Difference in Thought

Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway (1925) explores the inner workings of a cast of characters and follows their thought processes as they move through a day culminating in a party thrown by Clarissa, the title character. Virginia Woolf takes a third person narrative and alternately sets it down inside of each of the heads of four characters: Clarissa, Peter, Lucrezia and Septimus. By using specific vocabulary and sentence structure for each character’s internal thoughts the stream-of-consciousness narrative is differentiated, which allows the reader to delve into each character’s mindset. This technique can be seen most clearly on pages 1-78.

The first character we are faced with is Clarissa. Woolf uses Clarissa to ease the reader into her style. This section is still disjointed and fluid and hard to manage, but it is considerably less so than the subsequent musings of her companions. The fact that she hid her feelings actually makes her feel less on the inside, and it’s only when she’s thinking about Sally that the tone becomes emotional instead of reminiscent. Clarissa is always thinking about other people, their propriety and the parties they throw, her internal mind revolves around surface matter just as much as her external persona.

Lucrezia’s inner thoughts are much more desperate, to reflect her much more desperate situation. The language used is paranoid about other people finding out her situation: “People must notice.” (23). She is otherizing herself through their eyes, is determined to draw a line between her private anguish and the public view. There is significant emphasis put on herself, how Septimus’s illness has affected her life. This obsession with how her life has been torn asunder and her fear of letting other’s see it creates a sense of desperation that is different from the other character’s tone.

The flow of Peter’s mind is more emotional and obsessive that Clarissa’s. Woolf uses his shared memory with Clarissa to bring out their differences. When Clarissa recalls him visiting her at her family home, she remembers his words to her and the details of what happened, how everyone else interacted. But when he begins to reminisce on page 64, he thinks only of his own feelings and how the action affected him. He is being shown as selfish and self-absorbed. Woolf also uses repetition in his thought process to show the way he obsesses over things. “Remember my party, remember my party, said Peter…” (52). He has a series of refrains throughout the portion that focuses in his mind, which is effective in showing the reader the things he thought were important and the way he turned them over in his mind.

Septimus was by far the most erratically written thought process. He also repeats sentences and thoughts, but it is in a more circular way. He wanders away from “No crime; love…”(75) to think about the pain of extracting these truths, just to cycle back to it. Woolf also separates Septimus’ voice from the others through a much shorter average clause length. “The was cut; he mounted;he was free, as it was decreed that he, Septimus, the lord of men, should be free; alone…” (75) The shorter clauses not only speed up the pacing to make the reader feel like their own mind is racing, but differentiates between Lucrezia’s much longer, questioning phrases.

These techniques result in a stream-of-consciousness narration that feels significantly less self-indulgent than many other works with this style of narration. I am going to try to adapt something similar for my next piece, by using a different method of thought for each character. Hopefully I will be able to play with these subtle voice variations to make the characters feel distinct but real.