Virginia Woolf’s second novel, Mrs. Dalloway (1925), is many things. On one level, it’s a psychological portrait of London’s residents after the first World War. On another, it’s a love triangle, but long after the drama has concluded, and when all that’s left is dust. Doubtless, it is a feat of high modernism, displaying a trademark love of interior exploration and experimental language. As such, the plot takes a back seat to the structure in Virginia’s Woolf’s tale of the aging socialite, Clarissa Dalloway. The story revolves around a party thrown by Clarissa and takes place over the course of a single day. As the day progresses, Clarissa and her expanded social circle muse about the nature of life, death, society.
In the style made popular by modernist authors like James Joyce and William Faulkner in the early to mid-twentieth century, Mrs. Dalloway is told as a stream-of-consciousness narrative (i.e interior monologue). However, rather than focus on the thoughts of a single character, Woolf’s novel flows across several minds as the day progresses. The final effect is an intimate relationship between the reader and the people who brush past Clarissa Dalloway as she organizes and prepares for her party. Woolf presents this woman and this event like a pebble dropped into a pool; the story is a languid picture, not only of the sinking pebble but of the ripples it casts.
“Mrs. Dalloway is always giving parties to cover the silence”
-Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway
There is an overriding melancholy in the minds of the characters the third-person narrator follows. On one level, Clarissa’s party is an attempt to overcome isolation. The appearance of two friends from her past, however, shows the distance her social habits create. Time and space have removed Clarissa from the intimacy she once shared with her old friends Peter and Sally. As she flits by them, never holding a full or deep conversation with anyone, she becomes aware of the fact that people can never really know each other. This is one of the reasons the novel takes place in the interior. Characters are isolated within their own mind, even when surrounded by others. Throwing a party helps Clarissa and her guests escape the interior depths of their existential crises by focusing on the superficial. Their connections are fragmented, however, and they are thus unable to ease their loneliness.
This overriding sense of isolation is accompanied by an inescapable awareness of death. Woolf’s fragmented post-war society can’t separate itself from thoughts of mortality. Clarissa’s former flame, Peter Walsh, is so panic-stricken by the idea of death that the threat of time aging Clarissa’s face prompts him to stalk a young woman through the streets, simply as a distraction. Peter uses romance and adventure to drown out the thought of death, but the turmoil of his lifestyle keeps him from traditional success both in love and in his career. He jumps into things with full steam and passion, but nothing seems to last. As such, his main conflict is the fear of a life wasted—a lack of legacy. Impermanence is the inescapable marker of his life and a constant reminder of his impending death. Clarissa deals with her own fear of death by surrounding herself with symbols of life. She throws parties and buys flowers, skating across the glossy surface of life, but she is always aware that death flows beneath the ice. The thin surface can break at any moment, so Clarissa uses the beautiful routine of wealth and society as a distraction. Of all the characters in Mrs. Dalloway, Septimus, a war veteran outside of Clarissa’s wealthy circle, has the most intimate relationship with death. He saw death first-hand in the war, and this experience left him scarred and numb, so he retreats inside himself and holds imaginary conversations with the dead. Septimus is afraid of death, but he is more afraid of the outside world and his inability to create significant emotional connections with others. What separates Septimus from Peter and Clarissa is that he no longer tries to connect with life and the world outside himself; instead, he retreats fully into death and the mind.
“She had a perpetual sense, as she watched the taxi cabs, of being out, out, far out to sea and alone; she always had the feeling that it was very, very dangerous to live even one day.”
-Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway
Like most stream-of-consciousness narratives, Mrs. Dalloway, though short, is not a particularly simple or easy read. Much of the mastery of this novel is contained in the writing itself. There is a beauty in the ease with which the narrative seems to float between distinct minds. Woolf captures the complexities of time and psyche between the pages of her novel. When the story ends, the distance between the reader and the characters remains, despite the revelation of their interior beings. The reader gets to know the characters intimately, and yet has no traditional connection to their story. We don’t know much about what they physically do or what happens to them. For example, we experience the love triangle between Clarissa, Peter, and Richard in flashes of their memories, but there is no romantic conclusion to Peter’s eventual return to London because he and Clarissa fail to meaningfully connect. Something always gets in the way. The whole novel essentially has no rising or sinking action because nothing ever seems to happen at all. Thus, Woolf manages to leave her reader with a feeling of isolation that mirrors the lon
I definitely recommend you give Virginia Woolf’s well-known classic a read, though you should leave it for when you’re ready for something heavier and more experimental. It certainly isn’t light, but Woolf is one of those authors everyone has to read at least once in their lives.
Mrs. Dalloway was actually my first look into Woolf’s writing and although I was frustrated by a lack of traditional story trajectory, I think that the emotional state with which the novel left me was exactly what the author intended. Mrs. Dalloway got me thinking about life, death, the past, and social connections. It filled me with melancholy and nostalgia and yet left me with hope.
Let me know what you thought about it if you read it, and tell me which of Virginia Woolf’s books you think I should read next.
