Virginia Woolf's Stream of Consciousness in Mrs. Dalloway

Introduction: Woolf and the Stream of Consciousness

Much has been written about Virginia Woolf's use of the stream-of-consciousness technique, which was also employed by other Modernist writers of her time, such as D. H. Lawrence and James Joyce. Woolf is widely considered a pioneer of this narrative mode. The concept of the stream of thought was first proposed by William James, Harvard Professor of Psychology, in 1890.

In a diary entry dated 23 February 1926, Woolf compares the writing process she experienced while composing Mrs. Dalloway with the process she was then undergoing while writing To the Lighthouse:

"I am blown like an old flag by my novel. This one is To the Lighthouse. I think it is worth saying for my own interest that at last, after that battle Jacob's Room, that agony, all agony but the end, Mrs. Dalloway, I am writing as fast and freely as I have written in the whole of my life; more so, than any novel yet. I think this is the proof that I was on the right path; and that what fruit hangs in my soul is to be reached there. Amusingly, I now invent theories that fertility and fluency are the things: I used to plead for a kind of devil's own work not to be flogging my brain all the afternoon. I live entirely in it, and come to the surface rather obscurely and am often unable to think what to say when we walk round the Square which is bad I know." (59)

This passage reveals Woolf's genius and demonstrates how immersed she would become during the process of writing a novel. She uses wave imagery to describe the journey she would take in her own mind while writing, saying, "I live entirely in it, and come to the surface rather obscurely" (Woolf, The Diary 59). Woolf's use of the word "surface" conjures the image of an individual emerging from the depths of an ocean in order to come up for air. Woolf also uses the word "surface" in Peter Walsh's description of the human soul in Mrs. Dalloway in a similar fashion:

"For this is the truth about our soul, he thought, our self, who fish-like inhabits deep seas and plies among obscurities threading her way between the boles of giant weeds, over sun-flickered spaces and on into gloom, cold, deep, inscrutable; suddenly she shoots to the surface and sports on the wind-wrinkled waves; that is, has a positive need to brush, scrape, kindle herself, gossiping." (161)

Wave Imagery and the Passage of Time in Mrs. Dalloway

Woolf weaves wave imagery throughout her novels to represent a character's fully formed or fleeting thoughts—thoughts that rise to the surface of a character's mind unexpectedly. The following examples illustrate how Woolf pairs the psychological with the natural in Mrs. Dalloway. By "psychological," this paper denotes Woolf's use of the stream-of-consciousness technique, which allows readers to enter the minds of her characters; by "natural," it refers to the sounds of ocean waves and the resonating chimes of Big Ben, which correlate with characters' thoughts in intricate ways. Woolf published Mrs. Dalloway in 1925, two years before she published To the Lighthouse, and it is instructive to observe how she refined her stream-of-consciousness writing over the course of the two novels.

Woolf's imagery marks time with descriptive words such as "tides," complementing the movement of characters' thoughts, which at times may be inspiring and at other times may be detrimental. Her use of wave imagery most likely stems from fond childhood memories of spending time at the family beach house in St. Ives. Woolf also chose to invest considerable significance in the great bell tower located near the Palace of Westminster in London. Big Ben is a prominent symbol of London, and Woolf fills the pages of Mrs. Dalloway with its sounds not only to illustrate the passage of time, but also to redirect her characters' attention from the present moment toward the future or the past. For example, the sound of the clock reminds Clarissa that it is nearly time for her party. On other occasions, thoughts of the past are stirred when the clock sounds, as is the case with Rezia just after the death of her husband, Septimus; her thoughts turn to the war Septimus served in and to the men killed in battle. Through wave imagery and the sounds of Big Ben, Woolf draws on the artistic movement of Symbolism.

In Mrs. Dalloway, wave imagery and the resonating sounds of Big Ben together symbolize the passage of time for both readers and characters:

"And the sound of the bell flooded the room with its melancholy wave; which receded, and gathered itself together to fall once more, when she heard, distractingly, something fumbling, something scratching at the door. Who at this hour? Three, good Heavens! Three already! For with overpowering directness and dignity the clock struck three; and she heard nothing else; but the door handle slipped round and in came Richard!" (118)

In this passage, Woolf pairs the sound of the clock with a sonic wave evocative of the sea, illustrating the magnitude of the solitary moment Clarissa experiences in the room. The room is filled not only with the sound of Big Ben but with the force and sound of ocean waves. The wave described as "melancholy" envelops Clarissa Dalloway, and she is afloat in it at that moment and throughout much of the novel. Clarissa's thoughts, actions, and relations with other characters are enacted from within and beneath an ocean of feeling.

In his article "The Lady in the Looking Glass: Reflections on the Self in Virginia Woolf," Stephen Howard employs a psychoanalytic approach, incorporating Jacques Lacan's concept of the "mirror stage" to understand how Woolf explores "the concept of the self" in two short stories—"The Lady in the Looking Glass" and "An Unwritten Novel"—as well as in her later novel, The Waves. Howard also draws on Woolf's own thoughts about "life-writing" as manifested in her partially completed memoir, A Sketch of the Past. Howard refers to the passage in Mrs. Dalloway where Clarissa thinks, "she would not say of Peter, she would not say of herself, I am this, I am that" (46). Howard interprets this as Woolf's suggestion that Clarissa, like all individuals, has a fragmented understanding of her own being. Howard further argues that "as Woolf sees it, events become whole, connected, and manageable once they have been formulated in the terms of language" (49).

Septimus Warren Smith: War Trauma and Fractured Thought

Septimus Warren Smith, the shell-shocked World War I veteran, sees the world differently because of his mental state. The world that Woolf creates in the mind of Septimus is pervaded by watery images. Woolf demonstrates, however, that Septimus makes deeper connections with objects found in nature than Clarissa does, as illustrated in the following passage:

"K…R…" said the nursemaid, and Septimus heard her say "Kay Arr" close to his ear, deeply, softly, like a mellow organ, but with a roughness in her voice like a grasshopper's, which rasped his spine deliciously and sent running up into his brain, which concussing, broke. A marvelous condition can quicken trees into life! Happily Rezia put her hand with a tremendous weight on his knees so that he was weighted down, transfixed, or the excitement of the elm trees rising and falling, rising and falling with all their leaves alight and the colour thinning and thickening from blue to the green, like plumes on horses' heads, feathers on ladies', so proudly they rose and fell, so superbly, would have sent him mad. But he would not go mad. He would shut his eyes; he would see no more. (22)

An aeroplane is advertising a brand of toffee in the sky, but Septimus is so transfixed by the movement of trees and the sound of the nursemaid's voice that he does not seem to notice the advertisement. Due to his mental illness, Septimus is the one character in the novel who cannot readily return to memories of his past or focus on the present moment with the same clarity or understanding as the other characters. Nevertheless, James's theory—that "the knowledge of some other part of the stream, past or future, near or remote, is always mixed in with our knowledge of the present thing"—is applied by Woolf in her creation of Septimus's mind. His mind is like a blank canvas continually painted over with black paint each time his thoughts return to his traumatic wartime experiences. His thoughts' wave-like connections with one another are broken by breakwaters of wartime trauma. He cannot create an ocean of thought; he cannot sustain waves.

Septimus has a markedly different relationship with "time" than the other characters do, precisely because of his inability to be mentally present in the moment. Instead, he frequently imagines himself back in the war:

"The word 'time' split its husk; poured its riches over him; and from his lips fell like shells, like shavings from a plane, without his making them, hard, white, imperishable words, and flew to attach themselves to their places in an ode to Time; an immortal ode to Time. He sang. Evans answered from behind the tree." (69–70)

Conclusion: Thought, Language, and the Limits of Expression

Woolf connects wave imagery with a character's transitive and substantive thoughts. The motion of the waves is equated with whether the thought being experienced by a character is substantive or transitive. The terms "transitive" and "substantive" are taken from James's chapter titled "The Stream of Thought." James discusses how transitive, or passing, thoughts resemble those of a bird in flight because they are more difficult to observe (243). Perches, or substantive thoughts, are clearly formed conclusions. For example, Mrs. Ramsay's vision of "waves of pure lemon" leads her to the substantive conclusion of "It is enough!" (Woolf, To the Lighthouse 297–298). Woolf connects the waves of lemon to Mrs. Ramsay's thoughts—"waves of pure delight raced over the floor of her mind"—which supports the connection between James's theory and Woolf's literary application.

Woolf applies James's theory of the thought that acts like a "shock" in a steady stream of consciousness throughout her novels. The wave imagery provides a framework that helps readers pay close attention to the thoughts of characters in a lyrical way. Identifying the moments that interrupt the flow of a character's thoughts allows critics to chart the variations of waves in Woolf's narratives. For example, as Mrs. Ramsay takes an evening stroll with Mr. Ramsay, she is reminded once again of "all the poverty, all the suffering," but she envisions these concepts transformed into lights that are "rippling and running as if they were drops of silver water held firm in a wind" (Woolf, To the Lighthouse 299). This moment is classified as a shock because Mrs. Ramsay's thoughts are diverted to larger social issues in the midst of an ordinary moment with her husband. These shock-like moments in the lives of Mrs. Ramsay, Lily Briscoe, and Clarissa Dalloway are significant because they help peel away the layers of each character's personality.

Woolf makes the connection between a character's thoughts and wave imagery explicit through metaphorical language, describing how the words in the character's mind "toss their crests, and fall and rise" (Woolf, The Waves 675). Through this language, Woolf suggests that the words forming in a character's mind are powerful and long to be released. She illustrates how difficult it is to say what one means, and how, if one does not measure exactly how to represent cognition verbally, the process of seeing and feeling becomes over-represented. There is a battle raging in the mind of this character because of the intensity of his words—and it is striking how many of Woolf's leading characters identify with elements of the sea in such powerful and enduring ways.

References

Bakhtin, Mikhail M. Art and Answerability. Eds. Michael Holquist and Vadim Liapunov. Trans. and notes, Vadim Liapunov. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1990. Print.

James, William. "Different Times of Thought." Principles of Psychology. 260. Print.

Herbert, Christopher. "Mrs. Dalloway, the Dictator, and the Relativity Paradox." Novel 35.1 (Fall 2001): Duke University Press. 104–124. Academic Search Premier. Web. 5 April 2010.

Mathis, Mary Shirlene, Ph.D. "War/Narrative/Identity: Uses of Virginia Woolf's Modernism." Dissertation. 1995. Academic Search Premier. Web. 5 April 2010.

Woolf, Virginia. The Diary of Virginia Woolf, Volume Three: 1925–1930. Ed. Anne Bell. New York: Harcourt, 1980. Print.