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Mrs. Dalloway in terms of Modernism
Typology: Essays (university)
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Submitted by ALİ KUBAT 2017628218005
Paper Supervisor Asst. Prof. Dr. Nazila HEİDARZADEGAN
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world which many traditional certainties had departed, and a certain sort of Victorian confidence not only in the onward progress of mankind but in the very solidity and visibility of reality itself has evaporated” (Bradbury and McFarlane,1976) 1. Virginia Woolf is known as
a famous modernist writer who had used these features in her novels especially in Mrs. Dalloway. For example in Mrs. Dalloway , Woolf describes the Big Ben shortly: “irrevocable” and “The leaden circles dissolve in the air” which reveal the fact that she has noticed the passing of time and also suggest the importance of time associated with individuals’ temporal experience in modern life. In this study, I try to show and explain some features of Modernism through characters, plot and setting. Besides this, I mention relations between characters such as Mrs. Dalloway ,as Protagonist , and Septimus who has some mental problems wtih his past memories.
This novel by Virginia Woolf is very successful in many respects. The main reason why I find it successful is the emphasis on the 'present time' perception and the multi- layeredness of the moment. The novel also keeps track of both the 'past' and the 'present time', even though the event flow is as short as twelve hours from party preparation to the end. All life is portrayed as 'now and here'. It reveals the differences in the perception of the moment (Clarissa Dalloway, Septimus Warren Smith and Peter Walsh) in various aspects of perspective. On the same day, the inner voices of every character living in the same city reflect the richness of life and present. In this novel, ordinary party organising event transforms into an entire life story with a wonderful setting, life, death and preferences.
Another point I find successful is the emphasis on the unifying of the moment. Mrs. Dalloway and Septimus Smith never meet each other in novel. However; many things that
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combine them are mentioned in the novel. The explosion of the tire of a car passing in the street, Both Dalloway and Septimus and Lucrezia Smith, are scared even she was in the flower shop and Smiths were on the street. Smiths and mrs Dalloway witness the advertised airplane from different places. Peter Walsh, who later fell asleep in the park, saw Smiths and said, "It was guaranteed that If she were here she would speak to these unhappy lovers"(P81) 2 and he establishes a connection with Mrs Dalloway. Sir William Bradshaw's talking about the suicide in his party, initially irritates Dalloway, but then creates an interaction that will piss Septimus and then create an effect with him. Woolf has also successfully used common temporal and common space items to keep the whole novel 'now and here' feeling alive which are also dominated the novel. The bell sound of the Big Ben clock tower throughout the novel,while emphasize on the inevitability of time for each character and the power of change, on the other hand, it seems that all characters love and cannot leave all the beauty of London city. The constant use of flashbacks and memory are the techniques by which Virginia Woolf creates interior time. The image of Big Ben at the beginning of a new chapter signals the presence of external reality. The image of the city is not static or lifeless, it is full of cars, buses and crowds of people living their lives simultaneously.(Simion,2014)
There is no actual story, no plots or sub-plots, no action in the traditional sense, nothing actually ”happens” in this novel, apart from the “myriad of impressions” created by Virginia Woolf’s new style of writing, as opposed to the traditional one.” Examine for a moment an ordinary mind on an ordinary day”,she says in her essay, Modern Fiction.” The mind receives a myriad impressions-trivial, fantastic, evanescent, or engraved with the sharpest of steel. From all sides they come, an incenssant shower of innumerable atoms, and as they fall, as they shape themselves into the life of Monday or Tueday, the accent falls differently from of old…Life is not a series of gig lamps symmetrically arranged, life is a
of her life. She feels about Sally "as men feel," but she does not recognise these feelings as signs of bisexuality 3. The second character of the novel is Septimus Warren Smith represents the other side hidden in Dalloway. The fact that he finally chose death and came against the imprisonment of his soul, it led Mrs. Dalloway to empathize with him and identify herself. Septimus, driven by a spiritual bust due to the war, chose not to feed himself to the bourgeoisie while being two minds between insanity and health. Clarissa chose to be a woman whom bourgeois liked and favored, rather than throwing an adventure with Peter or falling in love with Sally. While Septimus was suffering for not adapting the society, Mrs. Dalloway is also suffering for her success.
Indeed, she first thought that he might live while Clarissa would die. As a result, many critics understand his death to be a substitute for Clarissa, for if he dies for his war experience (especially the death of his friend) and his inability to adjust to life; she is able to live, to adjust to the prison of her married life. Clarrisa wins psychological time and linear time whereas Septimus lost both. Septimus came as Christ as a savior for Clarissa. They both felt the necessity of spiritual privacy. They couldn't accept their reality for what it is. But they are, however, differentiated by their choices. Clarissa moves in her life by choosing a safe option while sacrificing her love to Peter. Also, she is always keeping herself busy with parties and such things just to escape from the reality. When he faces the horrible reality that Clarissa keeps escaping from, he has lost his mind! The similarities are that both Septimus and Clarissa feel that they are outside floating in the world, looking on at themselves at the world ahead of them and their actions. They feel very lonely and also very isolated from the world and feel very restless about themselves.
In Mrs Dalloway we have several narrators, flashbacks, stream-of-consciousness style, and a totally fragmented story. As a modernist, Virginia Woolf rejects the idea of a linear storyline that many writers had used in the past, and she rejects the idea that one being who "knows all" tells the whole story. Part of her point is to demonstrate through the book how life has changed after the war: life is not so tidy anymore. To oversimplify: remember how Clarissa feels about Sir William Bradshaw. That he's oppressive and authoritarian, and only wants things done in the English and traditional way. That’s sort of how Virginia Woolf felt about traditional storytelling.
The most dominant is that the novel's premise marks a "shift" in both content and narrative style. It was in this where the text becomes Modernist. In terms of content, Mrs. Dalloway focuses on how the fundamental notion of consciousness- "a whole life in a day"- is part of our being in the world. This is yet another "shift" in our thinking and in the way "human relations change." Mrs. Dalloway is not a direct narrative type of protagonist because Woolf believes that this shift which has taken place in both society and intellectual consciousness makes this impossible. This alienation is highly Modernist in its suggestion that individuals are not always immersed fully in a social group or in a collective entity. Clarissa's sense of consciousness is defined by how she has one foot in a social setting and another that exists entirely on the outside of it. Such a reality leads to a sense of fragmentation, the very idea that there is no totality.
To sum up; Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway is one of pioneers works in modernist literature including setting, plot, time, characters and other features of modernism. Novel is known specially with stream of consciousness techniques through the character mrs. Dalloway, the author tries implicitly to show her readers. When we read the novel we read also the life of Virginia Woolf and her thoughts about “life and death”.
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