Mrs. Dalloway Stream of Consciousness Analysis

Jei Woo

In her novel titled Mrs. Dalloway, Virginia Woolf writes of a day in the life of Clarissa Dalloway, an upper-class woman who lives in post-World War I London, utilizing a certain stream-of-consciousness writing style. Such a stream-of-consciousness writing style blends the thoughts and actions of a character and, at many times, with those of another character. One can analyze such a writing style while executing a close reading of a certain passage in the novel, such as the passage in which Mrs. Dalloway meets and converses with another person of high social status, Hugh Whitbread.

Mrs. Dalloway is in the middle of a walk through London when she happens upon Hugh Whitbread, whom she describes as the “admirable Hugh” (197). In the beginning, the first few lines of dialogue between Mrs. Dalloway and Mr. Whitbread are punctuated in quotation marks. However, when Evelyn Whitbread, Hugh Whitbread’s wife, is mentioned, Woolf writes, “Was Evelyn ill again?” (198). This line, however, is not in any quotations and is not shown to be one of Mrs. Dalloway’s thoughts, though it is presumably. The following line is a combination of thoughts and actions of both characters: “Evelyn was a good deal out of sorts, said Hugh, intimating by a kind of pout or swell of his well-covered, manly, extremely handsome, perfectly upholstered body…” (198). In this quote, Woolf includes Hugh’s speech as well as a description of Hugh’s body, which has to be in the mind of Mrs. Dalloway for we know that he is a subject of her admiration. Apparently, Woolf does not bother to create the distinction between thought and action through her physical writing. The next few lines also emphasize Woolf’s stream-of-consciousness writing style because they follow the certain stream of thoughts that must have passed through Mrs. Dalloway’s head during her encounter with Mr. Whitbread. Her train of thought moves from her considering herself a nuisance for thinking about asking of Evelyn’s ailments, then to her thinking that her hat was not “the right hat for the early morning,” and finally to how Hugh “always made her feel…that she might be a girl of eighteen” (198).

The next passage also demonstrates Woolf’s stream-of-consciousness writing style not only because it blends in Mrs. Dalloway’s thoughts into the writing, but also because the writing moves back and forth between time, from memory to present. When Mrs. Dalloway remembers Peter Walsh’s contempt for Hugh Whitbread, Woolf writes in the form of mental pictures: “She could remember scene after scene at Bourton—Peter furious; Hugh not, of course, his match in any way, but still not a positive imbecile as Peter made out; not a mere barber’s block” (198). Woolf switches back from thought to action and from past to present, which follows Mrs. Dalloway’s stream of thought that is racing through her head during her meeting with Mr. Whitbread. The writing style itself is very free in nature and possesses great momentum because it flows very easily from page to page. 

Time is Out of Joint: the Retrospection of Mrs. Dalloway

What’s clear to me about this text is that time is absolutely out of joint. From the motif of the Big Ben clock, noted by Woolf several times in the text, to the constant “flashbacks” and general sense of nostalgia from beginning to end, it is eminent for us as astute readers to acknowledge the omnipresence and role of time in the text and how we can apply that to the reality we live in.

It seems that every character mentioned, from Clarissa to Septimus to Sally and even Peter is preoccupied with events that have already happened, and it’s noteworthy to say that while we’re reading Mrs. Dalloway, we actually get more of each characters “past” and what they “used to do” or where they used to go, than we get anything of their personality or current life. What Woolf is implying here by doing this in her work is that no matter how apparent or unapparent it is, our past does not only haunt us, but shapes our personalities and the way we view the world from then on. That fact is so dramatized here (or is it, as we don’t truly know how frequently other people ponder the past) by Woolf is her way of getting this message across. Every character, whether physically or emotionally, reacts to what has shaped them in a different way.

There are several subtle moments in the text that indicate that there’s more to time, more that effects humans, than just past time, present time, and future time. For example, the theme of death alludes to the stopping of time. Death is treated interestingly in the text, actually, for the biggest instance within which the characters interact with it is through Septimus. While in Mrs. Dalloway, the other characters besides Septimus see death as something uncontrollable, Septimus killing himself is a blatant attempt on his part to control time—he chooses when he dies, not time. A more “simple” symbol would be the ticking of the Big Ben clock, which in my opinion represents the constancy or even redundancy of time, because that clock will tick at the same time, every day and night, for as long as we’re alive. Additionally, the way in which the streets of London are described by Mrs. Dalloway in the beginning of the text leads us to feel a sort of “perpetual motion” about them—another indication of the constancy of time, the flow. Finally, what struck me most as far as characters acknowledging time was when Mrs. Dalloway imagines having the opportunity to live her life over—a reversal of time that perhaps is most relatable to her audience.

What I believe this says about the human condition and just life in general is that it’s impossible for us to ignore what has happened, even if it was traumatic. It’s necessary for us to acknowledge what has happened to us, and allow it to shape us. We can let terrors of the past destroy us completely, like Septimus, or we can take control and, like Clarissa, trudge on with these memories we have in our heads. 

Woolf's Modernism

Woolf’s embodies a modernist style in The Mrs. Dalloway Reader through her stream of consciousness narrative and her non-linear depiction of time. The stream of consciousness narrative reveals the flow of consciousness and interior thoughts of her characters with no pauses. It is characterized by long passages of reflection and shifts in time and place. This is how thoughts flow in reality, with no sense of time or place and with one thought jumping to another with no control. Though our actions and experience of physical reality take place in the present, our waking consciousness is multifaceted. The protagonist of the novel, Clarissa is simultaneously living in the present, but is also thinking to the future all day, by planning for a party that night. She also has many flashbacks. She tries to recall a memory with an old friend, Peter Walsh. She thinks of something he once said, but questions it: “was that it? He must have said it at breakfast one morning” (165). Immediately following this thought, Clarissa notes that “he would be back from India one of these days, June or July” (166). Woolf makes a rapid shift from past to the future, while the setting is anchored in the present.

From an art historical perspective, Woolf’s writing style embodies many modern art movements. One could call her writing style Cubist because it includes all facets of a perspective. By including the entire spectrum of time and the flow of diverse thoughts, Woolf gives readers an illustration of Clarissa from all angles. Most writing offers a single stream of continuous thoughts, but Woolf offers a dissociative flow of thoughts in the active mind. Because this style causes many free associations and an unconscious control of thoughts, one could associate it with Surrealism. Surrealist artists often used automatic practices in order to make free associations from one thought or object to another in order to reveal repressed thoughts. Many also compare Woolf’s work to Impressionism. Impressionism often uses the technique of many visible brushstrokes to paint the experience of seeing reality. Similarly, Woolf’s use of stream of consciousness emphasizes the rapid shifts and movements of experience and gives viewers a subjective vision of reality. The emphasis of movement is further reflected in Woolf’s descriptions of urban London. Along with the rise in technology and movement, modern artists often portrayed this rapid movement with quick brushstrokes and motion. Woolf illustrates the “ebb and flow of things” in a city (171). She describes movement of the city: “everywhere, though it was still so early, there was a beating, a stirring of galloping poinies, tapping of cricket bats” (167). These descriptions of movement parallel the rapid movement of the Clarissa’s thoughts.

Clarissa’s thoughts suggest other thoughts without requiring rational connections or structures. In this way, Woolf’s style can be considered close to reality. Though her style may seem abstract and erratic, Woolf realistically portrays the way people naturally think without placing literary boundaries such as logical sequences and exclusive topics.

Woolf’s choice to focus on mundane experience is effective. Stream of consciousness during commonplace, everyday life further emphasizes the inconsistent, uncommon nature of thought. This juxtaposition of mental thought and mundane physical experience emphasize the loud voice of consciousness.  Woolf focuses on humdrum tasks. We are not captivated by excitement, plot, or logical cause and effect. Instead we are experiencing a realistic portrayal of thought that encapsulates all aspects of thought, not just the logical realm. At the beginning of the novel, as Clarissa is shopping, she has sudden moments of pensive introspection. She notes how she prefers “to be one of those people like Richard who did things for themselves” but instead does things “to make people think this or that” (171). As she is shopping to cater to guests later that night, she reflects on her life in general and how she wishes she could have a different approach to life. Not only does time move from past to future, but it also enters the realm of imagination and day-dream.  If perhaps we were entering Clarissa’s thoughts during an extraordinary experience, her thoughts would be as noticed in comparison to the physical experience occurring at the same time. Again, when Clarissa is talking to Hugh, the narrator reveals that Clarissa “felt very sisterly and oddly conscious at the same time of her hat” in comparison to Hugh’s well-dressed appearance (168). This reveals the unpredictable, uncontrollable nature of thoughts.

The entire novel takes place in one day of Clarissa’s life. Readers enter the consciousness of Clarissa and her subjective experiences. I am surprised by how similar this is to the piece that I work-shopped in class, Mental Processes, which I have changed the title to Tuesday. Like Woolf, I like to highlight the peculiar thoughts and emotions that underlie mundane experiences. However, what Woolf accomplishes that I would like to as well is her ability to reveal the inner workings of Clarissa’s mind, her worldview, and her values. My use of stream of consciousness could be more effective if I incorporate the narrator’s personal emotions, aspects of setting, and make random associations. Like Woolf, I want to intertwine introspective thoughts with external ones. I shed light and only vaguely reveal on my character’s emotions, but I really want to dig into her consciousness.

No matter where you are located in the world, your thoughts always interweave to alternate people, times, memories. Everything experienced is associated with different experiences. 

Conscious Streams of Consciousness

From an objective point of view, life on Earth is but a web of interconnected parts of people’s lives. Virginia Woolf makes good use of this perspective in her novel Mrs. Dalloway, published in 1995. The lives of Clarissa Dalloway and Septimus Warren Smith are linked in this story by the very flimsy mention of the latter’s suicide at a party that Mrs. Dalloway hosts. As the very anxious reader, I was waiting for the dramatic punch-line, the sentence or two in which Woolf would reveal that the two were long-lost siblings, or something equally cliché. But even halfheartedly expecting this was silly of me; upon turning to the first page of Woolf’s piece, I knew she was unlike most of the writers I had read before. Upon reflection, is it a great thing that Woolf did not stoop to the temptation of a stereotypical twist plot, for a stronger bond between her dual main characters would have muddied the contrast between the stark, somber life of traumatized veteran Smith and the busy, high-end life of social butterfly Clarissa. 

As I’m sure many of my classmates have not failed to point out, a central characteristic to Woolf’s writing is the subgenre in which she writes Mrs. Dalloway. The stream-of-consciousness style is one that I am much used to, and one that I enjoy writing in. I find something exciting about being able to be in a character’s head, even in the third person point of view, which many would complain is a rather detached point of view (though I would disagree). I also like the idea of being able to switch from one character to another. When this is done in the first person, I often have difficulty maintaining the respective voices of the characters throughout the story, especially if, as I have often seen, said characters are deeply engaged with each other as the story progresses. Woolf’s novel, however, takes stream-of-consciousness to a whole new level. In my writing I often give a mere tease of the character’s thoughts, often sharing general feelings my character is experiencing, but only rewarding them with the exact thoughts they have once in a while. With Mrs. Dalloway, one is constantly reading the thoughts of a character.

This allows for us to see the obvious differences between the four characters she lets us live this June day (along with a few flashbacks) through. As I find Clarissa and Septimus to be the essential main characters of Woolf’s story, I will describe how reading of them felt like. Scenes with Clarissa, though rather lively yet easy to follow, were laden with nostalgic moods, especially as she remembers Peter Walsh, a former lover. Even in other, more trivial undertakings, she helps us paint a picture of her past, such as when she “paus[es] for a moment at the window of a glove shop where, before the War, you could buy almost perfect gloves” (8). Septimus, on the other hand, has to be read differently as a shell-shocked survivor of the Great War. As expected of a suicidal character, his thoughts circle on the terror he was witnessed as a soldier, oozing the gloom and morbidity of his past. This supposed contrast between “the sane and the insane” is a striking product of Woolf’s that I would hope to be able to imitate in the future.

Woolf and the Stream of Conscious Style

The Mrs. Dalloway Reader is a modernist classic by Virginia Woolf that follows the day of 53 year old Mrs. Dalloway as she goes about her quotidian schedule, preparing for a party later that evening. Virginia Woolf was a prominent figure in 20^th century literature for her particular style of writing and the skill that she possessed in using it to delve deep into the minds of her subjects and captivates the audience. What is very particular is that she takes the stream of consciousness writing, a very fluid style of narration, pioneered by the likes of James Joyce and completely turns it on its head by making the conscious overwhelmingly apparent.

               Throughout the novel, there is little indication or adherence to grammatical rules that would otherwise mark pauses in the narration. Rather, Woolf excludes quotations marks, allows for excessive run on sentences and transitions from phrase to phrase with little or no clarity. That is not to say that Woolf does not make transitions clear, but they only make sense in the context of the thought. Take for instance, “First a warning, musical; then the hour, irrevocable. The leaden circles dissolved in the air. Such fools we are, she thought, crossing Victoria Street. For Heaven only knows why one loves it so, how one sees it so […] love life”, where Mrs. Dalloway is processing the environment and circumstance around her as she makes her way to purchase flowers in the morning. There are three successive phrases that are highly unorthodox when taken by themselves, for they are clauses that could easily be conjoined and would not compromise literary or comprehensive merit. If anything, they make less sense as disjoint thoughts. These are ideas that are interrupted by another thought, but are somehow expected to adhere to the prior and following, and so we are victim to Mrs. Dalloway’s untrained flow of thought and perhaps are even led to question, as readers, the stability of her own mind. The stream of consciousness, in Woolf’s repertoire, enhances profundity and character rather than comprehension, because the processes of each character differ slightly and there is the constant conceit of a fading or false interpretation to an event. Woolf’s work is very Freudian and very cognitive and from there has much strength in creating a rich world that is based on perception.

               One very clear example of how the stream of consciousness narrative style runs amok with perception is the liquid presence of time that never stays present in a continuous sense. From the very beginning, when she introduces the story, we are given this excerpt, “How fresh, how calm, stiller than this of course […] the kiss of a wave; chill and sharp and yet (for a girl of eighteen as she then was) solemn […] until Peter Walsh sid “musing among the vegetables?”-was that it?-“I prefer men to cauliflowers”-was that it? […] He would be back from India one of these days, June or July [...].” First off, there is so much to consume in just that one sentence that it boggles the mind that she makes it comprehensible, and even better one must question there exactly how long the thought takes her. What is interesting about the style is that plot actually does take a backseat because one of the most essential qualities of any plot is the sequence of events in a given time. However, time here is so utterly subjective and at the whims of the character’s thoughts that it seems almost illusory as Mrs. Dalloway and others will jump back and forth between flashbacks and the present without even warning. We are given a glimpse to the truest sense of a process of random thought that everything in the world becomes dependent on that alone. Events, time, perception are supplanted by subjective reality in the eye and thoughts of characters. This is why the book is very difficult to comprehend, but it is still a rich read.

Clarissa and Septimus

  

Clarissa Dalloway is a character in the Mrs. Dalloway that struggles with her internal state of mind, while tries to present herself as someone who is happy on the outside. She is a character that really struggles to reconcile the outside world with her internal state of mind. For example, she constantly wonders about death in the novel, but tries to live so perfectly and appear happy on the outside. She throws these pretty parties as a way to affirm her life and her happiness. Clarissa also conflicts her past with her present and future. Despite constantly fearing death, she also does things like buying flowers, which seems like an affirmation of life. She constantly thinks about Peter, and her decision to marry Richard instead of Peter. She realizes that Richard gave her many things, such as the comfort of a high English society and the finances to throw parties, but also acknowledges that life with Peter had more passion. As she considers Peter’s failure to accomplish his dreams, she says:

“She would say of any one in the world now that they were this or were that. She felt very young; at the same time unspeakably aged. She sliced like a through everything; at the same time was outside, looking on. 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” (200).

I think this quote embodies many of the conflicts that are later shown in the novel. Clarissa feels many things in the quote that are paradoxical, and this shows how conflicted she is with herself. She says later, “She would not say of herself, I am this, I am that.” She already finds it futile to label herself as something she doesn’t really understand. She should be happy. She is married to a wealthy man who cares about her, but is she happy? And, if living just one day is so dangerous, has she ever done it? I think that is the question that Clarissa explores throughout the novel.

Septimus, on the other hand, is somebody who has already been killed by the society he fought to defend. We get a sense that Septimus is already lost. While Clarissa still has hope, Septimus has already lost his mind, and firmly lives his life through internal thoughts. He no longer exists in the outside world, as his wife laments, “I am alone; I am alone” (214). While Clarissa throws parties to hide her inner dissatisfaction with her life, Septimus throws himself into solitude and the comforts of insanity to escape a world that Woolf portrays as insane. Septimus ultimately escapes the world by committing suicide, and this Clarissa deal with this world, which she still must live in.

Ultimately, she must find ways to reconcile herself with her past, present, future, internal consciousness, and external actions. Everyone has his own way. Woolf states this in a beautiful quote in the beginning, as Clarissa muses about the Big Ben:

“For Heaven only knows why one loves it so, how one sees it so, making it up, building it round one, tumbling it, creating it every moment afresh; but the veriest frumps, the most dejected of miseries sitting on doorsteps (drink their downfall) do the same; can’t be dealt with, she felt positive, by Acts of Parliament for that very reason: they love life” (196).

Human beings create the meaning in the things they experience, and see in the world. So, in a way, happiness can be attained simply by a change of perspective. Happiness is not to be found in the society you belong in, or can be “decreed” by the Parliament. Even the “most dejected of miseries” can be happy.

Works Cited:

Woolf, Virginia, and Francine Prose. The Mrs. Dalloway Reader. Orlando: Harvest Book/Harcourt, 2004. Print.