Mrs. Dalloway: Virginia Woolf as a Modernist Writer
Just as important though are the uses of space in time in these writings. Novels are often vast and cover a long span of writing. Some take place over weeks, while others tell the story over the span of months, years or even decades.
This wasn’t the case with Virginia Woolf’s “Mrs. Dalloway.” The entire novel takes the place during one day. Obviously, this style limits the information that can be conveyed to the reader to the events that happen in that 24-hour period, except for scenes in which a character flashed back to prior events.
This style, however, gives the reader a definite sense of urgency, as there as a defined period of time and the action cannot go on indefinitely.
The style of using the time of one day to tell a complicated story is used in popular culture as well in the television show “24.” The show uses each 60-minute program to tell what happens in the course of one hour and the entire 24 episode season takes place in one very, very long day. “Every second counts,” brags the show’s tagline and it’s that theme that keeps loyal fans riveted and keeps fans tuning in week after week.
While Mrs. Dalloway doesn’t feature the same type of action and suspense that the television program does, but does show how one event can cause a domino effect and affect several people’s lives simultaneously.
Setting the time issue aside, there is also quite a bit of commentary on social space, particularly when it comes to examining the characters and looking at how they may compare and contrast each other based upon their views, station in life and other factors.
Youngjoo Son says that both Woolf and D.H. Lawrence, another Modernist writer, often experimented with several things including spatial discourse. The works of Woolf and Lawerence were vastly different, but Son argues that there was a common thread in the way the two writers constructed their characters and their writings in general.
It appears that the writing may not have been as experimental when it comes to thematic elements as it was addressing the concerns of the day. According to Cynthia R. Port, the first part of the 20th century saw a shift in the way women were viewed and saw more of a concentration being placed on older women, as opposed to youthful, sexually vibrant type. Woolf’s Mrs.
Dalloway shows a dynamic contrast between these two and tends to portray the older as a more sophisticated and wiser type, while the more youthful characters seem to demonstrate the most compassion.
Modernism was shaped by the changing world, a world that was sometimes a war both politically and internally. With change comes both good and bad things and the writers of the Modernist period seem to relay that well and in a realistic manner that today’s readers can visualize. According to the Modernisms powerpoint, the era saw a number of female city dwellers and frequently showed them as a small fish in a large pond, as the hustle and bustle of the world kept buzzing at dizzying speeds around them and it was a constant battle now to get lost in the mix.
When it comes to Modernist fiction, Virginia Woolf’s “Mrs. Dalloway” provides a good example of Modernist themes, especially in the way she portrays and characterizes the characters in the novel.
Time and space aren’t always the same for all people and this point is clarified in Mrs. Dalloway. Like Woolf herself, Septimus Warren Smith suffered from mental illness. In “Moments of Being in June,” Adams uses Smith’s actions such as having delusions of birds singing to him in Greek to make a connection with the actions and ultimately in his decision to kill himself.
Although the writing style shows Mrs. Dalloway had an urgency in maintaining her party and perfection, Smith also had an urgency to make a change, to find a cure or to get some type of relief. Adams says the “rest cure” which is often suggested for mental patients often makes them worse than they were before. In some ways, this suggest that the “event” that sets a chain of events in motion may have been the suggestion of this “rest cure” or even something prior to that.
Since Woolf had mental problems herself, she knew first-hand how society treats people with mental disease or anything that they don’t understand. Therefore, she was able to use her characterize to show the plight that Smith goes through and the things that lead him to the conclusion that suicide isn’t only the best option, but it is infact the only option he has.
The title character seems to trivialize the suicide of Septimus Smith even though she is very affected by the news of his death, even if it may have been for selfish reasons. As common with Modernist literature, Woolf allows the readers to see many facets of the characters. Mrs. Dalloway seems to care more about how the tragic news of Smith’s suicide will affect her party than she cares about the actual self-inflicted death of Smith.
Stream of consciousness is plays a major role in Modernist fiction and it’s no different in Woolf’s “Mrs. Dalloway.” The character, though, isn’t a brainchild of Woolf, as the character in “The Voyage Out” and Woolf reworked that character for “Mrs. Dalloway on Bond Street,” a short story that set the stage for the full novel. “First and foremost, the Mrs. Dalloway of ‘Mrs. Dalloway on Bond Steet’ is a bit less congenial and (arguably) more self-critical than the graceful if flawed woman in the novel.” (Adams 1)
Adams also suggests that the Mrs. Dalloway from the short story was characterized as “the perfect hostess.” In fact, Adams article states that Mrs. Dalloway was patterned after Kitty Maxes, who was a friend of Woolf’s mother. Maxes was also characterized as being a “superb hostess and conservative socialite.” (Adams 1)
Woolf uses another character – Clarissa – to show another side of the same events. Clarissa shows the most compassion to the news of Smith’s death, even though her reaction can’t exactly be classified as “heartfelt.” Her reaction, and the way Woolf portrays her, provides a contrast and much more than old vs. young or mature vs. immature. It was Clarissa that was simply reacting to Smith’s death, as opposed to Mrs. Dalloway who saw the death as a tragedy as it impact her life.
Adams writes, “Although Clarissa is the primary focalizer of the novel, she is far from the only important perspective presented.” She goes on to say that characters such as Peter Walsh and Septimus Warren Smith, which Adams classifies as Clarissa’s double, were important points of view in the stream of consiousness telling of the story. Adams even goes so far as to say that the minor characters in the novel such as Jenny the maid, have an impact on the story. “Writers like Woolf (or Joyce for that matter) may have thought that they were ‘breaking the mold’ and defying convention, but contemporary scholars have demonstrated how these non-traditional writers a new narrative convention, ‘stream of consciousness'”
It is here that the time aspect really comes into play. The reader can clearly see the urgency and the impact that the news of Smith’s death has on Mrs. Dalloway and the party that she’s trying to host. Perhaps there is some part of Mrs. Dalloway that really does feel bad that Smith has chosen to take his own life. As Dalloway is portrayed as a fine, upstanding woman it would stand to reason that she would be at least sympathetic and sorry to hear of Smith’s death. Had the news came the day before, the day after or even prior to or following the party, we might have seen an entirely different reaction. Mrs. Dalloway prided herself on being an impeccable hostess and she couldn’t stand to see anything go wrong to disrupt her party. As most people would have a roll-with-the punches attitude, understand that sometimes things do happen with rotten timing and schedule to have the party at another date, Mrs. Dalloway is such a perfectionist that she isn’t only unwilling to do this, she is incapable of doing it.
In the same incident, Woolf builds the character and shows up the content of Dalloway’s character and showing us that one event can set a chain of things in motion. Most of all, we can see here that Smith’s decision to take his own life was far-reaching and affected people other than just him. Whether it’s Mrs. Dalloway being upset that her party has been ruined or someone that loved him longing for just one more moment with him, Woolf is showing that one decision affects a lot of people and the timing of the decision can make an impact, too.
The use of space and time plays a critical role in Modernist writing, to the extent that the setting and metaphorical explanations of space and time are almost as vital to the story (or poem) as the characters. In fact, the themes go hand in hand with the concept of space and time in Modernist writings. Much like adjectives describes a noun, the poetic devices and writing style take strides at giving the characters more depth, more personality and furthering the writer’s ability to give the reader a slice of life from the character’s point of view. In the Modernist times – and still in current society – there was a belief that older was better, most respectable, more reliable and more trustworthy. This comes through in other Modernist fiction that has been read through this term, including the short stories “Araby” and “Miss Brill.”
The young man in Araby wasn’t really taken seriously because of his age, while it was automatically assumed that the title character in “Miss Brill” was wise and proper just because she had lived for many years. In fact, Mansfield’s “Miss Brill” sees herself as retired and doesn’t look to the future as a youthful person might. She doesn’t dream and she doesn’t set goals for herself. It seems that she had turned bitter in her old age, something that time has done to her. Her compassion, love and interest in anything seems to have faded. In general, Mansfield doesn’t paint a very desiarable picture of growing old with this character.
Because of the way Mansfield wrote Miss Brill, there is also a sense of urgency. The reader sees everything that’s unfolding in “real time” and context clues indicate that something big is getting ready to happen. The author opted not to tell us for sure how it resolved. Instead, the reader can make their own decision. We do know that Miss Brill takes off her fur. But why? Does that mean she is tired. Does it mean that she died in that moment?
Personally, I choose the latter. I think Mrs. Brill had grown old, and the time passing had given her a bitterness to the world, and she is currently concerned about her place in society. She wants to bow out gracefully and she can see that life is moving on and not including her, so I feel she has just decided to let go. Again, this would be a decision that she is making that will impact a number of people and the timing of the decision will impact people much like Smith’s decision to take his own life in Mrs. Dalloway.
I believe the fur is a symbol of Mrs. Brill’s life, as it was something that she treasured in her life. In the moment that she decides to put the fur aside, I feel she is also putting her own life aside. Unlike Smith, she isn’t killing herself. She is simply stopping to hold onto something that isn’t entirely hers anymore. She can’t make herself stop breathing and most likely the moment she took off the fur wasn’t the moment that she took her last breath. However, it shows she is ready to give up the things that she has held onto a treasured for so long, the fur and most importantly her life.
Although fiction plays a major part in Modernist writing, there is also an emphasis on poetry as well. In many cases, it is easier to see some aspects of time and space in the confines of a poem than in prose. Because poetry is usually much shorter than a novel, it sometime plays a much bigger importance as well.
Yeats frequently uses phrases that indicate passage of time and the importance of time in his poems. Joseph Frank writes that “Modern Angelo-American poetry received its initial impetus from the Imagist movement of the years directly preceding and following the First World War.” (Frank 787)
One of the most important an influencial writers during this period, according to Frank, was Ezra Pound, who was known as a leading theoretician of Imagism. “But Pound’s definition of the image, perhaps the keenest of his perceptions, is of fundamental importance for any discussion of modern literary form.” (Frank 787)
According to Frank, both Pound and poet T.S. Eliot attempted to “undermine the inherent consecutiveness of language, frustrating the reader’s normal expectation of a sequence and forcing him to perceive the elements of the poem as juxtaposed in space rather than unrolling in time.” (Frank 788)
Both used forms of streams of consiousness, allowing the writing, characters and emotions to flow and not having a defined order or structure. The stream of consciousness became a new style and was particularly definitive of the Modernist era.
Frank says that the sections of Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” are “not governed by syntactical logic,” while insisting that there is a structure in the poem.
Eliot used a lot of symbolism in his poems starting most notably with “The Waste Land.” Eliot was influenced by French Symbolist writers and desired to use some of their influence in his poetry. For example, “it strove to create a poem around a single image or senation” and “attempted to use the subconscious associations of the mind.” (Old Possum 3)
According to Adams, all Modern poets were writing in the shadow of Romantic poets. Eliot fell into this mold as well, but it was more clear when looking at other writers of the day include Pound and Yeats.
Yeats seemed to have more of a structure than Eliot and Yeats once said that poetry couldn’t speak to a political condition and stated that “We [poets] have no gift to set a statesman’s right.” (Adams 1) Some brief context for yeats.
Although Yeats did not use his poetry to make a social or political statement, he did believe that there are elements of time and space that are present in his writing. There is the same sense of urgency that we find in parts of Modernist prose and the same theme that are common threads throughout all of Modernist literature. The feeling on age and experience is present in a number of his poems.
For example, his poem “Adam’s Curse” is all about time and making the comparison that a writer might spend hours working on a line and it must sound like it just rolled off of the tongue. Similarly, he reasons that women spend hours getting ready and making sure they look good, but would never adknowledge all the time that it takes to look they way they do.
