Modernism and Mrs Dalloway

Modernism occured as a big change in art and other cultural issues and as a leaving from
the old traditional kinds. The reason behind this change was basically the despair and chaos
environment following the World War I. People started to question the reasons behind their
situation and lost their trust to governments, religion or each other. And inevitably, this
pessimistic state of mind found its response in literature too. Mrs Dalloway is a novel which
represents the characteristics of modernist novel quite much and now I am going to try to
explain some of the features of modernist novel existing in Mrs Dalloway.

This leaving from traditional styles appears in Mrs Dalloway as the unconventional
characters of the novel: Sally and Peter. Sally was a friend of Clarissa. She was a rebellious
girl and with Clarissa, they would plan changing the world and ending private property which
were ideas quite against the social structure of that times when everything was for
bourgeoise’s interests. Moreover, Sally did not want to marry because she wanted to be
independent of a man , which again was a behavior not expected from a 20th century
woman. Another untraditional character of Woolf is Peter Walsh. Peter is an emotional,
romantic and unrealistic man. He cries in front of Clarissa while talking about his lover Daisy
in India and he comes all the way to London in order to arrange his divorce with his wife.
Shortly, he is still a man who can have hope in such a time although he actually is not happy
about his life too.

Second important characteristic of the novel is that emphasize is not on the story but on the
feelings of characters which foreground unconscious mind and psychological insights of them
and creates a stream of consciousness. Woolf informs us about their thoughts and feelings and
while doing this, she jumps from one character to another without showing the signs of these
shifts. The speaker is omniscient and we can see different sides of characters. Because it was
a time of uncertanities and instabilities, modernists analyzed people in their different states of
minds. As an example, during her party, Clarissa showed no big reaction to Septimus’s death
among other people, however, after some time she went to her room and she thought that how
bad it was a man who was just around her thirties died in this way. But still, she was not so
sure about what to think because from another side, Septimus’s death made her feel glad to be
living.
 As another important features of modernist novels, Mrs Dalloway has the signs of
Bergson’s psychological perception of time. According to Bergson, time is not perceived in
the same way by each person. For example, for Clarissa, it was clearly a long day because she
was getting prepared for her big party and she was so impatient about it; however, for
Elizabeth, it was just an ordinary day, so she did not think that day as long as Clarissa did. Or,
suicide of Septimus and Clarissa’s hugging Sally must have taken approximately the same
amount of time, but this time was not perceived in the same way by Clarissa and Septimus
clearly. Moreover, during the novel, minds of characters mostly go back in time which is
called “flashback” and this is quite against the idea that time is linear and it can only go
forward. As an example, the novel begins with a flashback, which is a memory of Clarissa
about her days with Peter.

Lastly, as in other modernist works, there is pessimism, hopelessness, uncertainity and

fragmentation in Mrs Dalloway. Septimus is a good example of pessimism and hopelessness.
He is a veteran having Shellshock syndrome and despite all the efforts of his and his wife
Lucrezia, he cannot recover from this illnes and what makes the story real dark is the ghost of
Evans, who was a good friend of Septimus but died in war, which also is the reason why
Septimus cannot forgive himself and recover. Secondly, the sound of the church’s bell is
another source of the depression and the pessimism covering the novel maybe because of the
idea that “ Even one minute is full of various possibilities” which is introduced us by
Clarissa’s sentences. Clarissa also shows us that she is confused about the meaning of life and
she questions it and she questions of her own importance in life too. And she sometimes think
about her decision of having married with Charles because actually she loved Peter and still
have some feelings for him which can be seen as an example of unsatisfaction of people
about their lives and this has an important place in modernist works. Finally, fragmentation in
the novel is so clear that Woolf has to make use of organizing elements such as car and the
plane, otherwise, it would be difficult to understand that these people actually are
experiencing the same piece of the time.

Deniz Durmuş