Mrs Dalloway, a short novel written in 1925 by Virginia
Woolf (1882-1941) is an excellent treatment of the problem of loneliness and
love, a theme which preoccupied the author.
The story opens as the heroine, society hostess Clarissa
Dalloway, is making preparations for giving a party. Parties are designed to
bring people together, but this novel raises the question of whether one can be
even lonelier in a crowd.
As she moves about London doing her shopping, every
encounter she has produces a response that is coloured by her earlier
experiences, so that as we follow her stream of consciousness we learn
everything that matters of her previous history. The events of her day are
organised in a way that raises many questions about the possibilities of
communication.
We also learn about the events in the day of Mr and Mrs
Septimus Warren Smith, who never actually meet Mrs Dalloway, but there is a
symbolic relationship between them, which is emphasised when one of the guests
at her party, a specialist who has been treating Mr Smith, tells her about his
suicide and produces in her a feeling of identification with the unfortunate
man.
Septimus Warren Smith goes mad because, as a result of his
experiences in World War I, he has lost all sense of contact with other people,
is driven into the isolated emptiness of himself, and is dragged back by
representatives of crude conventionality who imagine that by imposing their
artificial social norms on him they can restore his sense of communication.
The pattern of the novel is woven with considerable
delicacy, and the various elements from Mrs Dalloway’s past are brought into
the present through a variety of persuasive devices. The prose is carefully
cadenced and is, at times, almost poetic although never rhetorical. The individual
sense of significance which provides the basis for the plot pattern is conveyed
through style and imagery, through the suggestiveness and cunning of the
language.
© John Welford
