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MRS, DALLOWAY – THEME OF TIME

“It is clear that fixed concepts may be extracted by our thought from mobile reality; but there
are no means of reconstructing the mobility of the real with fixed concepts.”
In opinion to Virginia Woolf’s novel, Mrs. Dalloway, reveals her obsession with the subject of
time. 'Death,' 'old,' and 'young' are mentioned sixty-one, one hundred forty-eight, and sixty-one
times, respectively; 'moment' seventy times, and 'time,' itself, ninety-two times. The only words
mentioned more often than these are character names and 'said,' as in" Clarissa said," which is a
necessary aspect of dialogue. The novel embraces a Bergsonian sense of time through the
distinction Woolf makes between clock-time and mind time (duration), which directly correlates
to Bergson's notion of metaphysics. As Hasler states, "in Mrs. Dalloway the main characters are
almost uninterruptedly living in the duree bergsonienne, receptively, passively yielding to
memories ... prompted by all kinds of sense-stimuli".
Mrs. Dalloway does not ends at a happy note but it is a novel that offers a measure of hope: hope
after loss, hope after war.’ This is the novel in which Virginia Woolf broke new literary ground
with her experimental, modernist writing. In this tale of early 1920s London, the supporting
characters give us an insight into the consequences of the First World War. Among the more
notable English novels from the inter-war years, one might consider Virginia Woolf’s Mrs.
Dalloway, published in the spring of 1925. In a diary entry from 30 August 1923, Woolf writes:
I should say a good deal about The Hours, & my discovery; how I dig out beautiful caves behind
my characters, I think that gives exactly what I want; humanity, humor, depth. The idea is that
the caves shall connect, & each comes to daylight at the present moment.
Woolf uses the working title, The Hours, which she would eventually replace with Mrs. Dalloway.
The later title places an emphasis on the present, in which an established married woman of means
plans to give a party.
For Woolf, writing Mrs. Dalloway provided new literary hurdles. As Elaine Showalter points out
in an introduction to the novel, Woolf struggled with characterization: ‘The main problem Woolf
faced in the novel was that of making her characters four-dimensional: getting the element of time
into the book through the characters’ memories’. Through this act of digging out ‘beautiful caves’
behind her characters, Woolf moved away from traditional, realist forms of characterization. Peter
Childs writes:
In her diaries, during the writing of Mrs. Dalloway, Woolf called this technique ‘tunneling’. By
this she meant she would burrow into the characters’ pasts in order to unearth their history. Her
characters are then revealed to the reader as split beings who are living in the past and the present.
It is their current thoughts that tell us who they are, but only their memories of the past that explain
them, that reveal how they came to be who they are.
If tunneling ushered in a new way to show character, it also encouraged other literary forms such
as stream-of-consciousness, which would challenge assumptions about Realism. This tunneling of
novel and its change in title is very significant because in a way or other one can say that Woolf
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actually divided her character Mrs. Dalloway in hours or durations in Bergsonian terms. Her life
is narrated in hours and those hours are made known through Big Ben. This original novel also
indicates the importance of time as one of novel’s themes. Woolf’s writing style, critiquing her
use of clocks and analyzing Clarissa’s thoughts, the reader finds a philosophical message about
time, powerfully expressed. Furthermore, title The Hours is actually a huge reference towards her
metaphysical preoccupation with time which is apparent in novel. Woolf used memory and
thoughts of future that abled her to use elements of past to lend ‘duration’, to the present of her
characters. Bergson describes ‘duration’ as “the synthesis of unity and multiplicity”. Woolf’s
careful juxtaposition of external time with internal time also attempts to manipulate ‘fixed
concepts’ in order to create a sense of ‘mobile reality’ within the novel.
Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf mainly explores the metaphysical aspects and questions about
time which are a part of Henn Bergson as well. Michael Whitworth points out that even Woolf
never read Bergson, “one may reply that Bergsonian was part of the intellectual atmosphere”.
Woolf went to huge lengths in the novel to highlight “the distinction between psychological time
and clock time”. The attention her is draw to ‘clock time’, or external time, by repeated punctuation
of the story by Big Ben’s proclamation of passing hours and minutes. The first mentioning of this
time is when Clarissa sets out to buy flowers for party.
“There! Out it boomed. First a warning, musical; then the hour, irrevocable. The leaden circls
dissolved in the air”
Such references are repeated throughout the novel which serves as a reminder to reader that each
hour passes is ‘irrevocable’ and each moment will be ;dissolved in the air’ as it expires. This aspect
leaves us with the truth that they can never be recaptured in their original form, leaving us with
only ‘fixed concepts’ or memories. These memories are form of specific point of view and have
in them some remembered valuable moment only, thus altering from their original form.
Continuous references to times is accomplished through ominous presence of Big Ben and by
actions and comments of characters. When Clarissa’s maid “turns the crystal dolphin toward the
clock”, time is not mentioned but reader’s mind is brought back to clacks and their purpose.
Furthermore, reader is made humorously aware of time during the lunch with Hugh Whitbread,
Lady Bruton, and Richard Dalloway:
“the coffee was very slow in coming… they were waiting to bring the coffee until Mr. Whitbread
had finished… Hugh was so very slow”
Here awareness of time is agonizing as the reader feels the impatience and annoyance of Lady
Bruton and Mr. Dalloway as they wait for their slow, rude friend. Moreover, precise forms of
events are also included in memories despite their arguable lack of consequence. Peter remembers:
“The final scene, the terrible scene which he believed had mattered more than anything in the
whole of his life… happened at three o’clock in the afternoon of a very hot day”.
Woolf include such detailed information which a person’s memory might not retain in order to
bring her reader ever back to the ubiquitous time. Another trifling remark is stated by Woolf when
Clarissa recalls her thoughts of one night:
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“Well, thought Clarissa about three o’clock in the morning, reading Baron Marbot for she could
not sleep, it proves she has a heart”
Woolf included ‘three o’clock’ deliberately to foster emphasis on, and awareness of time. This is
uncertain that how many hours passed through the duration of story, it is indisputable that time
holds a position of great importance to this novel. By this establishment, Woolf sets up first half
of dichotomy between external and internal time. During the hours marked by Big Ben, many lives
are stretched out through their past, present and future, thus exploding the moment and lending
‘duration’ to time, rather than just ‘instantaneity’ by having each moment relived and repossessed
in characters; mind.
Big Ben and St. Margaret’s in the novel represent different rates of time: one marching straight
ahead without looking back, the other gently making its presence known. Big Ben serves two main
purposes in the novel. First, its concise tolling indicates the time we lose each day and second, Big
Ben’s fame suggests that the mark we leave on the world be something grand, something
renowned. Big Ben’s bell agitates Clarissa:
“The sound of Big Ben flooded Clarissa’s drawing-room where she sat, ever so annoyed at her
writing table; worried; annoyed”
The clock tells her that she is running out of time and getting aged and also that she had done
nothing civilization would consider impressive. Virginia Woolf’s description of bell as a
“warning” and the hour as “irrevocable” clearly states a negative idea of Big Ben time. Strike of
this clock cautions that another hour has passed which will never have to live again. Hence, Big
Ben’s deep, solemn, punctual chime is often associated with death - death of time and present
which becomes past. While Big Ben reminds Clarissa of her mortality, St. Margaret’s bell serves
another purpose. With this bell. Woolf presents a time that appeals to human heart. St. Margaret’s
chimes in a little late, gliding “into the recesses of the heart and buries itself, to be, with a tremor
of delight, at rest”. It contradicts the message of Big Ben – to leave behind something famous to
be remembered by when we die. Instead, St. Margaret’s suggests that we should not be overly
consumed with losing time and that we be aware of it in our own way. It also suggests that time
meanders and passes subtly. Hence, St. Margaret’s chime is associated with life, it sounds not
leaden but musical like Peter thinks of Clarissa:
Ah, said St. Margaret’s, like a hostess who comes into her drawing room on the very stroke of
the hour and finds her guests there already. I am not late. No, it is precisely half-past eleven, she
says. Yet, though she is perfectly right, her voice, being the voice of the hostess, is reluctant to
inflict its individuality. Some grief for the past holds it back; some concern for the present.
The bell tower and Clarissa differ from Big Ben. They are not hold in their individuality because
they prefer to make an impression on the world in a different manner – as hostesses. Her parties
and her affinity for people give her a feeling of timelessness. Through such links of bell with
Clarissa, Woolf expresses her perspective on time. Clarissa pays attention to the details of moment:
“What she loved was this, here, now in front of her”
Her appreciation of the moment leads her to a consideration of death:
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“Did it matter then, she asked herself...did it matter that she must inevitably cease completely;
all this must go on without her; did she resent it; or did it become consoling to believe that death
ended absolutely.”
Despite her attachment to the present, another part of Clarissa wants her spirit to outlast her time
on earth. She wants to remain.
Whereas Big Ben presides solemnly over the past and future, St. Margaret’s revels in the living
present. Still looking at his reflection, Peter heard St. Margaret’s chime and thought it sounded
“like something alive… like Clarissa herself.”
According to metaphysics, ‘mobile reality’ is the concept that reality is similar to river which
cannot be captured and frozen in time. The small parts of that river like dam or scoop outed water
won’t have those very characteristics of river as flowing and changing. These ponds and pots of
water would be to the river what ‘fixed concepts’ are to a ‘mobile reality’. Metaphysics states that
every moment is changed by the memory of the moment before that one can never have the past
moment again in its original state because it will be tainted with other memories and knowledge
of what happens next. Woolf also attempts to create the illusion of mobile reality in this novel. In
the following passage Woolf brilliantly juxtaposes several ‘fixed concepts’ in such a way as to
create an illusion of a ‘mobile reality’.
Such fools we are, she thought crossing Victoria Street. For Heaven only knows why one loves it
so, how one sees it so, making it up, building it round one, tumbling it, creating it every moment
afresh; but the veriest frumps, the most defected of miseries sitting on doorsteps (drink to their
downfall) do the same; can’t be dealt with, she felt positive, by Acts of Parliament for that very
reason: they love life. In people’s eyes, in the swing, tramp, and trudge; in the bellow and the
uproar; the carriages, motor cars, omnibuses, vans, sandwich men shuffling and swinging; brass
bands; barrel organs; in the triumph and the jingle and the strange high singing of some
aeroplane overhead was what she loved; life; London; this moment of June.
In this passage, different things that happened at different times are all considered which is simply
a blur of images, or ‘fixed concepts’, all thrown together to give the impression of a reality that is
living and always flowing as a river does. The three sentences accentuates the flowing nature and
all of these thoughts are extrapolated entirely from ‘this moment of June’. Woolf illustrates with
this passage the fluidity of reality by combining several different images and ideas in this one
moment. She is able to dazzle the reader with fixed concepts in a way that one is deceived into
seeing fluidity and mobility. The same idea is accomplished when Woolf interrupts Clarissa’s
meandering thoughts with a parenthetical jumble of images:
“June had drawn out every leaf on the trees. The mothers of Pimlico gave such to their young.
Messages were passing from the Fleet to the Admiralty. Arlington Street and Piccadilly seemed
to chafe the very air in the Park and lift its leaves hotly, brilliantly, one the waves of that divine
vitality which Clarissa loved. To dance, to ride, she had adored all that”
One final, lengthy, and very detailed example of Woolf’s mobile reality appears after Peter’s nap
in the park:
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Regent’s Park had changed very little since he was a boy, except for the squirrels—still,
presumably there were compensations—when little Elsi Mitchell, who had been picking up
pebbles to add to the pebble collection which she and her brother were making on the nursery
mantelpiece, plumped her handful down on the nurse’s knee and scudded off again full tilt into a
lady’s legs. Peter Walsh laughed out.
But Lucrezia Warren Smith was saying to herself, it’s wicked; why should I suffer? She was
asking, as she walked down the broad path. No; I can’t stand it any longer, she was saying,
having left Septimus, who wasn’t Septimus any longer, to say hard, cruel, wicked things, to talk
to himself, to talk to a dead man, on the seat over there; when the child ran full tilt into her, fell
flat, and burst out crying.
That was comforting rather. She stood her upright, dusted her frock, and kissed her…
The child ran straight back to its nurse, and Rezia saw her scolded, comforted, taken up by the
nurse who put down her knitting and the kind looking man gave her his watch to blow open to
comfort her—but why should she be exposed?
This passage can be examined in order to observe the elements of continuity that bind its seeming
randomness into a fluidity of mobile reality. All of the characters and events are contained within
Regent’s Park. Peter thinks of the squirrels. Peter sees the child. The child goes to her nurse. The
child runs and collides with Rezia. Rezia is thinking of Septimus. Peter sees the collision and
laughs out loud. The child, after being picked up and brushed off by Rezia, runs back to her nurse.
The nurse consoles the child. Peter plays with the child while she sits on her nurse’s lap. Rezia
watches as the child goes to her nurse and plays with Peter. Woolf connects all of these characters
and brings them into one another’s thoughts, which allows her to create continuity, fluidity, and
mobility out of these separate and fixed elements of the scene.
By allowing the narration to delve into the thoughts of the characters as they walk through London,
Woolf is able to cover not only the hours of the present, but the hours of entire lives stored in
memory. The lyrical, flowing pattern of Woolf’s writing easily slides in and out of different
characters’ thoughts. Her ability to show the random yet patterned working of minds gives a
realistic sense of mental time. Her sentences quickly cross the boundaries of the past, present, and
future. Her stream-of-consciousness writing allows us insight into a variety of characters. For
example, within the first moments that we meet Clarissa, we rapidly travel between her present,
past, and thoughts about the future. In this process, we understand pieces of her life which create
the woman we come to know in a single day. We see the lifetime culmination of beautiful moments
and painful moments embodied in Woolf’s characters. Peter, Clarissa, Richard, and several other
characters participate in reveries as they walk about London, which allows the reader to experience
large portions of their lives in the span of only a few minutes. The walk Peter takes after leaving
his interview with Clarissa in the morning is a fine example of this, as Wood points out:
“during that fifteen minutes, like Clarissa in her walk to Bond Street, Peter has traveled even
farther in his mind than the distance from Westminster to regent’s Park”.
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In this short amount of external time, the reader becomes privy to several years of internal time
as Peter recalls the past events about his younger years with Clarissa.
Richard’s walk home from luncheon is another example of internal time surpassing the external
time in which it is harbored. During this journey, Richard look at the importance of the work he
has just completed at Lady Bruton’s:
“Richard didn’t care a straw what became of Emigration; about that letter, whether the editor
put it in or not”.
He also ruminates on his wife’s relationship with Peter Walsh as his mind, “recovering from its
lethargy, set now on his wife, Clarissa, whom Peter Walsh had loved so passionately”.
Also among his distorted thoughts is an analysis of the current social problems:
“and those costermongers, not allowed to stand their barrows in the streets; and prostitutes,
good Lord, the fault wasn’t in them, nor in young men either, but in our detestable social system
and so forth”.
Nearly five pages are filled with thoughts occupying only a few minutes out of the day. The
characters have saved memories that they can bring out for examination as they wish, just as Maisie
Johnson plans to keep the memory of her encounter with Septimus and Rezia in the park “so that
should she be very old, she would still remember and make it jangle again among her memories
how she had walked through Regents Park on a fine summer morning fifty years ago”. By using
this technique repeatedly, Woolf is able to expand the significance of a moment by allowing the
characters’ memories to assign it more meaning than is allotted by the present. She illustrates ‘the
survival of the past into the present’ which Bergson claims offers ‘duration’ to something that
would, by itself, have only ‘instantaneity.’
Woolf also uses elements of the future in the present to create this duration. As Elizabeth gets off
the bus, she thinks “every profession is open to the women of your generation, said Miss Kilman.
So she might be a doctor. She might be a farmer. Animals are often ill. She might own a thousand
acres and have people under her…in short, she would like to have a profession”. As Wood
suggests,
“Elizabeth’s foray extends the London web in a direction not taken by other characters and
leads her to think, however tentatively, of her future”.
Instead of remembering the past as the other characters do, Elizabeth has a mental jaunt into the
time to come, which achieves the same duration that comes from the ‘survival of the past into the
present.’ Elizabeth is occupying more time than just that of the present moment because her
thoughts extend forward to the events yet to occur. This is the same principle of stretching beyond
the present moment into the past. In addition to illustrating how individuals can occupy time,
Woolf explores the way in which one external moment can inspire an infinite amount of internal
time. One such influential moment in the novel is that of the mysterious car in the street. Because
of this car, a myriad of passersby are sent into their own internal thought processes as everyone
speculates about who could be inside. Woolf speaks to the significance of this even as she writes:
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“Something so trifling in single instances that no mathematical instrument, though capable of

transmitting shocks in China could register the vibration; yet in its fullness rather
formidable…for the surface agitation of the passing car as it sunk grazed something very
profound”.
Here, Woolf suggests, not only can the past be brought into the present as a way of expanding the
area covered by a moment, that a moment, in the mind, can expand beyond the bounds of external
time.
In short, Woolf suggests that time exists in different forms. It exists in the external world, but
also—and perhaps more importantly—in our internal world. Her description of the loud and
rushing civilization suggests that we push ahead in the name of progress, without fully appreciating
the moment.
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References:
http://prizedwriting.ucdavis.edu/past/1991-1992/the-significance-of-time-in-mrs-dalloway

http://www.jiffynotes.com/Mrs.Dalloway/Section4.html

http://www.thinkingfaith.org/articles/mrs-dalloway-virginia-woolf

http://it.stlawu.edu/~slureview/2004/12.htm

https://kirstyahawthorn.wordpress.com/literature/time-and-space-in-mrs-dalloway-by-virginia-woolf/

“There Are Still the Hours”. Time in Mrs Dalloway and The Hours by Marlies de Vos)
The Philosophy of Time in Mrs. Dalloway, Orlando, and The Waves by Eric B. Wills.