Learning Mrs. Dalloway

Published in 1925, Virginia Woolf’s novel Mrs. Dalloway has long since been considered one of the finest English-language novels written. It details a day in the life of high-society Briton, Clarissa Dalloway, but it is more than a slice of life novel—it is a full-on commentary, rich in both writing and substance, and indeed, the writing is one of the more striking parts about it. Stream-of-consciousness is a valuable tool for characterization without active description, and Woolf manages to pull this off in a way that is both subtle and effective.

One of the clearest examples of the switch between character mindsets, and thus, writing styles, comes in the conversation between Clarissa and Peter Walsh—Clarissa, even before this moment, is often surrounded by text that is somehow equally languorous and fleeting. Her ideas are short but connected, leading to lengthy, saltatory sentences that are still constructed with poetic diction. We find one such example on page 229, reading “Now the door opened, and in came—for a single second she could not remember what he was called! so surprised she was to see him, so glad, so shy, so utterly taken aback to have Peter Walsh come to her unexpectedly in the morning! (She had not read his letter.)”

This particular section manages to stylistically lead the reader through Clarissa’s emotions: there is a definite buildup in the repetition of “so (adjective),” and then the sentence leads up to an abrupt cliff in ending it with the afterthought, almost, of “she had not read his letter.” Through this, we see the kind of person Clarissa is; she finds delight in the small things, but not necessarily a satisfaction. She can lead up and up and up, but when the crucial moment of catharsis comes, she is unsatisfied—“cold,” as Peter Walsh later describes her, though his words must be taken with a grain of salt considering his relation to Clarissa.

 

With Peter in mind, because of the back-and-forth exchange between the two characters, he provides a good contrast to who Clarissa is, through the differences in narrative:

Here she is mending her dress; mending her dress as usual, he thought; here she's been sitting all the time I've been in India; mending her dress; playing about; going to parties; running to the House and back and all that, he thought, growing more and more irritated, more and more agitated, for there's nothing in the world so bad for some women as marriage, he thought; and politics; and having a Conservative husband, like the admirable Richard. So it is, so it is, he thought, shutting his knife with a snap. (230)

Peter’s monologue is not nearly as jumpy as Clarissa’s—though they both share the repetition (in construct, rather than specific words, for Peter), Peter descriptions and observations feel insistent, moving forward with the constant sense of frustration that Peter seems to exemplify, and, occasionally, evoke in the reader for his hypocrisy. Where Clarissa’s thoughts ended abruptly, in a way that would suggest that she has, in some way, detached herself from Peter, Peter’s thoughts end “with a snap,” but it feels definitive and yet ongoing, as opposed to dismissive.

 

Woolf has certainly mastered the usefulness of stream-of-consciousness writing in this novel and, through that, has mastered the art of characterization. To even be able to incorporate a fraction of that would be immensely useful, as someone who writes a lot of character-driven things, and I think I would help break the monotony of the usual tactics of bringing a character to life.