UNIVERSIDADE FEDERAL DO PARANÁ

MARIA CAROLINA ALMEIDA

“FOR THERE SHE WAS”: DISSOLUTION AND UNITY IN VIRGINIA

WOOLF’S NOVEL MRS. DALLOWAY

CURITIBA
2018
 She came into a room; she stood, as he had often seen her, in a
doorway with lots of people round her. But it was Clarissa one
remembered. Not that she was striking; not beautiful at all; there was
nothing picturesque about her; she never said anything specially
clever; there she was, however; there she was.

― Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway.

I.
In 1923, the writer Arnold Bennett published in Cassell’s Weekly his review
on the then Virginia Woolf’s latest novel, “Jacob’s Room”. In response to Bennett
criticism, Woolf published an essay originally names “Character in Fiction” in the
July 1924 issue of The Criterion, a journal edited by T. S. Eliot. The essay would
later be republished under the name “Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Brown” by Hogarth
Press in October of the same year. In Woolf’s words, Bennett’s opinion is that
“we have no young novelists of first-rate importance at present moment, because
they are unable to create characters that are real, true and convincing” (WOOLF,
1966, p. 319).
Although Woolf agrees with Bennett that “all novels […] deal with
character, and that it is to express character – not to preach doctrines, sing songs,
or celebrate the glories of the British Empire” (ibidem, p. 324), she questions his
conceptions about character, redefining it in her own understanding. She quotes
him:

“The foundation of good fiction is character-creating and nothing else…

Style counts; plot counts; originality of outlook counts. But none of these
counts anything like so much as the convincingness of the characters.
If the characters are real the novel will have a chance; if they are not,
oblivion will be its portion” (ibidem, p. 319).

Woolf replies such conceptions in the recall of an episode she witnesses

about an elderly woman she sees on the train, whom she arbitrarily names "Mrs.
Brown”. By telling this anecdote, Woolf challenges Bennett's ideas by redefining
not what a character is, but how the character works inside fiction. In other words,
she examines the means of representing a character in a narrative rather than
how it actually resonates in reality (CAUGHIE, 1991). For her, Bennett and a few
other authors
“[…] have developed a technique of novel-writing which suits their
purpose; they have made tools and established conventions which do
their business. But those tools are not our tools, and that business is
not our business. For us those conventions are ruin, those tools are
death” (WOOLF, 1966, p. 330).
 Her ideas get clearer when we think about her books, especially the one
she was writing around the time the essay was written, Mrs. Dalloway (GAY,
2008). Published in 1925, Mrs. Dalloway is a novel that takes place during a
single day. Following several characters since morning, the narrative culminates
in Clarissa Dalloway’s evening party, where most of these characters will be
brought together.
Woolf uses the free indirect discourse as a narrative technique to shift the
focus between the characters. She uses some keys elements to interconnect and
transition through these different consciousnesses, for example, the striking of
the Big Ben and an old woman singing in Regent’s Park. For this reason, this
apparently “linear flow” in Woolf’s narrative was understood as a “unity” between
her characters, a collective discourse continuity (GOLDMAN, 2006; RICHTER,
1970).
However, according to Pamela Caughie (1991), these readings do not
seem to take into account the passages in which, for example, the "transitions"
between characters are perceived in different ways, and even the character
himself is caught in his contradiction and inaccuracy. Thus, it is not because
characters supposedly present a unified view of their experiences that unity is
indeed established. As stated by Caughie, “what Mrs. Dalloway reveals is not
some metaphysical unity but how [it] is perceived and contrived” (1991, p. 75). In
this manner, from these reflections on character and unity in the author’s writing,
what I argue in this paper is how this notion of unity is subverted in the
construction of the character Peter Walsh in Woolf’s novel Mrs. Dalloway.

II.
Many have written about Clarissa Dalloway having a "double" in the novel.
Most of Woolf’s critics consider that the character of Septimus Warren Smith is
Clarissa’s parallel, although the two never really meet in the narrative (GUTH,
1989; PAGE, 1961). Nevertheless, it is possible to consider Peter Walsh,
Clarissa’s old friend and lover, as another "double" of her. According to Wang
(1992), Clarissa, Septimus, and Peter share a similarity with each other in
because they participate in the “psychic tendency” to breakout the imposition of
the social system and “let their imagination, their sensibility, their bodily rhythms,
their unconscious desires break through the dominant signifying practice” (p.
186).
Peter Walsh is thus the third central consciousness in the novel. Though
he seems to be the most integrated of the three characters, (GARVEY, 1991) it
is possible to identify in his construction the collapse of an apparent coherence
and, therefore, the impression of a unified and harmonious Peter Walsh. There
are two main elements in Peter’s construction (which, in a sense, are connect)
that I consider the center of this discussion and which I will present in this paper:
The dissolution of character-narrator boundaries, and misleading and
contradictory thoughts.

III.
The element of narrator-character seems to be in first importance when
talking about Mrs. Dalloway. According to Caughie (1991), in Woolf’s works, a
“multi personal” narrative as well as a merging between her narrative perspective
and her characters’ perspective suggest an apparent unity. In such readings, two
specific point are implicit. The first is that Woolf’s narrators are “unobtrusive”, and
the second is that the dissolution of limits between character and narrator depicts
a kind of absolute metaphysical theory that preexists and which the narrative
expresses.
However, what Caughie points out is that not only the narrator is
completely immersed in narrative but also that Woolf’s narrators and characters
do not offer a logical and error proof theory of self and world. In opposite, what
they do is “make us self-conscious of theorizing about self and world by making
the narrative strategies self-conscious” (1991, p. 64). In other words, what Woolf
does in her narration process is revealing the ambiguity and doubtfulness of
literary forms and language.
Many are the scenes which these strategies take place. One of them is the
passage in which Peter walks alone through London and starts remembering his
youth with Clarissa:

Clarissa once, going on top of an omnibus with him somewhere,

Clarissa superficially at least, so easily moved, now in despair, now in
the best of spirits, all aquiver in those days and such good company,
spotting queer little scenes, names, people from the top of a bus, for
they used to explore London and bring back bags full of treasures from
 the Caledonian market — Clarissa had a theory in those days — they
had heaps of theories, always theories, as young people have. It was
to explain the feeling they had of dissatisfaction; not knowing people;
not being known […]. It ended in a transcendental theory which, with
her horror of death, allowed her to believe, or say that she believed (for
all her scepticism), that since our apparitions, the part of us which
appears, are so momentary compared with the other, the unseen part
of us, which spreads wide, the unseen might survive, be recovered
somehow attached to this person or that, or even haunting certain
places after death. Perhaps — perhaps. (WOOLF, 1996, p. 111).

This scene properly illustrates how Woolf’s narrative works in terms of

constructing this act of theorizing about self and world. Not only it is the object of
this passage – the fact that Clarissa creates a theory –, but also demonstrates
that Peter is looking it with his own eyes, shaping it in his own way. The narrator
in turn is also molding the scene while narrates. The blurred differences between
both characters and between both characters and narrator reveal the source of
thought as a doubtful one. (CAUGHIE, 1991).
As Linda Hutcheon has observed in postmodern narratives, “[the]
perceiving subject is no longer assumed to a coherent, meaning-generating
entity. Narrators in fiction become either disconcertingly multiple and hard to
locate” (1988, p. 11)1. In Mrs. Dalloway, what we observe is the indistinctiveness
of discourses, which does not create a united mind rather than a forged one, an
opaque narrative perspective, not transparent. “Something we look at, not
through” (CAUGHIE, 1991, p. 64).
Another illustrative episode that suggests the construction of a theory is a
scene in which Peter thinks about how Clarissa Dalloway felt the death of her
sister, Sylvia. Differently from the previous passage, in this one it is quite clear
that both character and narrator are indeed theorizing. However, and again, it is
not possible to determine which voice is speaking once it is not even possible to
separate them:

“Oddly enough, she was one of the most thoroughgoing sceptics he had
ever met, and possibly (this was a theory he used to make up to account

1 Certainly, by adopting such postmodern theories, I do not want to infer that Virginia Woolf is a
postmodernist writer, rather than a modernist or feminist one. Here, I agree with Pamela Caughie
when she argues that “in working through some of the tensions in the novel form itself, [Woolf]
experimented with some of the same structures and concerns that characterize postmodern
fiction”. Caughie continues, “I do not argue that ‘postmodernism’ is the appropriate category for
Virginia Woolf, only that her works are susceptible to analysis by means of this category and,
further, that this category enables us to deal with certain contradictions in Woolf's works” (1991,
p. 20-21).
 for her, so transparent in some ways, so inscrutable in others), possibly
she said to herself, As we are a doomed race, chained to a sinking ship
(her favourite reading as a girl was Huxley and Tyndall, and they were
fond of these nautical metaphors), as the whole thing is a bad joke, let
us, at any rate, do our part; mitigate the sufferings of our fellow-
prisoners (Huxley again); decorate the dungeon with flowers and air-
cushions; be as decent as we possibly can. Those ruffians, the Gods,
shan’t have it all their own way — her notion being that the Gods, who
never lost a chance of hurting, thwarting and spoiling human lives were
seriously put out if, all the same, you behaved like a lady. That phase
came directly after Sylvia’s death — that horrible affair. To see your own
sister killed by a falling tree (all Justin Parry’s fault — all his
carelessness) before your very eyes, a girl too on the verge of life, the
most gifted of them, Clarissa always said, was enough to turn one bitter.
Later she wasn’t so positive perhaps; she thought there were no Gods;
no one was to blame; and so she evolved this atheist’s religion of doing
good for the sake of goodness” (WOOLF, 1996, p. 58).

In these narrative compositions, what we see is the making of a successive

and uninterrupted construction by narrator as well as characters. It is possible to
notice such constructions even in the most unpretentious scenes, for instance, in
the conclusion of the novel, in which we have Peter reflecting upon Clarissa:

“ ‘I will come,’ said Peter, but he sat on for a moment. What is this terror?
What is this ecstasy? He thought to himself. What is it that fills me with
extraordinary excitement?
It is Clarissa, he said.
For there she was” (ibidem, p. 141).

What is interesting about this scene is that the question “What is it that fills
me with extraordinary excitement?” is not put in Peter’s voice, that is, it is not
possible to separate the narrator’s from the character’s discourse. This me
remains unknown.

IV.
Instead of a line, these narrative techniques build a network of meanings
that sometimes converge and blend, and sometimes retreat and differ from each
other. This kind of movement in Woolf's narrative also functions as a potent
source of contradiction and confusion, especially in a character like Peter Walsh
who, as stated before, only appears to be the most unified of the three characters.
One of the moments in which this becomes clear is when Peter,
remembering Clarissa's Aunt Helena, mentions with conviction that she had
already died.
 On top of them it had pressed; weighed them down, the women
especially, like those flowers Clarissa’s Aunt Helena used to press
between sheets of grey blotting-paper with Littré‘s dictionary on top,
sitting under the lamp after dinner. She was dead now. He had heard
of her, from Clarissa, losing the sight of one eye. (WOOLF, 1996, p.
118).

He leads us to believe that Miss Parry is dead, only to spot her alive at Clarissa’s
party at the end of the novel.

There was old Aunt Helena in her shawl. Alas, she must leave them –
Lord Gayton and Nancy Blow. There was old Miss Parry, her aunt.
For Miss Helena Parry was not dead: Miss Parry was alive. She was
past eighty. She ascended staircases slowly with a stick. She was
placed in a chair (Richard had seen to it). (ibidem, p. 29)

These scenes recreate the sensation of memory failure, and curiously

allow us to share the confusion of the character. According to Caughie (1991),
what they reveal, however, it is also how the past and the world are recreated all
the time. Thus, it is not possible to regard narrative as a product in itself closed
and stable, because to do so is to read the text as about a unified world or
consciousness that exists independently of our means of constructing them.
Such constructions are also evident in Peter's attempt to seek an
unattainable unity in his thoughts. For example, he is caught in contradiction
when judging Clarissa and vehemently denying any remaining attraction for her:

“No, no, no! He was not in love with her any more! He only felt, after
seeing her that morning, among her scissors and silks, making ready
for the party, unable to get away from the thought of her; she kept
coming back and back like a sleeper jolting against him in a railway
carriage; which was not being in love, of course; it was thinking of her,
criticising her, starting again, after thirty years, trying to explain her”
(WOOLF, 1996, p. 57).

However, it does not matter here the decision whether Peter does or does
not love Clarissa any longer, but rather the relation and the construction of such
contradictory discourses. In Peter’s character, what we recognize is the
manifestation of “the desire to create meaningful orders, to impose some kind of
unity on random life” (CAUGHIE, 1991, p. 75). In the novel, this desire is put to
the test, revealing the limits of our attempts to organize and establish a single
voice, a “master narrative” (HUTHEON, 1988). In this sense, the very narrative
systems are shaken: the moment you become acquainted with the mind of the
characters, there is a rupture that makes us recognize the "artificiality of the
narrative" (CAUGHIE, 1991).

V.
In this brief analysis, I attempted to demonstrate how the construction of
the character Peter Walsh in Woolf’s novel, Mrs. Dalloway, implodes and
recreates the very concept of a unified discourse. Two elements were used to
support this view: the relation between him and the narrator, as well as his own
relation to the materiality of the narrative. The character Peter Walsh not only
functions in order to impose a failure attempt of creating a substantial order, but
also brings to the surface the very impossibility of it. This construction of him,
however, does not seem to refuse completely the traditional ways of character
creating, but rather works inside the tradition, subverting its traditional
conceptions.
Just like Virginia Woolf’s response to Arnold Bennett, the characterization
of Peter Walsh in the novel is not exactly a representation of him, but a way of
constructing himself and the world around him. By exposing some of these
elements, and disturbing the usual qualities we tend to associate with character
creating, Mrs. Dalloway – or in this specific case, Peter Walsh – makes it clear
that narratives do not depict certain aspects of life without impregnating it with
their own ideas about the world. The imposition of a united and closed world is
then challenged by the very same means it was constructed. Peter is blurred
within the narrative and absorbed by his contradictory and unreliable thoughts
throughout the novel.

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL REFERENCES

CAUGHIE, Pamela L. Virginia Woolf and Postmodernism: Literature in Quest

and Question of Itself. Urbana & Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1991.

CYGAN, Philippe. Unity and fragmentation in four novels by Virginia Woolf. PhD
Thesis. Newcastle: University of Newcastle, 2010.

GARVEY, Johanna X. K. Difference and Continuity: The Voices of Mrs.

Dalloway. College English, vol. 53, no. 1, p. 59–76, 1991.
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Beyond. New York: WW Norton, 2008.

GOLDMAN, Jane. The Cambridge Introduction to Virginia Woolf. Cambridge

University Press, 2006.

GUTH, Deborah. "What a Lark! What a Plunge!": Fiction as Self-Evasion in

"Mrs. Dalloway". The Modern Language Review, vol. 84, no. 1, p. 18-25, 1989.

HUTCHEON, Linda. A poetics of Postmodernism: History, Theory, Fiction. New

York: Routledge, 1988.

PAGE, Alex. A dangerous day: Mrs. Dalloway discovers her double. Modern
Fiction Studies, vol. 7, no. 2, p. 115–124, 1961.

RICHTER, Harvena. Virginia Woolf: The Inward Voyage. Princeton: Princeton

University Press, 2015.

WANG, Ban. "I" on the Run: Crisis of Identity in Mrs. Dalloway. MFS Modern
Fiction Studies, v. 38, n. 1, p. 177-191, 1992.

WOOLF, Virginia. Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Brown. Collected Essays. Vol.1. London:
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______. Mrs Dalloway. Ware: Wordsworth Editions, 1996.