Mrs. Dalloway, is a modern novel created by Vriginia Woolf in her efforts to move away from the pre-modern era and into the people-focused modern era. Her idea of the modern novel is completely focused on the characters. It should be about how the characters think and react to other characters. The progression of time to a certain goal is not important. This is shown by how the entirety of Mrs. Dalloway is contained within an approximately 12 hour period. Even though this is true, there is still a lot that goes on within the book. As readers we get to know each major character from viewpoints both internal and external allowing for a fairly complete view of the characters. To accomplish this task, Woolf uses free indirect discourse to move fluidly through each character. I really liked the way that the free indirect discourse works. It feels almost like a sort of puzzle as you try to track who gets the point of view. Its feels like a cinematography effect where the camera looks at other characters while simultaneously changing the character whose view is being shown by the camera.
Going into Mrs. Dalloway, I was expecting a sort of Pride and Prejudice type book: so terribly boring and focused on romance to the point that I couldn't read it. While I didn't get exactly what I expected, I still got the Pride and Prejudice feeling of a bunch of stuffy old white people doing stuffy old white people stuff. At the same time though, I did find that I was able to read through the entire book and not completely hate it. There was a lot of interesting points of view (especially Septimus') that Mrs. Dalloway gives.
Clarissa is the most viewed character in Mrs. Dalloway - probably because she is the main character. But I enjoyed seeing the many different perspectives on her that give a very rounded out depiction. There are those who are just acquaintances with her (most of the people she invites to her party) who think of her as nice and likable. Then there are people like Peter, Sally, and Richard who know her better, and while they still like, her, they think of her as a bit pretentious (especially Peter and Sally). She appears to always be occupied with her parties, and being the perfect hostess. But when you get Clarissa's point of view, you find out a lot more about her that she can't exactly share. She thinks a lot about death for example, and the beauty of life. She shares a bit of Septimus' ideas on life and death, just not to the same extent. She does like to host parties, but at the same time, they stress her out because she wants to make sure that they are perfect. I think that all these viewpoints are valid and necessary to have a complete picture of Clarissa. To me, Clarissa is a rich old lady who, while seeming at least a bit pretentious, has very valid and interesting views on life that maybe not so many people share. She keeps on hosting parties because that is both what she enjoys and what people expect of her. She is unfortunately a bit estranged from her daughter who spends time with a devout Christian, against her very atheist mother's wishes and she likes bringing people together because it allows people to get to know each other and experience each other's "unseen" selves - the part that sticks in memory as opposed to the fleeting physical "apparition." Her friends enjoy seeing her and talking to her even if they have some slight negative opinions. Clarissa is an extraordinary person. She goes through much of the same as everybody else, and that makes it all the more impressive that Woolf made an entire novel focused most of the time on her character.
I think that this is a fairly interesting perspective on the book, and in many ways shows that Woolf succeeded in her goal of showing ordinary people with seemingly ordinary lives as unique. Throughout our time reading Mrs. Dalloway, it seems like this is Woolf’s attempt to back up the claims and criticisms she made of how books characterized people in the sense that characters are only present to advance a plot of some sort. As you alluded to, Woolf manages to take a completely ordinary woman in Mrs. Dalloway with a seemingly easy, aristocratic, privileged, life and give us a deep background making her feel like her own person rather than just a symbol for aristocratic women in that time period.
ReplyDeleteI like your mention of Pride and Prejudice; I was also a little worried when I realized this book took place in all of 12 hours and was essentially about parties. While at times Woolf does give off a sort of dramatic vibe with all of Clarissa's romantic interests, I definitely enjoyed this book more than Pride and Prejudice because it goes much deeper into a character's mind and is quite revealing about the way people's views of themselves often differ from how they are viewed by others. I like what you said about Woolf being able to show us the extraordinary in an ordinary person like Clarissa; I think the idea that everyone has something extraordinary about them, that often goes unseen by others, is a key theme in the book. I definitely could've used less random detail about briefly mentioned characters I didn't care about, but overall I found Woolf's style to be very enjoyable and I'm glad you didn't hate the book.
ReplyDeleteMore than one reader has made the comparison to _Pride and Prejudice_ on the blogs, and it's an interesting but surprising one. Austen is a very traditional novelist, writing on the early side of the Victorian period--a world far removed from the postwar urban landscape of Woolf's novel. But it's true that the scene Woolf depicts at Bourton (set after the end of the Victorian period, in the Edwardian period) has some resonance with an Austen plot: we get the conflicting passions, the central questions about whom to marry (not sure where Sally Seton would fit in, in Austen's tight-laced universe!).
ReplyDeleteBut the twist is that Woolf sets this Austenesque plotline in the past, and makes her novel centrally concerned with what the middle-aged woman *makes of* this past, looking back. It's as if Elizabeth from P&P were writing about Mr. Darcy from thirty years in the future, toying with regrets while also feeling pleased with how her life has turned out.