Treatment of Time in Virginia Woolf's 'Mrs. Dalloway'

This was composed in 2016.

MRS. DALLOWAY

by Virginia Woolf

The treatment of Time in Mrs. Dalloway

-Venus Anand

‘Mrs Dalloway’ is a novel by Virginia Woolf that details a day in the life of Clarissa Dalloway, a fictional high-society woman in post–First World War England. The novel was published in 1925 and is regarded as one of Woolf's best-known novels. ‘Mrs Dalloway’ was included on TIME magazine's list of the 100 best English-language novels written since 1923. [ I intend to show ] the treatment of time in the novel ‘Mrs Dalloway’. For this, I’ll consider Woolf’s creative and unique approach towards construction of the novel. The unchronological order along with changing of protagonists at different points.

‘Mrs. Dalloway’, like most modernist books, treats time as different from the conventional significance of time. Time becomes doubly special in this case in which Virginia Woolf experiments with writing in the form of ‘stream of consciousness’ technique.

In this technique the entire psyche of the characters is put forward in words. This internalisation of characters is done by a division of time. One is the mechanical time, that is the hours on the clock represented by the striking hours of Big Ben and the other is the inner time, that is, the time of the mind in one’s past life. It is in this context that Virginia talked of “time on the clock and time in the mind͟”. Division of time validates the turning loose of emotions that helped Woolf to celebrate to the inner life of her characters in contrast to the world outside.

Virginia Woolf has skilfully exploited Bergson’s concept of time for unity and expression in the theme and plot of her novel. According to this concept, time can be divided into three forms.

- The first is clock time or mechanical time. For the purpose of this time of Big Ben reminds the readers of the significance of the time in transference of consciousness of one person to the consciousness of the other character or it marks continuous transition in the movement of the story.

- Second, there is psychological or inner time referred by Bergson as ‘Duree’, it marks a flow of time like a stream as voyage of youth to the old age or form present to past or future.

- Thirdly, there is historic time in relation to national or international events.

The plot is that Mrs. Dalloway covers a period of a single day. 11AM to 3AM. The female protagonist of the novel, Mrs. Clarissa Dalloway lives a life of her own. Her life is split up between her past and present but she chooses her past whereas she actually lives in the present. ‘The clock time is constantly mark by big ben and other clocks of London chiming at regular intervals Mr. Dalloway walks to the flower shop on the party day in early June.

At eleven o’clock Septimus and Lucrezia reach Dr. William Bradshaw’s clinic and Clarissa lays her green dress on bed to mend it.

At half past one Hugh Whitbread and Richard Dalloway meet Lady Bruton for lunch. Richard comes back with rose flower or for his wife Clarissa at three and half hours.

At six o’clock Septimus kills himself and Peter remarks about civilisation. The chiming of Big Ben and other clock marks the change of consciousness from one character to another or transition in important events, external and inner mind of characters.

The mind has a life and a measure of time all its own and may not be so disciplined. ‘The psychological time is continuous like the flow of a stream. It has no present, past or future. So in consciousness of inner mind a character can move in present or in past. It moves backward and forward’.

Therefore, Virginia Woolf makes all her characters live in the life of their minds and thus takes place the eternal conflict of inner and outer life. Be it Mrs. Dalloway or the other equally important character Septimus Warren, Sally, Miss Kilman, Peter Or Richard, all live in their memories. All the characters travel inside their past episodes that unravel whatever superficial grip they have on their present lives. They wander in their memories through their minds and heart and then judge their present existences. Any external event in the text is significant only in terms of response it triggers in one’s inner life.

Peter Walsh’s brief visit to Clarissa’s house thus gives birth to a long digression into past in both of them where they actually relive their past in their present. Septimus Warren Smith, the great soldier is always lost in the memories of the war, in the death of one of his colleagues that disables him to face his own present conscience. Septimus’s death by suicide on one hand signifies his surrender before the time in his mind and on the other hand signified his victory over the mechanical time. Mrs Dalloway, for whom septimus acts as per double in the text although they could not know each other, wins in the end as she survives while Septimus died. But on the other hand her survival is a punishment for defiance of time. There is historical time too which has been utilized to refer to world war I or the time after the war of Peter’s visit to India and coming back and so on. The skilful use of time is significant feature of the Mrs. Dalloway in bringing about unity in the novel.

As for the conclusion, growing up in an intellectual environment of a literary family, Virginia Woolf was impressed by the need for contemporary writers to formulate a new approach to the treatment of time in their novels. Conventional handling of time seemed a distortion of the way in which time actually influences and is influenced by human lives. Not only is time incapable of being measured by such symbolic representations as hours, days, or months, but a writer cannot refer accurately to such arbitrary divisions as past, present and future. Time flows in uninterrupted succession; yet the individual carried along by time is not restricted to one dimension; through the use of memory, he can travel back and exist in the past before being swept along toward the future. Since Virginia Woolf felt that time exists only within the individual, she often chose experimental patterns of time for her novels. Such appropriate novel is none other than ‘Mrs Dalloway’.