1
Alba Vicario English Literature 1650-2000 British English 10 June 2014 1467 words
The Pursuit of Identity in Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway
In the 20th century, Modernism develops after a period of social, political and economic upheavals. A more individualistic perspective was born after World War; whereas the reality and the objective facts are put aside. Some writers of this period, as Virginia Woolf, are focused on "stream of consciousness". Thus, the depth of each character is particularly reflected, so that their feelings and thoughts are shown at all times how they are changing according to the situation in which the characters are. (Bouzid, 2013:4) Furthermore, Darwinian theories — based on denying that man descended from God, but from ape evolution — influence influence the need to know which function the human being assumes in the world. (Greenberg, 2009:426 ) Bouzid states that Virginia Woolf, as a modern and feminist writer, deals with the study of the individual’s consciousness using the “stream of consciousness” technique. (2013:12). This technique appears in her book Mrs book Mrs Dalloway published Dalloway published in 1925. The author focuses on Mrs Dalloway’s Dalloway’s characters’ inner life through their youth youth memories and their thoughts. This technique is so interesting because Woolf ’s ’s analysis encompasses each character’s thought and feeling in a continuous way, moving from one character to another. Moreover, she does not focus on the outer side, but on the inner life of each character. (Bouzid, 2013:2). The adoption of the internal monologue takes a very important role in Woolf's work because it is the mean which the characters question their identity. The sense of identity is essential in the era of Modernism because, like the existentialist stream does,
2
individuals look for their own identity, the importance of being in the world and the function that they comply in it. Mrs Dalloway is written after a war period, where English people seek their identity in a vanished past where everything has been destroyed because of the war. However, in Mrs Dalloway the search of identity makes the reader question theirs. The course of time and the constant change make reader wonder whether someone can be lack of something in their identity when they have ever in the past; or even though a particular virtue or defect has never been attached to their identity, it is essential reason for what they are now? Mrs Dalloway is set in London in a day of June of 1923. In spite of difficulty to know the characters circumstances (because of the fact that the story takes place in one day), Woolf delves into them using introspection, i.e., entering into the deepest of his consciousness. Additionally, there is an impersonal narrator who is very close to the character, so he shows characters’ thoughts, actions and per ceptions. Similar to human mind — which flows from the conscious to the unconscious, fantasy to reality and past memories to the present — the narrator mixes dreams with the reality and past with present, for this purpose, the narrator introduces the Clarissa’s memories through flashbacks. Clarissa Dalloway’s memories are positive for her because she finds her identity in her youth. However, after some years, she questions what she was and what she has become. That is why; she remembers her past to find their identity in the present. Her voice always speaks unconsciously inside her, surfacing her wishes, desires and fantasies. Nevertheless, she questions her surroundings because craves the energy of youth, freedom of a single life and the chance of choosing Peter Walsh as her partner: The final scene, the terrible scene which he believed had mattered more than anything in the whole of his life […] Sally at lunch
3
saying something about Dalloway, and calling him `My name is Dalloway´; whereupon Clarissa suddenly stiffened, coloured, in a way she had, an rapped out sharply, `We’ve had enough of that feeble joke´. That was all […] `Clarissa!´ he cried. `Clarissa!´ But she never came back. It was over. He went away that night. He never saw her again”. (Woolf, 2008:54-55) Clarissa's life is a quiet calm, with concerns such as: throwing a party or buying roses. However, she feels empty with an emotional deficiency or an unfulfilled dream. Virginia Woolf portrays life as unavoidable circumstances in a row over time in which people have to choose. Each decision led life in one or another way, which not only does it change life but the identity. In other words, new circumstances do not change the identity but they broad the aspects of it. Thus, Clarissa Dalloway seeks meaning to her existence, she nostalgically remembers the happiest moments of the past: “She and Sally fell a little behind. Then came the most exquisite moment of her whole life passing a stone urn with flowers in it. Sally stopped; picked a flower; kissed her on the lips.” (Woolf, 2008:30) Likewise, she also has in her mind all she has never been because of a fate which she cannot escape from. Virginia Woolf shows that life is made of fleeting but precious moments. For example, Clarissa feels pleasure when she remembers Sally Seton, her friend of youth and first love experience. Clarissa values a pure love full of passion, and that makes Clarisse consider marriage as a horrible experience because her marriage drags her to be another wife more in the society. Her identity is under the name of her husband: Mr. Dalloway, a business gentleman. Hence, she feels sorry for not having another life with Peter: “Yet how much she owed Peter Walsh later. Always when she thought of him she
4
thought of their quarrels for some reason — because she wanted his good opinion so much, perhaps. She owed him words: `sentimental´…” (Woolf, 2008:31) From an existentialist perspective, Mrs Dalloway reflects how the characters question their identity and their role within society. Nevertheless, Virginia Woolf works with the technique of the interior monologue especially from the feminine sensibility. On the one hand, Existentialism places the individual in the present, which must live with resignation, but it does not emphasize much on the experiences of the past or the future. On the other hand, the internal monologue takes life as an embodiment to be traced from the past and it has a close relationship with the yearnings. The interior monologue assumes personal and emotional relationships as an inevitable space in which the individual is placed and where identity is forged, and that from these circumstances their feelings and longings are possible. In the same vein, Virginia Woolf, as feminist writer, makes a contribution on the oppression of marriage. Jane Goldman asserts that by the time the woman neglects her name (part of her identity) to take her husband’s name the woman is subjected to marriage oppression. (2008:53). Virginia Woolf shows how the roles are established in the story: while man makes decisions and works out of the house to give dignity and support their families; wife should remain at home, doing housework and take care of children. In the case of Clarissa, she has nothing else to do that preparing parties, while she waits her husband arrives home. Clarissa Dalloway discovers in her married name `Dalloway´ the signal of submission; and therefore, the affirmation of her tragedy. Marriage identity has been alienating Clarisse, and it forces her to see things from the Mr. Dalloway perspective, i.e., from an aristocratic and bourgeois vision. Clarissa hides her sensitivities and her youth dreams; that is why, she lives in constantly nostalgia.
5
In addition, there are situations that break identity completely, as in the case of Septimus: “For God’s sake don´t come!´ Septimus cried out. For he could not look upon the dead. But the branches parted. A man in grey was actually walking towards them. It was Evans! But no wounds; he was no changed.” (Woolf, 2008:59) Reinsertion after the war is hard, so that society rejects and his onl y way out is suicide. Clarissa's party is the climax of the story because she meets with her old friends: Sally and Peter. She realizes that even though they are together as in her memory, the circumstances are different, so she realizes how quickly life goes. Finally, the news about Septimus death also makes her reflect about the sense of human being in the world. Virginia Woolf reflects that after the World War, the English population felt empty because of the death of a lot of people and the loss of national identity, which make people star questioning their own identity. (Bouzid, 2013:4). Modernism brings interior monologue to Woolf's Mrs Dalloway in order to analyse the individual consciousness. Thus, the events do not matter as much as the characters’ inner world: their memories, regrets, fantasies and hopes, which constitute their identity. In Mrs Dalloway, the character of Clarissa identifies constantly in her youth when she is young and free of marriage, in other words, she identifies with the happiest time of her life and she still had the chance of choose her future. In the party, which is the climax in Mrs Dalloway, Virginia Woolf explains through the character of Clarissa that man has to assume his existence, to live his life because there is only one life. She realizes through the loss of the youth virtues. Septimus suicide is a turning point to Clarissa to understand that eternity does not exist and sometimes, all may be hopeless. However, man can only understand himself as a subject by living and doing examinations of conscience.
6
Finally, Clarissa ponders Septimus' death. Even though he dies, life goes on in the rest of people’s life. So, she doubts the importance or function she has in the world. Woolf finds a deeper meaning to human being existence, appealing to rigorous internal tests, which require mindedness and sincerity. An individual needs to look at themselves as if they were in front of a mirror, pointing out their flaws and qualities to face the world and to face that anguish produced by the fact that they are in the world for no apparent reason. There is not always reasons found to be in this world, but human being has the privilege of being the protagonist in their own mind, so that they can find through reflection their identity and their happiness.
References
Bouzik, Soumia. 2013. The Use of Stream of Consciousness in Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway. Ouargla: Kasdi Merbah University. Greenberg, Jonathan. 2009.
“Introduction: Darwin and Literary Studies.” Twentieth-
Century Literature 55.4: 423-444. Goldman, Jane. 2008. The Cambridge Introduction to Virginia Woolf . Cambridge University Press Woolf, Virginia. 2008. Mrs Dalloway. New York: Oxford University Press
