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Woolf Seminar:Some themes in Mrs. Dalloway All references are to the Harcourt Brace Harvest Books edition
The novel not only has two main narrative lines involving two separate characters (Clarissa Dalloway and Septimus Smith). Within each narrative there is a particular time and place in the past that the main characters keep returning to in their minds. For Clarissa, the "continuous present" (Gertrude Stein's phrase) of her charmed youth at Bourton keeps intruding into her thoughts on this day in London. For Septimus, the "continuous present" of his time as a soldier during the Great War keeps intruding, especially in the form of Evans, his comrade.
illness the bed and the grave time homoerotic desire death the significance of a party empire narrative point of view the country and the city the sane and the insane war and its victims suicide
Clarissa's illness (heart disease; is this illness suggestive beyond the literal fact of mortality?)
Clarissa's thoughts of death and Septimus' preoccupa tion with the dead (compare also to Jacob's Room); is Mrs. Dalloway Woolf's Memento Mori, as Maria diBattista suggests? And how does the elegiac tone of Jacob's Room compare to or differ from the tone of Mrs. Dalloway?
the country and the city (pastoral life, urban "society" life of London; yet when Clarissa looks out the window from her party that night in Westminster, London, she imagines that she sees the sky as it might appear at Bourton)
The bed and the grave; what connection does adult sexuality have with death? Elizabeth Abel and others (Virginia Woolf and the Fictions of Psychoanalysis, Chicago: U Chicago P, 1989) who read the novel through theories of psychoanalysis suggest that much of the novel's power lies in its treatment of Clarissa's development through Freudian stages and in Woolf's critique of Freudian assumptions about the "normal" progression into heterosexuality. Clarissa's yearning for a more perfect past (the ideal at Bourton and her passionate response to women rather than to men) are not so easily explained away in the novel as merely immature. Abel reads Septimus as a character who illustrates the developmental choices. "Through Septimus, Woolf recasts the developmental impasse as a choice betwen development or death. By recalling to Clarissa the power ofher past and the only method of eternalizing it, Septimus enables Clarissa to acknowledge and renounce its hold, to embrace the imperfect pleasure of adulthood more completely." Consider also that Septimus doesn't want to have sex with Rezia, and she is relieved when he finally touches her at one point. Compare this to Clarissa's worry over having "failed" Richard at Constantinople and elsewhere.
The significance of a party
Clarissa's desire to create a party as a way of bringing people together ("an offering"): this is a recurring theme in Woolf and connects to the aesthetics of G.E. Moore and Alfred North Whitehead; art, for Woolf, was one way to bring people together, but social occasions such as beautifully carried off parties were alternative ways to create beauty and a kind of harmony from the disorder and chaos of our conflicted lives; however, this illusion of harmony is only an illusion and cannot hold. Nonetheless, Woolf frequently emphasized these as one type of her "moments of being." Mrs. Dalloway and Mrs. Ramsay in To the Lighthouse can be compared in their ability to create special places and moments in which to bring people together. Clarissa at one point criticizes "love and religion" as the ways in which people "force" other people. She views her party as an alternative, a way of freeing people to be themselves and to be with each other. This view, is of course, complicated by the degree of dissembling and hypocrisy Peter criticizes and that Clarissa herself acknowledges.The theme of the "sane" and the "insane", the troubling worship of "Proportion" (Bradshaw and Holmes et al) and the "forcing" of the "soul" through "Conversion" (Bradshaw, Kilman et al); Hermione Lee and others have much to say about how Woolf felt in response to the enforced "rest cures" she suffered, where she was removed from Leonard and kept in isolation; her weight dropped significantly (thus the reference to weight--in England, in "stone," not pounds); Lee points out that Woolf felt that her doctors and Leonard conspired to force her not to have children, and she was devastated by this. Woolf herself had suicidal urges after the death of her mother and at other times prior to her eventual suicide in 1941. You may wish to compare the critique of the forces of order and reason and the rest cure in Mrs. Dalloway to Charlotte Perkins Gilman's story "The Yellow Wallpaper."
The theme of time (Big Ben etc; the past, the present; evanescence). You may wish to compare Mrs. Dalloway to
Jacob's Room and to draw some distinctions. We have discussed and will continue to discuss this in class. As you know, Woolf's working title was The Hours. And you may wish to write a paper comparing Mrs. Dalloway to Michael Cunningham's novel The Hours."Empire," postcolonial criticism, and Peter Walsh
Peter Walsh can be read in many ways. One approach is to consider him in light of Britain's colonialist empire. Both Peter Walsh and Miss Parry refer to "coolies" and express racist attitudes. Peter likes to criticize others for snobbishness, yet he represents the British empire in India, a troubling condition indeed. Postcolonial criticism suggests a reading of Peter Walsh in light of the text's own conflicted attitude about the subjugation of others. Clarissa herself must be examined critically in terms of her class, her keeping of servants, her snobbery, etc. And Hugh Whitbread, the type of the English gentleman, whom even Peter and Richard find insufferable. Richard is the more liberal, less stuffy politician, devoted to service to others, but he too is a creature of privilege, though one who prefers the open air. Lady Bruton and Miss Parry also have their attitudes toward "barbarians" etc. Kathy Phillips, in Virginia Woolf Against Empire (Knoxville: U Tennessee P, 1994), has much to say about Woolf's critique of empire and links this critique to the satirical treatment of patriarchal personages such as Dr. William Bradshaw; the colonial impulse is also an impulse to subjugate women.War and its Victims
Toward the end of the novel, at Clarissa's party, Dr. Bradshaw speaks with Richard about adding a provision in a bill at Parliament for the veterans of the Great War who suffer the delayed effects of shell shock. Today, our awareness of post-traumatic stress syndrome has been greatly enhanced by research on Vietnam War veterans. Several critics have linked Woolf's antiwar themes with her critique of patriarchy. Elaine Showalter has shown that both men and women suffered and were oppressed under the conventional notions of manhood and womanhood in Victorian society. Masami Usui argues, in "The Female Victims of the War in Mrs. Dalloway," that not only Septimus, but also Clarissa, Lucrezia Smith, and Doris Kilman are all victims of war. You may recall that Doris Kilman suffers social ostracism when she refuses to declare that Germans are evil. Her happiest memories were of times spent in Germany as a child (you may wish to compare this to Clarissa's memories of Bourton) and Doris' own name has undergone a spelling change from the original German version. You may wish to consider images of war, death, and destruction as well as images of birth, fecundity, nurturance and rejuvenation. See Usui's essay, "The Female Victims of War in Mrs. Dalloway," in Virginia Woolf and War: Fiction, Reality, Myth, ed. Mark Hussey. Syracuse, NY: Syracus U P, 1991.Lesbian/Homoerotic Desire
You may wish to consider Clarissa's passion for women, and the kiss between Sally Seton and Clarissa as an important moment in the novel, and you may wish to contrast/compare this with Elizabeth's attraction to Doris Kilman and with other female relationships. Lesbian desire and alterative constructions of sexuality recur in the novel. Consider also Septimus's relationship with Evans and his lack of desire for his wife. And read back to Jacob's Room to the character of Richard Bonamy (bon amie?) and his love for Jacob. We might ask, wouldn't it have been better to have had Jacob live and be loved by Bonamy, or Clara, or both, or anyone? Following orders, obeying the rules, the conventions of compulsory heterosexuality and political/military obligations--this is a kind of death. Jacob and Septimus are treated as sacrificial lambs. Septimus survives the war but not the loss of Evans and the shock of violence and misery from all the suffering and death he witnessed. The war has taken his soul.Narrative Point of View
You may wish to comment on the shifting point of view in the novel as we move in and out of different characters' consciousnesses. You may wish to comment on Woolf's use of linking devices, such as the motorcar, the aeroplane, the little girl in the park, etc., that serve to connect the disparate threads of narrative layers. Other novelists besides Woolf used the stream-of-consciousness technique, but in both Jacob's Room and Mrs. Dalloway we are not limited to a single character's consciousness. We move in and out of characters' consciousness and perceptions throughout the novel. Consider the significance of the fact that we are not limited to Clarissa's consciousness throughout the novel. What does this shifting among different perspectives have to do with the novel's themes (such as the theme of perception, so prominent here and in Jacob's Room) and with Woolf's notions regarding character?
Suicide
Woolf wrote in her diary not only that she wanted to write about sanity and insanity, but that she also wanted to explore suicide in this novel. (See A Writer's Diary 51). Attitudes toward suicide as cowardice are effectively challenged in her sympathetic portrayal of Septimus and in her satiric portrayal of Drs. Holmes and Bradshaw. Think about suicide and your own attitudes toward it. Consider how Woolf nearly valorizes it in the novel. Clarissa must deal with the fact of the suicide, and she must somehow make room in her world for such a reality. Think of what effect the suicide has on Bradshaw and its ultimate potential impact on pending legislation. Yet, can the Bradshaws really be changed? What would it take to change the fact that no one, except perhaps Lucrezia, could understand or listen to Septimus Smith without wanting to "force" his soul?
this page created March 9 2000
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