Mrs dalloway

Historical Context

By 1923 (the year in which the novel is set), World War I had been over for five years.
The horror of the War still haunted the national psyche as an unresolved trauma, even as
England tried to bury its memory and move on, in order to catch up with the rest of the
world, which was speeding headlong into modernity. For some, it was an exciting,
promising time. London buzzed with airplanes, motorcars, commerce, and the barely-
contained exuberance of young people focused not on the past but on the present and
future. A few industries were growing; the upper classes were still rich, and some
segments of the working class were enjoying higher wages and better conditions than
before the War. Women had more rights and freedoms; it was even possible for a young
woman (such as Elizabeth Dalloway) to imagine a career in government for herself.
There had been many exciting developments in art, music, and literature: Cubism, Jazz,
Modernism, and other movements had administered a series of shocks from which
traditional English culture was still reeling and recoiling, and new shocks were on the
way (Woolf's novel would be one). Developments in psychology, anthropology, physics,
and other fields had animated many artists, scientists, politicians, and social activists with
a sense of urgency, with a conviction that they were uniquely positioned to revitalize,
transform, and revolutionize society and the world.

At the same time, trouble lurked on the horizon. There had been full employment in
England during the War, but afterwards, as the war machine was dismantled, as
immigration increased, and as thousands of veterans returned from foreign parts broken
in body and mind, unemployment began to rise. Though few knew it, the country was
heading toward the deep depression, massive unemployment, food shortages, epidemics,
and profound social unrest that for the next 15 years would make life miserable for the
lower classes and that would contribute, eventually, to the causal chain that led England
into World War II. Other troubles were on the horizon as well. By the end of 1923,
Mussolini had already turned Italy into a Fascist state, Hitler had emerged on the political
scene in Germany, and the British Empire was beginning to disintegrate, as its various
colonies intensified their struggles to throw off British rule. Civil War in Ireland had
already led to the establishment of the Irish Free State, for example, and Ghandi had
begun his campaign for independence in India. Woolf's novel makes few direct
references to these events, but signs of trouble occasionally¾and pointedly¾break
through the bubble of security surrounding Clarissa and her set: a group of young boys in
uniform march lockstep through the park; a vagrant woman's song stirs Peter to pity,
another female vagrant discomfits Richard, Doris Kilman's poverty rebukes Clarissa, a
shell-shocked veteran (Septimus) haunts the city, and his suicide interrupts Clarissa's
party. We get intimations, too, that Peter, as a member of the British ruling class in India,
has played some role in his government's repression of the independence movement
there. In some ways, Woolf's novel is about, or at least recreates, the unstable mixture of
breathless optimism and paralytic fear that characterized her time.

Main Characters
Mrs. Clarissa Dalloway

Aged 52. Very thin, straight, neat, upright. Also, since her near-fatal illness, very white.
Not particularly beautiful or clever, but her vivacity makes her a "presence" nonetheless.
In a crowded room, she is the one whom people notice and remember. Upper-middle-
class. Lives well in Westminster with her husband (a conservative in the House of
Commons) and their teenage daughter Elizabeth. Has a wide circle of aristocratic friends.
Enjoys her rank in English society, its duties and pleasures. Has spent much of her
married life doing "little kindnesses" for others and arranging a comfortable domestic
environment. Likes to give parties, is a perfect hostess. Thinks of her parties as works of
art, as her "offerings" at the altar of life. Is passionate about life, friendship, beauty, but
also has moments of deep depression, self-loathing, jealousy, and rage. Is a cynic:
believes that the gods, if they exist, take pleasure in tormenting humanity. Knows her
limitations, too: realizes that she is pampered and sheltered and contributes very little to
the world. Has trouble with love and sex. Loved Peter Walsh, but felt hampered and
smothered by his critical intelligence; loved Sally Seton, has felt attracted to other women
too, but has never acted on this; loves the easy companionship and civic virtues of her
husband Richard, but cannot make love to him.

Clarissa is the central character in the book. All of the other characters are connected to
her in some way (including Septimus, who never meets her: more on that later). Even
when they are away from her, they still feel connected to her, and she to them, by
"invisible strings." They often find themselves trying to explain her, or else trying to
explain themselves by comparing themselves to her. Not everyone likes her, but in one
way or another, all must come to terms with her. Though many criticize her for being
frivolous, they nonetheless come to her party. And because they come, because Clarissa
causes all of the separate lives to gather in one place where they can mix, bump, and
recombine, "life" gets created anew. Clarissa is the creative energy that makes things
happen, the "life force" animating their small corner of the world. And she believes that
because she has made herself so much a part of other people, she will continue to live
through them after she dies.

Peter Walsh

Aged 53. Tall, intelligent-looking, charming. Refined enough to impress strangers as a

well-bred gentleman, but not over-refined, not affected, not a snob. Loves books and
solitude, but loves society equally well¾loves people, gossip, politics, sports, cigars, and
especially "the society of women." Has both an analytical mind and a passionate heart.
Clarissa was his first and only true love; when she refused to marry him, he fled to India
(then part of the British Empire), married a woman on the boat, and started a new life.
Living in India, he has done dangerous, exciting work but has also gotten divorced, had
many love-affairs, and failed at several jobs. He blames his failures on two things: 1)
what he calls his "susceptibility" to impressions and strong feelings, which causes him
never to quite fit into society and 2) his long-ago rejection by Clarissa, which he calls the
most important event of his life. He has returned to London on and off since he fled; the
last time he returned was five years ago. This time, when he meets Clarissa, he notices
that she and he have both aged and death-thoughts haunt his mind throughout the rest of
the day.

Peter has always admired, even been astonished by, Clarissa's vivacity and her social
grace. He has also always criticized her "frivolity," her worldliness, and her snobbery. He
has always detected, too, a cold streak in her, something hard and unyielding. He realizes
that, had they married, they probably would have destroyed each other. Even in this late
stage of his life, contact with her is excruciatingly painful for him, a mixture of
frustration, terror, and ecstasy; but he relishes their meetings after the fact, becomes
absorbed in remembering and analyzing what they said and felt and why, and is still
surprised by the way revelations about her continue to "unfold" and fill his inner life,
long after they have met.

Septimus Smith

Age: mid-twenties. Tall, thin, big-nosed, bright-eyed, a bit hunched. Intense. Was an
ambitious but mediocre young poet before the War. Fought bravely during the War, but
began to have problems afterwards, when he discovered that he could not feel. He began
having nightmares, visions, out-of-body experiences. Two doctors examined him; the
second, Sir William Bradshaw, decided to institutionalize him. When Septimus's wife,
Lucrezia, vowed to protect him from the doctors, he finally began to heal. But when he
realized that the doctors and "their kind" could not be stopped, he committed suicide.

From a clinical perspective and that of ordinary people, Septimus is delusional, shell-
shocked, self-absorbed, utterly insane. He talks to dead people and trees. From another
perspective, more sympathetic but no less ordinary, he is one of the sad "casualties" of a
necessary war, a once-promising young man ruined by his unfortunate, prolonged contact
with death and destruction. From yet another perspective, however ¾that of many artists,
thinkers, and veterans during the 1920s and 30s¾ Septimus is not insane in the least. He
is, rather, the sanest person in England, and his response to the War is entirely
appropriate. As had many young men, Septimus had fought from a poetic and patriotic
sense of duty, but the England and cause for which he thought he was fighting turned out
not to exist. Instead, the War became an arbitrary and pointless death machine, a pure
expression of the evil in human nature. The slaughter and destruction, they would say,
were utterly futile and massive in scale; the political and economic motives for fighting
were specious, even criminal. The War was the remorseless cruelty and "rationality" of
Sir William writ large. Seen from this perspective, Septimus's condition is not "madness"
but an expression of the unspeakable terror and agony of these truths, which cannot be
communicated in ordinary language. Without knowing any of the details of his case,
Clarissa takes, instinctively, this latter perspective (at least in part), when she intuits that
Septimus's suicide was an attempt to protect his soul, to communicate something, and to
defy men like Sir William, who struck her, too, as "obscurely evil."

Points to Ponder

The form of Mrs. Dalloway is, of course, something to ponder. It was deemed
"experimental" in its day, and Woolf believed that with it she had made a major
contribution to the modern reinvention of the novel. Woolf wanted the novel's form to
reflect and also recreate what she considered to be a uniquely modern experience of the
world. How does it do this, and what is that experience like? (You might begin thinking
along these lines: Though the "stream of consciousness" passages and the lack of
traditional chapter divisions can give the novel a formless feel, it does have formal unity.
For example, Woolf observes, to some extent, the classical unities of time and place, and
she establishes patterns of images, phrases, and events that connect the different parts of
the narrative to each other and also emphasize connections among the characters.)

Think about how Woolf develops her characters in Mrs. Dalloway. Here is one place to
start: Woolf once described her technique as a "tunnelling process": "I dig out beautiful
caves behind my characters," she wrote. "[And] I tell the past in installments, as I have
need of it." In other words, Woolf's characters reveal their depths gradually and
piecemeal; fragments of thought and memory emerge as they respond to and interact with
their surroundings and other characters, and from these fragments we piece together each
character's past and a tentative idea of his or her "whole being."

Clarissa's insight that Septimus "was somehow like her" both is and is not startling.
Though they never meet, and though they move in entirely different social spheres and
have had radically different life experiences, Clarissa is the only person who "hears" the
message Septimus sends via his suicide. Why is this? How are the two characters related?
Some readers find a spiritual likeness between them. Some emphasize instead their
functional roles in the novel, arguing, for instance, that Septimus symbolizes and
embodies England's war trauma while Clarissa represents the very ideal of "Englishness"
that the War put into question.