A hot London day in June; ‘the swing, tramp, and trudge; in the bellow and the uproar; the carriages, motor cars, omnibuses, vans, sandwich men shuffling and swinging.’ (1) Woolf wrote a novel that narratively explored an ordinary day and the experiences the characters in the novel have on this singular day. The text was to triumph as a literary experiment: Mrs Dalloway (1925). Through various literary techniques, ‘tunnelling processes’ and the exploration of womanhood, Woolf sets up an impressionistic text that can be read through a psychoanalytic lens. Sue Vice describes psychoanalysis as ‘an interpretative strategy, concentrating particularly on the language which tries to render the body’s experiences, the role of sexuality in defining the self, and the construction of subjectivity and gender.’ (2) In this blog post I aim to explore this hot London day and examine the information Woolf sets up for readers to interpret. At times this analysis will cross over into a Feminist reading, however, this is understandable when analysing the position of women in a text that explores the mind of women in such depth.
What Woolf does so cleverly is use one event to explore multiple experiences. This allows the narrative to flow from one mind to another to the outside world and back into another’s mind. One event that highlights this narrative flow so well is the episode with the sky-writing aeroplane: ‘dropping dead down, the aeroplane soared straight up […] out fluttered behind it a thick muffled bar of white smoke.’ (p.17) This single event on an ordinary day allows Woolf to describe the event narratively through multiple characters - both major and minor. ‘“Glaxo,” said Mrs Coates in a strained, awe-stricken voice’ is compared to ‘“Kreemo,” murmured Mrs Bletchley, like a sleepwalker.’ (p.17) The minor characters are given the same significance as characters deemed major, such as Clarissa or Septimus. There is no hierarchy in experiencing life - one experience is not favoured above another - and this single event shows how an ordinary day can become extraordinary through the presenting of characters’ thoughts. Readers need and want these snippets of experience so as to build up a picture of what is occurring in the narrative.
What aids Woolf in her depiction of this ordinary day through the mind of many is her impressionistic writing technique. She captures the sights, smells, sounds, and more which adds up to create an impressionist collage of a shared experience. If these impressions are repeated throughout life they can cause memories to rise. Take the use of a simple hairpin:
‘But she would remember going cold with excitement and doing her hair in a kind of ecstasy (now the old feeling began to come back to her, as she took out her hairpins, laid them on the dressing-table, began to do her hair), with the rooks flattening up and down in the pink evening light’ (p.29-30)
Throughout the text, certain impressions trigger past feelings. What becomes fascinating is what triggers these memories: hairpins, hat-making materials, fresh morning air. A memory can be triggered by any impression that has stayed long enough with the character to affect them in the same way once again. Through her use of punctuation Woolf is able to draw attention to these triggering objects. The use of parenthesis about interrupts her memory at Bourton, drawing a link between the past and present in the text with the stage direction like description presented in the parenthesis. Woolf emphasises how the ordinary, any usual object, can become extraordinary as it triggers the subconscious.
The memories of Bourton become a key element in the narrative of Mrs Dalloway when reading it from a psychoanalytic viewpoint. Elizabeth Abel explains that ‘although the Bourton scenes Clarissa remembers span a period of several years, they partake of a single emotional climate that absorbs them into a homogeneous backdrop of the present day in June.’ (3) What become of interest in these memories is what is specifically remembered and the emotions tied to these memories. For Peter, his memories at Bourton are tainted with regret and pain. The memory of Clarissa telling him she was to choose Richard Dalloway is interrupted with the small impression: ‘how sights fix themselves upon the mind! For example, the vivid green moss.’ (p.54) Why is the ‘vivid green moss’ remembered? Do these small remembered impressions allow the reader to place meaning on these puzzle pieces? Woolf spoke of a ‘tunnelling process’ she used to give readers information on characters when she felt it important and necessary. Could these remembered impressions be part of this process? Potentially.For Clarissa, the memories of Bourton are filled with happiness and the remembrance of growth from girl to woman. The different presentations of the Bourton-related memories affect how readers will analyse the characters in the present day. It could be suggested that Clarissa’s fond thoughts of Bourton could be used as a mean to escape the dread she has been feeling all day. For Peter, the past acts as a record of what he perceives as his past failures and causes him to think about his current situation with regards to relationships, employment and his position in life.
Although the relationship between Clarissa and Septimus of importance in the text I want to examine the less explored relationship between Clarissa and Rezia Warren Smith. This allows me to discuss the importance of female space and female relationships with Mrs Dalloway. Clarissa and Rezia are both wives who have been removed from a ‘female paradise.’ (4) This female paradise is a space where women interact with other women, a space that is then interrupted by the War and the patriarchy. The connection between Rezia and Clarissa becomes apparent after Septimus’s death. ‘It seemed to her as she drank the sweet stuff that she was opening long windows, stepping out into some garden’ (p.127) is reminiscent of the opening of Mrs Dalloway where Clarissa remembers ‘she burst open the French windows and plunged at Bourton.’ (p.3) The women are connected by spaces that are open to them. For Rezia it was the hat-making activity with her sister, for Clarissa it was Bourton with Sally Seton. Abel argues that ‘the death of [Septimus] releases Rezia to return imaginatively to a past she implicitly shares with Clarissa: the female-centred world anterior to heterosexual bonds.’ (5) The war acts as a dividing factor for both factors, creating a historical landmark that places them in ‘masculine present’ away from a ‘mythically feminine past.’ (6)
The influence of Sally on Clarissa becomes an influence that Clarissa remembers fondly. Although the ‘exquisite’ kiss they share could be interpreted through a lesbian lens, I argue that this kiss is a cementing of a female bond that Clarissa has, until Sally’s arrival, been devoid of. Woolf gives readers very little information on Clarissa’s childhood, focusing on just the memories of Bourton. Any personal information about Clarissa’s family is revealed by other characters. Readers are told about her sister Sylvia’s death by Peter, and her mother’s death is implied by Clarissa’s reaction after a party-goer informs her ‘she looked tonight […] so like her mother as she first saw her walking in a garden in a grey hat.’ (p.149) It becomes clear that Clarissa existed in a space with little or no influence of other women until Sally takes up residence at Bourton. I argue that Sally becomes a role model for Clarissa and this is why she remembers her so fondly. The kiss is recognition of the sacred bond between Sally and Clarissa, one built on teaching radicalism, gift-giving, and teaching that a mother or sister would have potentially given to Clarissa.
Ultimately, this is just one reading of Woolf's Mrs Dalloway. However, a psychoanalytic reading has opened up some interesting points of discussion, espcially the history of Clarissa and the importance of female spaces in a text dominated by the aftershocks of the war. Impressionist techniques and free indirect discourse allow Woolf to transform an ordinary day into an extraordinary reading experience as readers are made to recognise the impressions they face everyday and their importance. The use of past and present narrative slips helps Woolf to 'tunnel' behind her characters, revealing (or in some cases keeping hidden) nuggets of information that would provide readers with many ways to interpret characters. The whole text is an experience that one should immerse themselves in to fully appreciate Woolf at her experimental best.
- Josie Cray
(1) Virginia Woolf, Mrs Dalloway, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009)
(2) Sue Vice, 'Introduction,' in Psychoanalytic Criticism: A Reader (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1996) p.1
(3) Elizabeth Abel, 'Between the Acts in Mrs Dalloway' in Virginia Woolf and the Fictions of Psychoanalysis (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989) p.31
(4) ibid, p.34
(5) ibid, p.34
(6) ibid, p.42
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