You are on page 1of 7

Melbourne 1

Matt Melbourne
Professor Shaup
ENGL 181-01
11 April 2014
The Artist, Clarissa
In Virginia Woolfs Mrs. Dalloway, a wealthy housewife, Clarissa Dalloway, plans a
party at her home for her upper-class friends while negotiating her identity in relation to (and
distinct from) the complex social structures of family, womanhood, and society. Although event-
planning as a subject might seem superficial, it acts as an essential framework for Woolf to
examine the struggles of a woman constrained by high-society life as she enacts a quiet change
within her community. Clarissas internal strife reveals itself most apparently in her interactions
with former lover Peter Walsh, where she feels alone for ever as he leaves her at home (Woolf
47). Her emotional endeavor for connection remains at least partly entrenched in her perception
as the perfect hostess by Peter and the greater societyan expectation for Mrs. Dalloway, not
Clarissa, to perform her duties as a lady and wife (7).
This struggle of societal isolation takes place physically throughout London, an urban
center in which Woolf explores modernization and its effect on the individual, the woman, and
society. The novel focuses on Clarissa and her experiences, but also explores the inner mental
mechanisms of her husband, daughter, friend, past lover, and a stranger to complete the picture
of a unified consciousness of the human person; this ultra-specific picture allows for the diversity
of experience in the present moment, but negates this notion of selfhood by acknowledging its
transitory, ephemeral nature. This tension, which Woolf attempts to convey through Clarissas
experiences and thoughts, echoes Charles Baudelaires early-modernist essay The Painter of
Melbourne 2
Modern Life on the artist in the crowdor the flneur. Although Baudelaires essay leaves
almost no room for a woman-as-flneur, Woolf depicts Clarissa as the ultimate flneurin
embracing an existential dichotomy of identity, in demonstrating sensitivity to subtle social
action, and as an artist informed by the crowd.
Baudelaires essay uses the artist Constantin Guys to discuss a changing world in regard
to the arts and aesthetics that preceded the extensive modernization of Europe at the end of the
19th century and beginning of the 20th century. He emphasizes the fault in art to look only to the
past for depictions of general beauty, as the present particular beauty of circumstance and
the sketch of manners necessarily complements and completes the eternal, invariable element
of beauty (Baudelaire 1-2). This particular beauty, he argues, consists of the ephemeral, the
fugitive, the contingent, accessed by an exceptional man: an observer, philosopher, flneur
[or] painter of the passing moment (4-5). In essence, the flneur, in his passionate, observatory
nature in one flesh with the crowd, discerns the fleeting, present intricacies of human existence
(that equally suggest the permanent, eternal beauty) to inform his works of poetry or art (9). In a
fitting defiance of even Baudelaires masculine paragon for the modern artist, Clarissa Dalloway
follows this model of meticulous and intuitive perception of crowd-life and resultant production
of art.
Clarissas contemplation of two opposing illustrations of identity mirrors Baudelaires
description of the flneurs position in public society:
For the perfect flneur, for the passionate spectator, it is an immense joy to set up
house in the heart of the multitude, amid the ebb and flow of movement, in the
midst of the fugitive and the infinite. To be far away from home and yet to feel
Melbourne 3
oneself everywhere at home; to see the world, to be at the centre of the world, and
yet to remain hidden from the world. (9)
Clarissa quite literally set[s] up house in the heart of the multitude as she prepares her home
for a party with a number of guests (9). In this multitude, she describes feeling very young,
and unspeakably aged (Woolf 8). At the age of 52, she fits neither description exactly. These
phrases create an initial contradiction to illustrate the capricious and incomprehensible nature of
perception, but it also precedes a set of more contradictions of feeling on identity. For example,
she describes feeling like a knife through everything, while at the same time outside,
looking on (8). Again, this contradiction of incised, microscopic investigation while feeling
completely outside of a particular scope illustrates how one can spectate a certain experience
(hidden) while, at the same time, participating entirely in its vitality (at the centre.) In fact,
this set of analogies continues with a perpetual sense, as she watched the taxi cabs, of being out,
out, far out to sea and alone (8). Nevertheless, Clarissa resolves this isolation with a statement
of her mental survival: somehow in the streets of London, on the ebb and flow of things, here,
there she survived (8). Instead of feeling alone and apart from the commotion and movement
of London, she feels in and on the citys vitality. Moreover, Woolf creates the sense that her
suriviv[al] depends upon her place on the ebb and flow of things, here, there, which most
clearly echoes Baudelaires sentiments on crowd-life in its diction of movement and the use of
here, there to indicate a separation of selfhood central to the flneur.
Clarissa exemplifies an acute awareness of the temporal world around her, reflecting
Baudelaires narrative of a flneurs perception:
in a word, he delights in universal life. If a fashion or the cut of a garment has
been slightly modified, if bows and curls have been supplanted by cockades if
Melbourne 4
waists have been raised and skirts have become fuller, be very sure that his eagle
eye will already have spotted it from however great distance. (Baudelaire 3)
Woolf presents her protagonist with an extraordinary social awarenessblessed with the
flneurs eagle eye inherently with her narrative style of the stream of consciousness
technique. More specifically, she creates ambiguity in the point of view as the narrator speaking
or as the narrator communicating Clarissas thoughts. This elevates Clarissas commentary to a
higher status of reliability as a hyperaware Clarissa approaches an omniscientthus, perfectly
awarethird person narrator.
Perhaps the height of Clarissas intuitive observance comes during her party: And
Clarissa sawshe saw Ralph Lyon beat [the curtain] back, and go on talking. So it wasnt a
failure after all! (Woolf 170). The narrator refers to Clarissa in the third person in the first
sentence but follows this description of events with a seemingly first-person exclamation by
Clarissa (about Ralphs movement of the curtain as an indicator of her partys success).
Although the same narrator states both sentences, the first sentence reports fact, while the second
expresses Clarissas decidedly precarious opinion on the significance of the subtle occurrence;
however, the lack of substantive, textual distinction in truth-value between the two suggests
Clarissas social awareness as closer to omniscience than ordinary human cognizance.
In conjunction with the point of view, Woolfs diction implies Clarissas appreciation for
the subtleties and intricacies of human interaction. For the host, It was delicious how [Lord and
Lady Lexham] petted each other (168). She first notes their petting, a highly specific moment
of affectionate interaction that requires a great degree of mental adeptness to recognize and
identify. More importantly, delicious denotes a pleasure in, and connotes a consumption of, the
social movements of those in the crowd; Clarissa discerns these minute interactions and
Melbourne 5
consumes them as a life source like from a reservoir of electrical energy, (Baudelaire 9). In a
similar moment, Clarissa spots a squabble between Professor Brierly and Jim Hutton even at [a]
distance, with even conveying the impressive quality of her social awareness that a flneur
necessarily possesses (176). Parenthetical expressions interspersed through the narrative
emphasize Clarissas perceptiveness. The narrator remarks, Professor Brierly (Clarissa could
see) wasnt hitting it off with Jimmy, underscoring, with the modal verb could, not only her
realized perception of the pair but also her intrinsic capacity for see[ing] or perceiving (176).
In a subsequent evaluation of Lord Gayton and Nancy Blow, Clarissa thinks, Not that they
added perceptively to the noise of the party, and the narrator adds, They were not talking
(perceptibly) (177). The repetition of perceptibly and its parenthetical expression highlight
the words definition as able to be seen or noticed (especially of a slight movement.) This
parallelism between Clarissa and the narrator notes Clarissas tendency and power to explore the
perceptible or these slight, social movements that define her partys social environment.
Clarissa expresses Baudelaires ideal artistic yield of the flneur as she uses the crowd to
inform her party-as-art (Littleton 46)*:
Or we might liken him to a mirror as vast as the crowd itself; or to a kaleidoscope
gifted with consciousness, responding to each one of its movements and
reproducing the multiplicity of life and the flickering grace of all the elements of
life. (Baudelaire 9)
As Clarissas party draws to a close, members of her crowd-creation reflect on her character and
her gathering. Peter Walsh contemplates, What is this terror? what is this ecstasy? he thought to
himself. What is it that fills me with extraordinary excitement? It is Clarissa he said. (Woolf
*The only part of this assertion that is Littletons is the idea that Clarissas party is an art form.

Melbourne 6
194). Peters meditation reveals that Clarissa, with her party, has managed to achieve
Baudelaires vision of artistic reproduction of the societal mass. The gulf between the emotive
diction of terror and ecstasy demonstrates the creative display of lifes emotional variety
or the multiplicity of lifea foundational element of Baudelaires idea of the crowd. In
addition to this disparity in diction, Peters queries, (in Baudelaires words) flicker gracefully,
between these margins of his mental stimulation in their syntax and sentence length: The
emotions in the first questions contradict just as a lamp flicker[s] between margins of
luminance (light and dark), and the uniformity in length and syntax suggests the poise, or
grace, with which Clarissa has crafted her party.
Clarissa, in Baudelaires likeness of the flneur, grapples with identity, perception, and
artistry in her soire of aesthetic discovery. Although her party planning fails to completely quell
her inner turmoil caused by isolation, it gives Clarissa a creative outlet to frame, consider, and
debate the questions that plague her very existence. When considering the novels other
characters burdened by the woe of alienation, one could even contend that Clarissas flneur
traits save her from the fates of divorce like Peter Walsh, political exile like Ms. Kilman, and
suicide like Septimus. Each of these characters felt some aspect of the oppressive social, political
and economic framework of the early 20th century in Europe, but Clarissa manages to stay
within the rigid boundaries commanded by her class and sex while covertly creating art that does
not necessarily fit this same restricted box. The beauty of the flneur perhaps lies in her (or his)
ability to imaginatively discuss the present and its milieu while simultaneously effecting change
for a prospective future.


Melbourne 7

Works Cited
Baudelaire, Charles. The Painter of Modern Life. Trans. Jonathan Mayne. London: Phaidon,
1995. Print.
Littleton, Jacob. Mrs. Dalloway: Portrait of het artist as a Middle-Aged Woman. JSTOR.
Hofstra University, n.d. Web. 15 Apr. 2014.
Woolf, Virginia. Mrs. Dalloway. New York: Harcourt, 1925. Print.

You might also like