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Mrs. Dalloway - Analysis
Mrs. Dalloway - Analysis
Mrs. Dalloway - Analysis
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.
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:
“ ‘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.
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)
“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
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.
GAY, PETER. Modernism, the Lure of Heresy: From Baudelaire to Beckett and
Beyond. New York: WW Norton, 2008.
PAGE, Alex. A dangerous day: Mrs. Dalloway discovers her double. Modern
Fiction Studies, vol. 7, no. 2, p. 115–124, 1961.
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: Hogarth, 1966. p. 319-337.