Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
4 out of 5 stars.
Truly a masterpiece of the Modernist age, with its aesthetic and abstract writing, Mrs Dalloway tells the story of Clarissa Dalloway during the timespan of one day in June 1923. As Clarissa prepares for a party in the evening, she is surmounted by memories and regrets from her past when her long-lost lover, Peter Walsh, suddenly returns from India. At the same time, we follow Septimus's story - another man completely unrelated to Clarrisa. Through his consciousness, Woolf tells the story of a soldier traumatized from war and unable to move forth from the horrors he experienced, notably the death of his friend and fellow soldier, Evans, whom he blames himself for.
Mrs Dalloway was the first novel I read that employed stream of consciousness, and thus Woolf’s use of this unconventional narrative style immediately aroused my interest in the novel. I found that stream of consciousness, with its continuous flow of thoughts, actions, feelings, and memories, lent itself particularly well to this work due to the novel’s exploration of the effects of time on the individual. Clarissa is consumed with memories of her past that arise sporadically into her present. Woolf’s stream of consciousness writing allows for mid-sentence, sudden transitions from the present moment to an account of Clarissa’s memories which effectively depict the all-consuming nature of her past. In turn, the syntactical confusion produced by this narrative style allowed me to understand Clarissa’s vacillating, confused state of internal consciousness. The redoubtable message on memory that Woolf leaves us with is perhaps what I found most memorable about the novel – the extent to which our memories consume our thoughts and antagonize our present, and the amount of time we spend thinking about and reliving our past is truly and frighteningly exemplified in Woolf’s work.
Moreover, Clarissa’s interior consciousness allows for psychoanalytical themes to emerge out of the work. I found this particularly interesting because, being a woman myself, I am fascinated by the manner in which female authors have distinguished and empowered themselves through their writing. Woolf’s exploration of contentious topics such as homosexuality and post-traumatic stress disorder throughout Mrs Dalloway was enlightening in this manner, as it was a courageous affirmation of topics which were somewhat taboo at the time. This is a rebellious novel. "Sally stopped; picked a flower; kissed her on the lips." - This quote manifests the entirety of Woolf's novel in more ways than one. Firstly, it encompasses Woolf's rebellious intentions through an exploration of sexuality. Secondly, with its inticate punctuation, it is evidence of Woolf's individual, incoherent, and complex writing style. And thirdly, in all its simplicity and beauty, it signals the importance of mundane actions, and how Woolf decided that these too were worth the attention of writers.
The inclusion of Septimus, whom I categorize as a major protagonist along with Clarissa, allowed for a deeper exploration of the psychological effects of war. The uncomfortable closeness that I felt with the character whilst reading the descriptions of his disturbed thoughts and feelings demonstrates Woolf’s undeniable skill of consciousness writing; similarly, for readers of the time, this uncomfortable feeling forced the acknowledgement of post-traumatic stress disorder as a reality which had to be confronted and not shied away from. To me, such a reading of Mrs Dalloway allows for an understanding of the importance of literature’s role in conveying truth through intimate and sensorily descriptive writing. Through this form of credibility my fascination for Woolf’s writing-style matured and grew.
In addition, my interest with the text led me to read extracts of Woolf’s manuscript draft of Mrs Dalloway. At one point, Woolf writes, “the war might {'might' is crossed out} was really done with now,” a hesitation which I find signifies how the fear of war may still have been present in Woolf’s mind. This is mirrored in the ‘final manuscript’, the novel itself, where the war is mentioned, though seems to be presented implicitly, allowing for a much more powerful effect than if it were directly stated. For instance, the recurring symbolic mention of falling leaves, an ancient literary symbol for the dead, struck me as an implicit reminder of losses at war. When considering this, scenes in the park where Septimus hallucinates that his deceased soldier friend Evans appears from behind a tree now serve to heighten the impact of death on Septimus’s consciousness. Through similar implicit writing throughout the novel, such as a description of the unintentional looks of passers-by at the sky as a plane passes overhead (a memory of bombs), Woolf delineates the impact of war on society, further enhancing the disastrous effects of the past and of memory on her characters by conjoining this with current issues of her time.
(Left): My personal notes on stream of consciousness in the exposition of Mrs Dalloway.
