the unfair treatment of women at the time). After she hears the news of Septimus at the party, Clarissa feels for Septimus. She has never seen nor known him, but she understands the pain carried by the man, thinking “[d]eath was defiance … [and] an attempt to communicate [when] people [were] feeling the impossibility of reaching the centre which, mystically, evaded them; closeness drew apart; rapture faded; one was alone” (202). However, she sees an old woman getting into bed, all in solitude, then regains the impetus to live on. Mrs Dalloway chooses a different path: life. She thinks “she must go back” and “must find Sally and Peter” (204).
I think I found a lot of myself in Clarissa. And that explains why the sudden rapture filled inside me before. As Proust said, a good artwork provides one with opportunities to discover oneself, and eventually reassess one’s life. In that sense, Mrs Dalloway is indeed a timeless classic. It is worth reading several times, and I do not doubt each time different impressions will come up. Lastly, it is such a shame that I lack the ability to review more themes - such as the modernity, feminism, memory, etc. - of this magnificent literary feat here. I dare recommend Sparknotes to those who want more ‘in-depth’ analysis. :~(
‘I will come,’ said Peter, but he sat on for a moment. What is this terror? what is this ecstasy? he thought to himself. What is it that fills me with extraordinary excitement?
It is Clarissa, he said.
For there she was.
P.S. I found an interesting website that tracks the route through which each character in Mrs Dalloway had walked: http://mrsdallowaymappingproject.weebly.com/peter-walsh.html. It would be a wonderful experience to follow the routes in modern-day London for fans of Virginia Woolf - although Proust would call it an idiocy.
