|
Mrs. Dalloway
The novel describes the events of twenty-four hours in central London.
Clarrisa Dalloway is the wife of Richard Dalloway, a Member of Parliament.
She is a fashionable, worldly wealthy woman of 51years old. One-day morning
she sets off to by flowers for her party in the evening. Then her interior
monologue, interwoven with the sights and sounds of the urban London,
unfolds her character through the eyes of many other characters in her life.
The writer successfully creates such minor characters as her former lover
Peter Walsh who is a “failure” just back from India, her friend Sally Seton,
her daughter Elizabeth, a seventeen girl greatly influenced by her history
tutor and others. There is a paralleling clue in the novel, which is
realized in Septimus Warren Smith. The depiction of Septimus constitutes
almost a separate story with its own significance within the main framework.
Shocked by the war Septimus goes insane. He becomes, in a way, a victim of
two irresponsible and inhuman doctors Dr. Holmes and Sir William Bradshaw.
He commits suicide at the end of the day. The news of his death was brought
by the doctor, Harley Street, to the party.
In the novel the stream of consciousness method is
successfully applied especially in the first part. The heroine’s thoughts
jump from one thing to another, transcending the boundaries of time and
space. This is the exact practice of her theory of writing a novel: “Examine
for a moment an ordinary mind on an ordinary day. The mind receives a myriad
impressions….” The novel did not follow the conventional way in presenting
the characters. The two characters never meet but their lives were mutually
connected. In some way they represented the two aspects of one person or two
perspectives of life. The writer has a sympathetic attitude towards Mr.
Dalloway, when she realizes her defects and foibles in her
self-consciousness. The madness of Septimus, to some extent, represents
Woolf’s own voice. In this “one day” novel Woolf tried to reveal her own
idea of life trough the mental processes of her characters and their
emotional responses to existence. The shifting of time from reality to
mental world was influenced by French philosopher Bergson whose idea of
“special time” and “psychological time” were put into practice in writing
the novel. The fowling excerpted paragraph is a typical representation of
stream of consciousness with discursive thoughts jumping from one to the
other:
“So she would still find
herself arguing in St. James’s Park, still making out that she had been
right- and she had too-not to marry him. For in marriage a little licence, a
little independence there must be between people living together day in day
out in the same house; which Richard gave her, and she him. (Where was he
this morning for instance? Some committee, she never asked what.) But with
Peter everything had to be shared; everything gone into. And it was
intolerable, and when it came that scene in the little garden by the
fountain, she had to break with him or they would have been destroyed, both
of them ruined, she was convinced; though she had borne about with her for
years like an arrow sticking in her heart the grief, the anguish; and then
the horror of the moment when someone told her at the concert that he had
married a woman met on the boat going to India! Never should she forget all
that! Cold, heartless, a prude, he called her. Never could she understand
how he cared. But those Indian women did presumably- silly, pretty, flimsy
nincompoops. And she wasted her pity. For he was quite happy, he assured
her-perfectly happy, though he had never done a thing that they talked of;
his whole life had been a failure. It made her angry still.”
To the Lighthouse
The novel was divided into three parts: “The Window”,
“Time Passage” and “The Lighthouse”. In the first part, the Ramsays with
their eight children and some guests live in their seaside home. The
youngest son, James wants to visit the lighthouse. But the weather is
unsuitable to go and the father ruthlessly refused the boy. The second part
is a brief record of family’s life during ten years. Mrs. Ramsay dies
suddenly one night. The son, Andrew is killed in the war and Prue dies of
childbirth. The house on the island has been deserted for ten years. So much
has changed on the effect of time passage. This part ends, when the former
guest of the family, Lily Briscoe, the painter and Mr. Carmichael, the poet
arrive. In the third parts, the Ramsay family gathers in the same house ten
years later. The family finally completes the visit to the lighthouse that
has been put off for ten years. The father, Mr. Ramsay, James, and Cam board
on the boat to the lighthouse. Although during the sailing toward the
lighthouse, Mr. Ramsay is still the tyrannical father, they arrive at the
lighthouse and receive some self-awareness about life. In the meanwhile,
Lily completes her painting left unfinished ten years ago.
In the novel Mrs. Ramsay is a very kind, gracious and
nurturing mother in the eyes of Lily. She devotes her whole life to the
children and her husband. On the contrary, Mr. Ramsay is a rational
philosopher and even ruthless father. In the family Mr. Ramsay is the
master, but he fails to win genuine respect and love from his children. In a
sense, Mrs. Ramsay is the center of the family through her maternal love and
kindness. Thus the novel reflects the author’s criticism of male-dominated
society in Victorian Age. In the meanwhile, a new dimension was explored in
this novel, not only the personal relationships, but also man’s wider
relation to the universe. The lighthouse is an important symbol through the
novel. Though there were various interpretations, it seemed to symbolize
something that is hopeful and could bring ultimate harmony between human
beings and the universe. At the end of the novel the search of the meaning
of life was consummated in Lily’s harmonious painting. The stream of
consciousness technique is still its narrative method, yet it is used
subtler and goes deeper. Another significant feature of the book is the
multi-perspective view and language of the novel is full of poetic rhythms
and lyric imagery.
|
