Clarissa Dalloway and Mrs. Pym (Flower Seller)

The spectrum of life and death is addressed through Clarissa’s relations not only with herself but with others. She is connected to her youth via memories of her past. Presently, she is a middle-class wealthy woman married to a man of Parliament. Miss Pym, from Mulberry’s florist shop, is Clarissa’s reminder of old age, of life progressing to its natural conclusion of death. The flowers in the shop, the overriding influence of nature, take Clarissa to a different world as she remembers her relationship with the old woman:

Ah yes—so she breathed in the earthy garden sweet smell as she stood talking to Miss Pym who owed her help, and thought her kind, for kind she had been years ago; very kind, but she looked older, this year, turning her head from side to side among the irises and roses and nodding tufts of lilac with her eyes half closed, snuffing it, after the street uproar, the delicious scent, the exquisite coolness. (12-13)

Miss Pym is an interesting character that readers only see a glimpse of the relationship between Clarissa and her. It can be assumed that Clarissa has multiple occasions to visit Miss Pym at Mulberry’s because she hosts so many parties. She obviously sees the woman often enough to notice when she is looking older, not even the beauty of nature, the flowers surrounding the two women, can hide the affects of aging. In fact, the image of the sea, waves, the flux of life, has developed into a symbol about life. Irene Simon in her article “Some Images in Mrs. Dalloway” describes it more precisely as follows:

The fear of loneliness and the fear of being lost in the flux, the love of the flux and the love of independent existence, the twofold movement of merging and separating, of existing individually and being annihilated, are subsumed in the image of, which, thanks to its ambivalence, can be used to express both aspects of the theme. (Critics on Virginia 58)

The relationships between dichotomies, such as life and death, young and old, independence and dependence, individual and social identities, are all explored in the complex relationships in Woolf’s novels. In Mrs. Dalloway, this seemingly simple relationship between an old woman and Clarissa becomes a complex web of images that herald a remembrance of youth and an epiphany about the mysteries surrounding life:

And as she began to go with Miss Pym from jar to jar, choosing, nonsense, nonsense, she said to herself, more and more gently, as if this beauty, this scent, this colour, and Miss Pym liking her, trusting her, were a wave which she let flow over her and surmount that hatred, that monster, surmount it all; and it lifted her up and up when—oh! a pistol shot in the street outside! (13)

The waves are rushing Clarissa to a climax. The scent of flowers in the shop mix with images of Miss Pym, a kind woman who likes Clarissa, to an intense revelation. Clarissa is close. She is riding the waves, high, higher…when suddenly the waves crash against a rock. Clarissa’s revelation is dashed to pieces as reality breaks into her reverie. Suddenly, Miss Pym does not seem like the nice, old lady that has always liked Clarissa. Miss Pym has suddenly become Clarissa’s judge, her accuser: [Miss Pym was]…coming back and smiling apologetically with her hands full of sweet peas, as if those motor cars, those tyres of motor cars, were all her fault” (13). This quote emphasizes how strangely fragile our relationships can be with each other. In one instance, Clarissa and Miss Pym are being carried, like waves, to some large conclusion about life, but, just as suddenly, reality comes crashing down and interrupts their budding relationship. The Garden of Eden has been invaded by mankind. Clarissa ends her encounter with Miss Pym as if they are enemies, as if Miss Pym blames her for the interruption of technology into their world of nature, it is solely in the mind of Clarissa, whose sense of reality wavers as the day progresses.

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.