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BA Eng. (H) 5th (Monsoon)

Assignment 1

Roll No – ENH17093

 Analyze the concept of time and space in context of the narrative "journey" of the

protagonist (s). Discuss and compare it in reference to Mrs. Dalloway and Heart of

Darkness.

Mrs. Dalloway (published on 14 May 1925) is a novel by Virginia Woolf created from

two short stories, "Mrs. Dalloway in Bond Street" and the unfinished "The Prime Minister". Mrs.

Dalloway, Woolf’s fourth novel incorporates this vision enabling her to turn away from the

traditional linear mode of writing and incorporate a more inclusive style and representation of the

current modes of thinking. Mrs. Dalloway is a story of Clarissa Dalloway the protagonist of the

novel a perfect hostess in her early fifties, questioning the decision she made thirty years ago.

The man intended by the author to be Clarissa’s dual protagonist is the Shell-Shocked war

veteran Septimus Warren Smith, The disturbed young war veteran who suffers delayed

flashbacks and hallucination of his deceased friend Evans over the wartime, and commit suicide

at the end of the novel. Septimus is important to the text for two reasons: first, for bearing the

weight of the Woolf's response to war, appears to serve the function of a scapegoat figure, the

one who is sacrificed so that society may cleanse, redeem and re-fuel itself, and second, for

providing her with the scope to explore the phenomenon of serious mental illness that plagued
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her particularly through the war years 1914-18. The novel follows parallel stories of Clarissa and

Septimus, whom she has never met. Their lives are connected through the interactions of external

events and past memories in time and space. The story that folds back and forth in time and in

and out of the characters' minds to construct an image of Clarissa's life and of the inter-war social

structure.

The novel details a story of Clarissa Dalloway a 51-year-old protagonist of the novel, a

fictional high-society woman in post–First World War England and a single day of her life in

London 1925. She is Richard‘s wife and Elizabeth’s mother, although in first the novel‘s heroine

seems to be her sex role she is “Mrs. Dalloway”, not even Clarissa any more “Mrs. Richard

Dalloway”. Clarrisa Dalloway goes around London in the morning, getting ready to host a party

that evening. While she walks in St. James’s Park in London the day reminds her of her youth

spent in the countryside in Bourton and the young leaves on the trees reminds her memories of a

pure passion for her childhood love interest Sally Senton and makes her wonder about her choice

of husband and having a inadequate marriage, she married the reliable Richard Dalloway instead

of the enigmatic and demanding Peter Walsh, and she “had not the option” to be with her love

Sally Senton. Peter recalls these memories by visiting Clarissa’s house that morning. While

reminiscing about her past, Clarissa spends the day preparing for a party that she will host that

evening. She is self-conscious about her role in London high society. This is the first act where

we can see the use of time by Woolf, Clarissa is thinking about time she spent on the countryside

with her childhood friend Sally Seton with whom she shared a kiss. Now Sally is married to Lord

Rosseter and has five boy‘s. Clarissa retrospect of her sexual history, as show later points out is

also to do with her time of life.

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Now the narration shifts to Septimus Warren Smith, a First World War veteran suffering

from great depression spending his day in the park with his Italian born wife Lucrezia, where

Peter Walsh observes them. This shows how the characters in the novel are connected to each

other in some ways. Septimus is suffering from traumatic stress and gets visited by frequent and

inadequate hallucinations mostly concerning about his dear friend Evans who died in the war.

Later that day, he commits suicide by jumping out of the window.

The ending of the novel happens with the climax of Mrs. Dalloway’s party which is a

slow success attended by most of the characters she has met in the novel, including people from

her past. At her party she hears about Septimus‘s suicide and is now the topic of conversation at

the party. As Clarissa hears about Septimus’s suicide she retreats to a room and identifies him,

Clarissa gradually comes to admire this strangers act which she considers as an effort of

preserving happiness of his soul and not compromising his happiness. The two characters can be

seen as foils for each other.

Virginia Woolf novel unify the interior with exterior memory with the present. The story

is in chronological order only in so far as real time is related, the use of flashbacks and memory

create a montage of private space time. There are many different strands of plot in the novel,

Clarissa the protagonist of the novel who struggles between her past and present with her

unfulfilled dreams and retrospect of her sexual history, as Showalter points out, is also to do with

her time. Clarissa mourns that her life is superficial and passionless as she was different when

she was young. Septimus who suffers from Shell-Shock and his wife trying to care from him.

Who failed to fulfill the requirements of the society and was unable to manage her marriage with

Lucrezia. Peter Walsh coming back to India and visiting her childhood love Clarissa who

rejected her marriage proposal, and did not become a writer, has failed at most of his ventures in
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life, and other strands of the novel. These various strands are interlinked with each other through

time and space. The story jumps from one strands to the next. Woolf uses Big Ben as an image

which represents not only the start of a new chapter or turning point in the novel but also as a

means by which the characters regain the sense of here and now, a waking up from the interior

and exterior reality, it shows the physical means of time in the novel. The chimes of Big Ben

punctuate the novel with reality bringing the characters back to reality to the present time “ the

public space” while at the same time providing link between the characters and there are

references to the past, present and future. It deals with the crossing of time boundaries with the

help of memories. The novel is not only about what happens in a particular day bit also about

how the characters past effect their present situations, thoughts and decisions. Woolf mergers the

concept of time and space very beautiful in the novel, the passing of time is central to this novel.

Heart of Darkness is a novella by Polish British novelist Joseph Conrad published in

1902 is about a narrated voyage up the Congo river into the Congo Free States in the so-called

heart of South Africa. It was originally published as a three-part story in Blackwood‘s Magazine

in 1899 before being collected into a book in 1902. Heart of Darkness is structured as a frame

tale, not a first-person narrative. Marlow’s story is told by the anonymous narrator who listens to

Marlow on the deck of the Nellie. Conrad’s frame narrator, like the reader, learns that his ideas

about European imperialism are founded on a number of lies that he wholeheartedly believed. By

the end of the novella, Marlow’s tale significantly changes the narrator’s attitude toward the

ships and men of the past. Heart of Darkness centers around Marlow, an introspective sailor and

his journey up the Congo River to meet Kurtz a man with great abilities. Marlow takes a job as a

ship’s commander for a trading company in Africa, a Belgian concern organized to trade in the

Congo. He sailed from France to the trading company’s Central Station in the Congo. Marlow
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describes a night spent on a ship in the mouth of the Thames River in England where he hears

the stories about a man named Kurtz the most successful collector of Ivory and is now obsessed

with him, he hears that Kurtz's is unwell so he sets of to find him. Over the course of his journey,

Marlow witnesses the brutalization of the natives by white traders he learns that Europeans may

not be as civilized and advanced as they would like to think. After Kurtz died, Marlow returns to

Europe. Marlow then tells “the Lies” and the story ends. Only the narrator and the reader

understand Marlow’s initial point: “Civilized” Europe was once a “dark place,” and it has only

become more morally dark through the activities of institutions like the Company.

Conrad’s Heart of Darkness serves as an object for structural narrative analysis. Theirs is

a use of narrative techniques such as prolepsis and analepsis which means flash-forward and

flashback. Conrad manipulates the structure of time and space. The description of light and

character simultaneously, bringing together previous events he various elements of “darkness”.

The concluding events of the story are also characterized by disruption to the liner time-

sequence. The other incidents is when Marlow describes the photograph of the Intended, thus

preparing us for the actual encounter shortly afterwards, with all the metaphorical imagery

surrounding it is a prolepsis a weak case. Marlow constantly recalling Kurtz his appearance,

actions, voice and especially his last words and this flashback combines dynamically with the

flash-forward earlier in the story when the Intended’s tragic gesture is linked to that of the

brown-armed native woman. There are many other events in the story which helps to understand

the techniques such as prolepsis and analepsis used in the novel.

The instance of flash-forward and flashback not only disrupt the time-flow but also the

“space-flow”, and flash-forward or backward necessarily entails the portrayal of a different space

of here and now of the narrative present. Conrad compares Kurtz’s life to the current. He is also
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haunted by images of his past, causing a fitful sleep which Marlow observes and analyzes.

Various parallels between or differences in these spaces can also contribute to the meaning

created. The meaning emerges through the contrasting of different time space elements of his

past, which by them selves a less transcendental significance. The events described by Marlow

are related some time after his journey to Africa, and in Thames. The difference of time can

create the difference of space. Conrad’s Heart of Darkness shows a different use of time and

space in the novel the narrator is describing his journey some time after it entails the portrayal of

different time “flashback” and on a different “space” the difference of time creates a difference

of space Marlow in present telling a story of his past which shows the time difference.

The concept of time and space in the novel Mrs. Dalloway and Heart of Darkness have

some similarities as well as differences can also be found. Mrs. Dalloway was already a complex

novel in respect of time and structure, but in Heart of Darkness Conrad’s usage of time is

slightly different. It is in Mrs. Dalloway the Vagina Woolf achieves perfection in the technique

of stream of consciousness as the mind ranges without limitations of time and space, the novel

basically deals with the past of its characters than with the present of its single day. The novel is

concerned with the effects the past has on the present. Memories of the past show the dreams and

expectations the characters had on life while they were young. With an interior perspective, the

novel addresses the nature of time in personal experience through multiple interwoven stories. In

Conrad’s Heart of Darkness Marlow the protagonist is narrating the story of his past and we can

see that in the story how the effect of his past is underline the life-changing nature if Marlow’s

time in Africa. What has happened to him is so shocking, so terrible that he has never recovered

from it and never managed to reconcile himself to it. It has disrupted his life to such an extent
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that it has, in effect, made him into a different person. The novel is concerned with the effects of

the past has on the present. The River is a symbol of linear time that Marlow and his crew

traverse, as they go further and further up the river, they fell as if they are receding farther back

in time. All of these features of Conrad’s narrative technique draw attention to the peculiar uses

of time and space that are utilized in Heart of Darkness. The time boundaries are crossed through

flashback of serval characters. It is examined how it’s dimensions and present situations and

present moments evoking past memories are if important in going back in time and giving

memories and thoughts and sayings. In both the novels time has been regardless as an endless

spectrum in which characters able to experience other times and spaces and are aware of it.