Mehr 1
In a 1925 book review of Virginia Woolf's Mrs Dalloway, Richard Hughes writes that for each person reading the novel, “London is made for the first time…to exist. It merges, shining like crystal out of the fog in which all the merely material universe is ordinarily enveloped…it emerges and stays” (13[JM1]). Just as Hughes’ statement suggests, the London we encounter in Mrs. Dalloway transcends the boundaries of mere physical space, instead becoming an active part of the novel’s characters and readers as they attempt to create the city for themselves. Far from a static, one-dimensional setting, Mrs. Dalloway’s London is fluid and ever changing, a constantly shifting reality that disrupts secure constructions of self, nation, and gender. Allowing the boundaries that exist between characters to dissolve into an anarchic collective, Woolf’s London challenges the notion of a clearly defined self. It represents the British imperial nation as merely a social construction that must be performed into being, and depicts the London streets as a place where women can transgress traditional gender roles. Juxtaposing the brief lives of its characters against their more permanent surroundings, Mrs. Dalloway creates in London a path towards immortality—its physical spaces becoming a way that characters can connect with one another and become an enduring part of the great procession of life that is the city itself.
Mrs. Dalloway’s London is constantly challenging the notion of a set reality. At one point in the novel Peter Walsh claims that “nothing exists outside us except a state of mind” (57[JM2]). This seems a rather appropriate way to describe the London of this novel: a state of each character’s mind. For there is no singular London in Mrs. Dalloway—no definitive interpretation of the physical space that surrounds the novel’s characters. As Clarissa takes her first steps out onto the London streets in the morning she thinks, “For Heaven only knows why one loves it so, how one sees it so, making it up, building it round one, tumbling it, creating every moment afresh” (4). In Clarissa’s eyes London is not a static background but a source of constant creation, a space one reconstructs every moment into something new.[1] The flux and chaos of a world so continuously changing is embodied in Woolf’s “stream of consciousness” style, in which we are emerged in each character’s individual thoughts and constructions. Any fixed sense of reality we have falls away as the past and present converge and we are taken down a winding path of memories, events, and emotions (Clarissa’s youth at Bourton, Peter Walsh’s love for her, Septimus’ involvement in the War, etc.)[2] Woolf further disrupts our sense of reality with her use of multiple perspectives, illustrating the vast diversity of human experience by filtering the world of London through the eyes of a number of characters. The novel consistently highlights reality’s subjectivity by showing us the different ways two or three people interpret the same event (for example, when the airplane flies over Bond Street and everyone sees something different spelled in the sky [21]). We watch as each character in the novel constructs their own London, revealing aspects of themselves through their perceptions of the city, their differing viewpoints constantly underlining the lack of a definitive paradigm that can accurately embody the chaos of the modern world.[3]
In much the same way that London destabilizes our neat conceptions of reality, it also challenges the notion of a clearly defined and stable sense of self. Not only is identity in Mrs. Dalloway seen as indeterminate, a constantly changing product of the people and places one knows, but in addition we see London repeatedly blur the distinctions between self and other, connecting a vast range of characters through the physical spaces of the city. Clarissa herself is quite conscious of the unfixed and vaguely defined nature of identity, claiming, “She would not say of any one in the world now that they were this or were that” (8). Clarissa is keenly aware that, like reality, the self is dynamically constructed from moment to moment, comprised of a force that is not securely bound but a part of everything it touches: “She felt herself everywhere; not ‘here, here, here’…but everywhere…So that to know her, or any one, one must seek out the people who completed them; even the places” (152). If the self consists, as Clarissa claims, of the constant interaction of the people and places one cares about, then London becomes a crucial part of each character’s identity, since it is not only the environment in which they live, but the means by which they connect to the people who complete their selves.[4]
London is the external medium through which the characters of Mrs. Dalloway connect to one another. It is the physical images of the city that form the transitions for Woolf’s “stream of consciousness” narrations, allowing different characters’ thoughts to become interwoven by seeing the same object or simultaneously hearing Big Ben chime.[5] Consider the way London connects Clarissa and Septimus, who never actually meet but whose stories run parallel to each other. They see the same plane circling overhead and hearing Big Ben at the same time. Septimus sits on a bench beside Clarissa’s friend Peter Walsh in Regent’s Park, and throws himself out of a window due to the carelessness of one of Clarissa’s own party guests, William Bradshaw. Bradshaw then tells the story in Clarissa’s presence, causing her to feel “somehow very like him—the young manwho had killed himself” (186). At the same time that the novel stresses the multiplicity of experience, there are a number of moments like these when characters discover a sense that certain aspects of human life are universal: the experience of love, death, and beauty, for example. Mrs. Dalloway claims that she has “odd affinities…with people she had never spoken to” (154), and when Septimus remembers the death of his friend Evans he thinks: “such things happen to everyone. Every one has friends who were killed in the War. Every one gives up something when they marry” (66).
Yet despite these brief moments of community, characters in Mrs. Dalloway frequently express a sense of isolation, an inability to communicate with others that can only be overcome through their shared connection to London. Throughout the novel, characters often experience a solipsistic sense of self-containment. Clarissa herself even wavers between feelings of connectivity and utter isolation. Though she feels a “part of people she had never met” (9), she also has “a perpetual sense…of being out, out, far out to sea and alone” (8[JM3]). Sally Seton expresses a similar sensation that people are all trapped in our own little cells, unable to truly know others: “For what can one know even of the people one lives with every day? Are we not all prisoners?” (192). One of the novels clearest moments of solipsism occurs during a scene in Regents Park when Mrs. Dempster, Maisie Johnson, and Lucrezia all express a sense of isolation and a frustrated desire to communicate with one another.[6] Lucrezia claims that “it was she who suffered, but she had no one to tell” (23), and Mrs. Dempster “could not help wishing to whisper a word to Maisie Johnson” (27), thinking she could comfort the obviously frightened girl with some motherly advice.
It is the physical surroundings of London that ultimately allow these boundaries of the self to break down into a sense of collectivity. Since every character is somehow connected to London, they become a part of one another through their shared relationship to the city.[7] As people begin to realize the permanence of the external world in comparison with the temporality of their own lives, the boundaries that isolate them begin to dissolve as they become a part of a communal life force that binds them to each other and the earth. Consider what happens to Lucrezia as she walks in the park:
I am alone; I am alone! she cried, by the fountain in Regent’s Park…as perhaps at midnight[JM4], when all boundaries are lost, the country reverts to its ancient shape, as the Roman’s saw it, lying cloudy, when they landed, and the hills had no names and rivers wound they knew not where—such was her darkness” (24).
Only seconds after Lucrezia’s solipstic cry of isolation, “I am alone; I am alone!” all the limits that contain[JM5] her self suddenly melt away as she is transported to an almost prehistoric London where it is just her and life force of the physical spaces. This “ancient” world connects Lucrezia to everyone that surrounds her because it is what they all share—it is where they all came from and what they will go back to when they die—the grass, the earth that lurks beneath the London pavements. This world even predates nomenclature—the thing that names and therefore defines one entity from another. In truth, names such as “Lucrezia” or “Clarissa” are quite confining, binding characters into tightly contained selves when in reality they are fluid beings engaged in an active exchange with the people and places around them.
By dissolving oneself into the collective and attaching to the physical spaces of London, the characters in Mrs. Dalloway can achieve a communication with others that transcends the limits of language. Though she does not realize it, what Lucrezia has stumbled upon is not “darkness” at all, but a kind of light—a means of achieving the link to others she so desperately needs. While language forces people to communicate directly, London allows them to do so merely through a sense that the energy of their lives occupies the same physical space, flowing in and out of one another.[8] This is why death is the ultimate form of communication. As Clarissa claims, “Death was an attempt to communicate; people feeling the impossibility of reaching the center which, mystically, evaded them; closeness drew apart; rapture faded, one was alone. There was an embrace in death” (184). With death comes the ultimate dissolution of one’s self into their surroundings, the most pervasive sense of intermingling with the people and places one has known. Such is the feeling of connection that overcomes Clarissa when she learns of Septimus’ death, looking out the window and suddenly experiencing a part of this man she has never spoken to. He makes her “feel the beauty,” “feel the fun” of her own existence (186).
Because one’s individual life is so transient when compared with the permanence of the physical world and the constant march of human life, this connecting to others through London becomes a way to achieve immortality—a means for characters to attach themselves to something larger that will continue on after their own personal deaths. In Clarissa’s case, London almost becomes a kind of religion. She claims that “not for a moment did she believe in God” (29), yet she feels she will attain an afterlife through the life force of the city. “She believed…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” (152-153). Clarissa clearly sees London as one of the places where her unseen self might continue, thinking that even after death, “somehow in the streets of London, on the ebb and flow of things, here, there, she
survived” (9). The way Mrs. Dalloway’s London disrupts a well-defined sense of self in favor of an
anarchic collective becomes something rather positive, connecting characters to the physical world and to one another, giving them the opportunity for an endless stretch of life on “the ebb and flow” of the city.
When one compares London’s permanence with the ephemeral nature of his or her own life—when one realizes how the chaotic interplay of self, other, and city disrupts secure paradigms of reality and identity, it is hard to see any simple organizing principle of life as more than a transient social construction. Such is the case with seemingly secure notions of imperialism and gender, which are quickly destabilized by Mrs. Dalloway’s representation of London. Woolf depicts British empire as a reigning force that claims to have an essential heritage, when in truth, it is a mere construction that must constantly be reasserted. We see this early on in the novel during the important scene in which a car backfires on Bond Street, attracting everyone’s attention to “a face of the very greatest importance” that mysteriously lurks inside (14). Yet in the absence of real evidence that proves the passenger’s identity, characters begin to construct their own ideas of who the car contains, making imperialism this intangible thing that must be conjectured into being. The notion of imperial authority is further undermined by Woolf’s failure to ever reveal who the person actually is, leaving the reader to wonder if the face of British empire even exists at all.[9]
Constructions of imperialism are all called into question as Woolf once again reinforces the permanence of London’s physical space. As this same vehicle drives down Bond Street she writes:
There could be no doubt that…greatness was passing…removed only by a hand’s breadth from ordinary people who might now, for the first and last time, be within speaking distance of the majesty of England, of the enduring symbol of the state which will be known to curious antiquaries, sifting the ruins of time, when London is a grass-grown path and all those hurrying along the pavement this Wednesday morning are but bones with a few wedding rings mixed up in their dust and the gold stoppings of innumerable decayed teeth. The face in the motor car will then be known. (16)
Are we really to believe that the “majesty of England” will still exist when the city and even time itself have both been laid to ruins? Quite the contrary, when the streets of Mrs. Dalloway’s London suddenly transform into wild grass it does not prove imperialism’s endurance, but sets it against the backdrop of the world’s permanence, making the fall of the British empire seem an inevitable consequence of the passage of time. Woolf also implicitly counters the idea of an everlasting British empire with her careful choice of words in the phrase “known to curious antiquaries.” She doesn’t claim that in hundreds of years British imperialism as an ideology will be “believed” or “followed,” but simply “known” as something that once existed. In this future mankind will then be able to name this authority, this “face in the motor car,” for what it really is—nothing, a complete fabrication. Without the crowd to construct it into being it too will soon disintegrate into dust and bones.
Woolf further challenges the centrality of imperialism by depicting an empire that must be consistently built and performed into being. Consider the walk Peter Walsh takes down Whitehall Street, passing a variety of “exalted statues,” including that of his childhood hero, Gordon. Meanwhile he is overtaken by a group of young soldiers marching to lay a wreath on the Cenotaph: “Boys in uniform, carrying guns, marched with their eyes ahead of them…on their faces an expression like the letters of a legend written round the base of a statue praising duty, gratitude, fidelity, love of England” (51). On the surface these images seem evidence of empire’s greatness and stake a claim to a vast heritage that reaches deep into the past and will presumably continue far into the future. However, in truth, what they do is reveal its constructed nature. First of all, these statues were literally constructed—built by the government in order to bolster the people’s confidence in imperialism. Second, the particular monuments that Woolf chooses are not old at all, but were erected fairly close to the time the novel was written.[10] They represent a false sense of permanence, proof of empire’s constant struggle to assert itself by building physical structures and performing rituals such as the soldiers laying a wreath on the tomb. Once again the physical spaces of London reveal constructs of imperialism to be strikingly insecure.[11] Even the marching boys are described as “weedly” and “not robust,” weak statues sent to uphold the values of a nation (51).
As we’ve already seen, the London of Mrs. Dalloway is a rapidly shifting space in which even society’s firmest beliefs are called into question. As the boundaries of the self collapse into a sense of collectivity on the city streets, women are given a unique opportunity to challenge oppressive gender constructions, achieving a freedom through their newfound anonymity and transgressing upon the traditionally male public space. The gender hierarchy and division of labor depends a great deal upon the relegation of women to a private, domestic sphere. As a result, the public sphere becomes a symbolically male area—a place where men can practice politics, plan wars, and otherwise run society while women labor to take care of the necessary duties at home. We certainly see this dual sphere in Mrs. Dalloway, in which Woolf depicts London as a patriarchal society, one in which women are marginalized from the male-dominated imperial nation.