Clarissa Dalloway and Herself

In Mrs. Dalloway, Woolf emphasizes the phenomena of memory, change, and death. Linear time, such as clock time, conflicts with mind time, thought and imagination. Through the intricateness of Clarissa’s mind, the reader is presented with two different protagonists, one that is young and one that is old.

The relationship between the younger Clarissa and the older Clarissa examines the idea of identity, who is the real Clarissa, and the type of isolation the terror of death can foster on an individual. The very first line of the novel, “Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself,” implies independence and individualization within the mind of the older Clarissa (3). However, it is quickly realized that there is more to Mrs. Dalloway than meets the eye. On the same page, she is suddenly thrown back in time as she reflects upon her youth. The images of waves sweep her away with the memory of her past self, her past life:

How fresh, how calm, stiller than this of course, the air was in the early morning; like the flap of a wave; the kiss of a wave; chill and sharp and yet (for a girl of eighteen, as she then was) solemn, feeling as she did, standing there at the open window, that something awful was about to happen… (3)

The images of waves and clocks constantly interrupt this one day in the life of Clarissa to herald a time of the past. It is through her memories of her self, the relations with her past self, that Clarissa is able to come to some type of understanding about the choices she made in life. The ebb and flow of life reminds her that she cannot stay stuck in her past self, her past memories:

She remembered once throwing a shilling into the Serpentine. But every one remembered; what she loved was this, here, now, in front of her; the fat lady in the cab. Did it matter then, she asked herself, walking towards Bond Street, did it matter that she must inevitably cease completely; all this must go on without her; did she resent it; or did it not become consoling to believe that death ended absolutely? but that somehow in the streets of London, on the ebb and flow of things, here, there, she survived, Peter survived, lived in each other, she being part, she was positive, of the trees at home… (9)

Clarissa remembers small images of a past self, a young girl that went out with friends, dancing all night, enjoying parties. These brief images of her throwing coins into the Serpentine River mean nothing, though. The older, wiser Clarissa admits that it is only through her present relationships that she will live on long after death has consumed her like a wave breaking against the banks of the sand.

Clarissa struggles with regret from her youth. Though she is happy about living, happy about existing, she sometimes wishes that things could have been different, that she could have made better choices in her youth. The older Clarissa is the perfect hostess; she is constantly trying to please those around her. However, she admits to wanting something different, to being someone different: “Much rather would she have been one of those people like Richard who did things for themselves…she did things not simply, not for themselves; but to make people think this or that…Oh if she could have had her life over again! she thought, stepping on to the pavement, could have even differently” (10). From there she begins to describe herself as an exotic woman with dark skin who is interested in politics, perhaps the type of woman she would have been if she had married Peter? Woolf juxtaposes this image with the harsh reality of the true Clarissa, who is simply “a narrow pea-stick figure” that resembles a bird (10). Despite her connection with past memories, Clarissa has no idea who she is. She is “invisible, unseen; unknown…not even Clarissa any more; this being Mrs. Richard Dalloway” (10).

The main defining feature about the older Clarissa is her love of parties. After all, the whole novel surrounds one event in her life—the preparation for one of Clarissa’s parties. Unfortunately, even that characteristic about Clarissa’s present life is false, to some degree:

It was too much like being—just anybody, standing there; anybody could do it, yet this anybody she did a little admire, couldn’t help feeling that she had, anyhow, made this happen, that it marked a stage…Every time she gave a party she had this feeling of being something not herself, and that every one was unreal in one way; much more real in another. (166)

Clarissa’s ambivalence towards herself not only defines who she is, but defines the types of relationships and decisions she forms during her life. The water images, the waves, wash through Clarissa, showing bits and pieces of the real woman hiding underneath the surface. Isabel Gamble, in her article “Clarissa Dalloway’s ‘Double,’” explains that “Clarissa’s progress toward selfhood is at the same time an unlocking and unfreezing of the chill at the depths, realizing in her the seas of pity” (Critics on Virginia 53). Gamble’s theory is supported by the transmutation of water images that permeate this novel: “It was…something warm which broke up surfaces and rippled the cold contact” of one human being with another (MD 31). The breaking of surfaces brings one into contact not only with the sources of one’s own nature, but simultaneously with the similar sources in every human nature. Knowledge of self is achieved by, and leads to, sympathetic identity with others (53).

Works Cited

Latham, Jacqueline E.M. ed. Critics on Virginia Woolf. Coral Gables, Florida: U of Miami P, 1970.

Woolf, Virginia. Mrs. Dalloway. Orlando: Harcourt, 2005.