Classics Corner: Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf; A Unique Trip Inside the Mind of Post-WWI London

Classics Corner: Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf; A Unique Trip Inside the Mind of Post-WWI London

By Julie Sara Porter

Bookworm Reviews

Spoilers: Virginia Woolf was a talented writer who knew about the inside of the human mind. Many of her works explored characters from the inside out, what they were thinking, feeling, and experiencing in their pasts and present. Sometimes the interior was a darker stormier place than the exterior. Unfortunately this was a truth that Woolf knew rather well. She was gripped by frequent depression and committed suicide by drowning in 1941.

However, her works such as Mrs. Dalloway are excellent works that explore the psychology of individuals and how their surrounding environment affects them. Mrs. Dalloway is similar to James Joyce’s Ulysses in that the action covers a single day and takes the Readers inside the characters’ minds. However I find it a better work because it does a better job of separating a person’s exterior life of conformity and respectability and the interior life of rebellion and boredom. It also acknowledges the death and despair that often are just waiting around the corner.

Without the stream of conscious trips inside the minds of Woolf’s characters, the day in the life of Clarissa Dalloway would be deadly dull. Mrs. Dalloway prepares for a party and shops surrounded by other characters including WWI veteran, Septimus Warren Smith. She then would present the party and hears about Septimus’ suicide. Well alright the suicide would be interesting to read, but the rest of Mrs. Dalloway’s life would be extremely dull. And that’s the point.

Mrs. Dalloway is driven to give this party as though it is her only purpose and Woolf hints that as far as she and the other characters in her life are concerned, it is. She chooses flowers, food, oversees the menu, and the servants’ preparation, and welcomes guests playing the role of perfect hostess. However, inside she is suffering from boredom, ennui, and possibly depression.

At 51 years old, Mrs. Dalloway feels her life slipping away from her and is unwilling to accept middle age. She remembers her rebellious youth when she carried on affairs with Peter Walsh, a former Lothario and Sally Seton, a formerly Bohemian friend who has now become a Conservative mother of five. As she thinks of her early affairs and wayward youth, she feels nothing but boredom and disgust at the life around her even though she goes through the motions.

Mrs. Dalloway’s relationship with her husband, Richard is proper and conventional with all of the propriety one would expect from a marriage in Upper-Middle Class London. She is economically cared for, has children, and attends the correct functions. But still she feels something is missing. She goes from location to location throughout her day as if avoiding her deeper thoughts and unhappiness as the clocks tick away as if removing hours, minutes, seconds of her life.

Mrs. Dalloway also feels somewhat envious and competitive towards her daughter, Elizabeth.  Elizabeth is a New Woman product of the early 20^th century. Unlike her mother, she is able to express her displeasure and disappointments (making it clear that she does not want to attend her mother’s dinner party and would rather go to the country with her father). She also has dreams of being a doctor, a farmer, or go into Parliament avenues that her mother would never have dreamt. Instead Mrs. Dalloway gives parties as her life passes her by.

Mrs. Dalloway isn’t the only character with problems. Woolf saw Septimus Warren Smith as “an essential counterpoint” to Mrs. Dalloway and he is. While Mrs. Dalloway goes through the ennui of her life, Smith goes through the trauma of his. He is a WWI veteran with PTSD and an unhappy marriage with his wife, Lucrezia, an Italian immigrant.

Smith is haunted by the ghost of his friend and fellow soldier (and possibly more) Evans who was killed in action. He goes through his life having imaginary mental conversations with Evans and finding life difficult to adjust to returning after war. His wife, Lucrezia is supportive but doesn’t understand him. His doctor, Dr. Holmes gives blank diagnoses about his condition based on little effort. (Perhaps Woolf’s way of getting back at some fraudulent psychiatrists in her life). The pressure and inability of returning to a so-called normal life leads to Smith’s suicide by jumping off a building.

Though Mrs. Dalloway and Smith never meet or interact with each other (except for a moment when he sees Mrs. D. through a window), their fates are connected. When one of her party guests mentions Smith’s suicide, Mrs. Dalloway at first is dismayed and upset that this shadow of death fell on her surroundings. (“A young man had killed himself. And they talked of it at her party..”)  Instead she feels envious towards him. She says to herself, “But this young man who had killed himself-had he plunged his treasure? ‘If it were now to die, ‘twere now to be most happy.’” She is jealous that Smith was able to do something about his unhappiness. He was able to act out and accept what he was feeling. While Mrs. Dalloway had to hide her feelings behind a semblance of respectability. Smith’s death forces Mrs. Dalloway to confront her own tormented thoughts and emotions and for the first time live honestly to herself.

Virginia Woolf took the Reader on a trip inside the human psyche and explored who they were. She showed us that sometimes those who are most seemingly contented are often inside the saddest.