4th Year / First Term / 2017

Mrs. Dalloway
Time-montage
occasion

In the opening of the novel, Woolf uses indirect interior monologue to present Clarissa as
she is going to buy flowers for her party.
Clarissa is in the same place but her mind is moving in time to the past at Bourton when
she was eighteen years old and to the future anticipating the party.
The third person omniscient narrator guides the reader to the consciousness of Clarissa.
He tries to capture the interior consciousness of Clarissa and gives the external aspect of
her life.

(1) Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself.

Clarissa thinks of preparation for her party that is going to be in the evening.

(2) For Lucy had her work cut out for her. The doors would be taken off their hinges;
Rumpelmayer’s men were coming. And then, thought Clarissa Dalloway, what a
morning — fresh as if issued to children on a beach.

Then she shifts back to the present moment and considers what a fine morning it is.

(3) What a lark! What a plunge! For so it had always seemed to her, when, with a little
squeak of the hinges, which she could hear now, she had burst open the French
windows and plunged at Bourton into the open air. How fresh, how calm, stiller than
this of course, the air was in the early morning; like the flap of a wave; the kiss of a
wave; chill and sharp and yet (for a girl of eighteen as she then was) solemn, feeling as
she did, standing there at the open window, that something awful was about to happen;

All the orientations of Clarissa's mind belong to the past.

Clarissa's mind is oriented to a particular past but she does not remember all her past.
She selects only few images.
Clarissa's thoughts do not highlight random events from the past. They are very carefully
selected.
All these memories center around the time when she was young living with her family at
Bourton.

The technique used is to bring two moments together: the present and the past.
She does not remember anything about her sister's death, for example, because she is
afraid of the passage of time, of getting old, and even of death.
The past memories become part of the present moment. Her present is illuminated by a
particular past.
All these memories influence the character's perception of her world.
There is time-montage in which a "flashback" is used over twenty years when she was
young.
She remembers how she opened the French windows.
What is working is the principle of free association.
She associates the sound of the hinges and the fresh morning with the fresh morning at
Bourton when she was young.

The word "plunge" is a unifying element in the novel. It unifies the two major characters:
Clarissa and Septimus.
Later on an airplane skywrites advertising something. This is an external stimulus that is
going to unify everybody on the streets of London.
The airplane is going to plunge. Clarissa is always thinking of plunging into life and then
plunging into her memories.
The worst plunge is going to be when Septimus plunges himself out of the window into
the railings outside and then he dies.

She has the idea that something awful is about to happen.

This awful thing is Septimus's committing suicide the thing that destroys her party and
even kills her spiritually.

(4) looking at the flowers, at the trees with the smoke winding off them and the rooks
rising, falling; standing and looking until Peter Walsh said, “Musing among the
vegetables?”— was that it?—“I prefer men to cauliflowers”— was that it? He must have
said it at breakfast one morning when she had gone out on to the terrace — Peter Walsh.

Peter is her first love and probably she is still in love with him.
He is coming from India and he is going to attend the party in the evening.
She remembers a point when she was with him and tries to recall the exact phrases that
he said.
This is a specific moment of the past of a conversation with Peter in detail.

She is still in the past but at a specific moment that is the conversation with Peter.
The device used here is "close-up".
Her mind brings so many incidents from the past and suddenly her mind concentrates on
the incident of meeting Peter.

(5) He would be back from India one of these days, June or July, she forgot which, for
his letters were awfully dull; it was his sayings one remembered; his eyes, his pocket-
knife, his smile, his grumpiness and, when millions of things had utterly vanished —
how strange it was!— a few sayings like this about cabbages.

Her consciousness shifts to a vision of the very near future.

She ponders why Peter will come from India very soon.

(6) She stiffened a little on the kerb, waiting for Durtnall’s van to pass. A charming
woman, Scrope Purvis thought her (knowing her as one does know people who live next
door to one in Westminster); a touch of the bird about her, of the jay, blue-green, light,
vivacious, though she was over fifty, and grown very white since her illness. There she
perched, never seeing him, waiting to cross, very upright.
The narrator guides the readers to shift from the mind of Clarissa to the mind of her
neighbor standing at the opposite side of the street looking at Clarissa.
The shift that is made from Clarissa's mind to her neighbor's is implied by Woolf to make
the readers discover something that is covered about Clarissa.
The device of "multiple views" shows her passing the street and her neighbor is in the
other side of the street at the same time.

The bird imagery clusters or accumulates in this passage in words such as "bird" and
"perched."
The bird imagery is a motif in the novel and it is associated with Clarissa's life as she
plunges in life now.
The bird plunges in the sky and Clarissa also plunges into life and into her past memories
at Bourton.

Clarissa does not talk about her illness but the readers know about her illness from other
characters.
Clarissa does not remember all her past. She selects only few images.
Clarissa's thoughts do not highlight random events from the past. They are very carefully
selected.
All these memories center around the time when she was young living with her family at
Bourton.
Clarissa does not recall anything that is associated with illness and the passage of time
because she is always afraid of death. She focuses only on life.
The past memories become part of the present moment.
All these memories influence the character's perception of her world.

(7) For having lived in Westminster — how many years now? over twenty,— one feels
even in the midst of the traffic, or waking at night, Clarissa was positive, a particular
hush, or solemnity; an indescribable pause; a suspense (but that might be her heart,
affected, they said, by influenza) before Big Ben strikes. There! Out it boomed. First a
warning, musical; then the hour, irrevocable. The leaden circles dissolved in the air. 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 dejected of miseries sitting on
doorsteps (drink 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.

Big Ben is a symbol in the novel. Its sound is ominous for Clarissa.
The striking of the hour means death since it focuses on the passage of time.
Clarissa tries to focus on something and Big Ben suddenly strikes and warns her of the
passage of time.

The readers are back in Clarissa's mind contemplating her love of Wesminster.
(8) For it was the middle of June. The War was over, except for some one like Mrs.
Foxcroft at the Embassy last night eating her heart out because that nice boy was killed
and now the old Manor House must go to a cousin; or Lady Bexborough who opened a
bazaar, they said, with the telegram in her hand, John, her favourite, killed;

The images of war cluster inside Clarissa's mind as if they conspire against her.
Death always invades the image and she cannot escape it.

There is a "fading-out" of Clarissa's sentimental musings about the beauty of London in

order to give opportunity to recall the conversation about the War being over.
The sentimental musing "fades-out" to capture a conversation about war and death.

(9) but it was over; thank Heaven — over. It was June. The King and Queen were at the
Palace. And everywhere, though it was still so early, there was a beating, a stirring of
galloping ponies, tapping of cricket bats; Lords, Ascot, Ranelagh and all the rest of it;
wrapped in the soft mesh of the grey-blue morning air, which, as the day wore on, would
unwind them, and set down on their lawns and pitches the bouncing ponies, whose
forefeet just struck the ground and up they sprung, the whirling young men, and laughing
girls in their transparent muslins who, even now, after dancing all night, were taking
their absurd woolly dogs for a run; and even now, at this hour, discreet old dowagers
were shooting out in their motor cars on errands of mystery; and the shopkeepers were
fidgeting in their windows with their paste and diamonds, their lovely old sea-green
brooches in eighteenth-century settings to tempt Americans (but one must economise,
not buy things rashly for Elizabeth), and she, too, loving it as she did with an absurd and
faithful passion, being part of it, since her people were courtiers once in the time of the
Georges, she, too, was going that very night to kindle and illuminate; to give her party.
But how strange, on entering the Park, the silence; the mist; the hum; the slow-
swimming happy ducks; the pouched birds waddling;

She runs away from the image of the War to images of life.

The idea of war "fades-out" and the readers are back to Clarissa's joy at her being part of
London and this beautiful day of June.

(10) and who should be coming along with his back against the Government buildings,
most appropriately, carrying a despatch box stamped with the Royal Arms, who but
Hugh Whitbread; her old friend Hugh — the admirable Hugh!

“Good-morning to you, Clarissa!” said Hugh, rather extravagantly, for they had known
each other as children. “Where are you off to?”

“I love walking in London,” said Mrs. Dalloway. “Really it’s better than walking in the
country.”

She sees her friend Hugh and the readers are out of her mind now.
The narrator registers the meeting between Clarissa and Hugh.

The device used is "cutting". Her stream of consciousness is cut.

She has to stop thinking in order to talk to Hugh whom she meets.
(11) They had just come up — unfortunately — to see doctors. Other people came to see
pictures; go to the opera; take their daughters out; the Whitbreads came “to see doctors.”
Times without number Clarissa had visited Evelyn Whitbread in a nursing home. Was
Evelyn ill again? Evelyn was a good deal out of sorts, said Hugh, intimating by a kind of
pout or swell of his very well-covered, manly, extremely handsome, perfectly
upholstered body (he was almost too well dressed always, but presumably had to be,
with his little job at Court) that his wife had some internal ailment, nothing serious,
which, as an old friend, Clarissa Dalloway would quite understand without requiring him
to specify.

Clarissa is so desperately attempting to celebrate life but images of death and war invade
her life every second of the day.

The conversation "fades-out" to lose itself in Clarissa's stream of consciousness while

she is concerned with thinking of the Whitbread family.

(12) Ah yes, she did of course; what a nuisance; and felt very sisterly and oddly
conscious at the same time of her hat. Not the right hat for the early morning, was that it?
For Hugh always made her feel, as he bustled on, raising his hat rather extravagantly and
assuring her that she might be a girl of eighteen, and of course he was coming to her
party to-night, Evelyn absolutely insisted, only a little late he might be after the party at
the Palace to which he had to take one of Jim’s boys,— she always felt a little skimpy
beside Hugh; schoolgirlish; but attached to him, partly from having known him always,
but she did think him a good sort in his own way, though Richard was nearly driven mad
by him, and as for Peter Walsh, he had never to this day forgiven her for liking him.

The time quickly shifts from an indefinite past, to the present moment, to the immediate
future, and then to the far past.
This is about the three men: one was in love with her, another is flirtatious, and her
husband is jealous.

(13) She could remember scene after scene at Bourton — Peter furious; Hugh not, of
course, his match in any way, but still not a positive imbecile as Peter made out; not a
mere barber’s block. When his old mother wanted him to give up shooting or to take her
to Bath he did it, without a word; he was really unselfish, and as for saying, as Peter did,
that he had no heart, no brain, nothing but the manners and breeding of an English
gentleman, that was only her dear Peter at his worst; and he could be intolerable; he
could be impossible; but adorable to walk with on a morning like this.

The readers are still in the far past. Clarissa is thinking of Peter and Hugh at Bourton
when she was eighteen years old.

(14) (June had drawn out every leaf on the trees. The mothers of Pimlico gave suck to
their young. Messages were passing from the Fleet to the Admiralty.

These recollections of the past are "cut" and she is back to contemplate the fine weather
at the present moment.

(15) Arlington Street and Piccadilly seemed to chafe the very air in the Park and lift its
leaves hotly, brilliantly, on waves of that divine vitality which Clarissa loved. To dance,
to ride, she had adored all that.)

The present moment "fades-out" to thoughts of Clarissa's own divine vitality as she knew
herself in the indefinite past as vital and full of life.

Space-montage
occasion

Woolf provides a panoramic view of London as a response to the same stimulus which is
the airplane and the two major characters reflecting upon the same stimulus.
Space-montage picks up different people from different places at the same time with a
"close-up" on all these people.
The scene of the airplane is the best example of "multiple view" or space-montage.
The scene of the commercial airplane advertising in the sky unifies everybody on the
street of London as they respond to that seen.
This includes many people and most importantly Septimus as he responds to the same
stimulus.

Wools manages to manipulate space-montage most effectively to serve her purpose of

using stream of consciousnsess.
She manages to manipulate space-montage and relates it at the same time to the other
devices.
She manages to subordinate space-montage to her basic stream of consciousness subject
matter.

(p.15-6) Suddenly Mrs. Coates looked up into the sky. The sound of an aeroplane bored
ominously into the ears of the crowd. There it was coming over the trees, letting out
white smoke from behind, which curled and twisted, actually writing something! making
letters in the sky! Every one looked up.

Dropping dead down the aeroplane soared straight up, curved in a loop, raced, sank,
rose, and whatever it did, wherever it went, out fluttered behind it a thick ruffled bar of
white smoke which curled and wreathed upon the sky in letters. But what letters? A C
was it? an E, then an L? Only for a moment did they lie still; then they moved and
melted and were rubbed out up in the sky, and the aeroplane shot further away and
again, in a fresh space of sky, began writing a K, an E, a Y perhaps?
... As they looked the whole world became perfectly silent, and a flight of gulls crossed
the sky, first one gull leading, then another, and in this extraordinary silence and peace,
in this pallor, in this purity, bells struck eleven times, the sound fading up there among
the gulls.

The women in the street are trying to know what the airplane is commercializing in the
sky.

Woolf repeats the same motif of the bird by the words "fluttered", and "gulls".
The bird motif unifies the two major characters: Clarissa and Septimus.
The airplane works as a unifying element that connects all the people on the streets of
London.
The airplane is going to plunge. Clarissa is always thinking of plunging into life and then
plunging into her memories.
The worst plunge is going to be when Septimus plunges himself out of the window into
the railings outside and then he dies.

The phrase "bells struck eleven" refers to Big Ben striking the hour.
The sound of Big Ben is always ominous to Clarissa.
Big Ben is a symbol in the novel. Its sound is ominous for Clarissa.
The striking of the hour means death since it focuses on the passage of time.
Clarissa tries to focus on something and Big Ben suddenly strikes and warns her of the
passage of time.

(p. 16) The aeroplane turned and raced and swooped exactly where it liked, swiftly,
freely, like a skater —

This is a meta-fiction passage since it shows how Woolf writes fiction.

The movement of the airplane is just like the consciousness of the characters that Woolf
depicts by means of space-montage.
The smoke of the airplane and the letters the airplane draws in the sky show how the
minds of the characters and incidents dissolve together.

(p.16) The clouds to which the letters E, G, or L had attached themselves moved freely,
as if destined to cross from West to East on a mission of the greatest importance which
would never be revealed, and yet certainly so it was — a mission of the greatest
importance.

The third person narrator describes the smoke in the sky as it fades out.
The smoke of the airplane and the letters the airplane draws in the sky show how the
minds of the characters and incidents dissolve together.
Just like the smoke fades away and melts, the consciousness of the characters fades away
and melts into one another.

(p. 17) Lucrezia Warren Smith, sitting by her husband’s side on a seat in Regent’s Park in
the Broad Walk, looked up.

“Look, look, Septimus!” she cried. For Dr. Holmes had told her to make her husband
(who had nothing whatever seriously the matter with him but was a little out of sorts)
take an interest in things outside himself.

So, thought Septimus, looking up, they are signalling to me. Not indeed in actual
words; that is, he could not read the language yet; but it was plain enough, this beauty,
this exquisite beauty, and tears filled his eyes as he looked at the smoke words
languishing and melting in the sky and bestowing upon him in their inexhaustible
charity and laughing goodness one shape after another of unimaginable beauty and
signalling their intention to provide him, for nothing, for ever, for looking merely, with
beauty, more beauty! Tears ran down his cheeks.

Space-montage shifts the concentration and focuses among people.

Now the focus is on Lucrezia and Septimus sitting in a park watching the airplane.
The airplane works as a unifying element that connects the characters.
Just like the smoke fades away and melts, the consciousness of the characters fades away
and melts into one another.

Apparently Septimus is suffering schizophrenic symptoms.

He has lost touch with the external reality and withdrawn inside.
He is on the verge of madness.

The narrator guides the readers into the mind of Septimus and they see how he perceives
the world in an eccentric manner.
He takes the airplane to be a message to him.
This is how he feels the words spoken around him and how he deciphers these images.

(p. 18) But they beckoned; leaves were alive; trees were alive. And the leaves being
connected by millions of fibres with his own body, there on the seat, fanned it up and
down; when the branch stretched he, too, made that statement. The sparrows fluttering,
rising, and falling in jagged fountains were part of the pattern; the white and blue, barred
with black branches. Sounds made harmonies with premeditation; the spaces between
them were as significant as the sounds. A child cried. Rightly far away a horn sounded.
All taken together meant the birth of a new religion —

This is a mystical moment for Septimus.

He feels that his entity is melting in the world around him and everything is one and
unified.
He keeps hallucinating and he can communicate only with nature.

bird motif (as above)

(p. 19) I am alone; I am alone! she cried, by the fountain in Regent’s Park (staring at
the Indian and his cross), as perhaps at midnight, when all boundaries are lost, the
country reverts to its ancient shape, as the Romans saw it, lying cloudy, when they
landed, and the hills had no names and rivers wound they knew not where — such was
her darkness; when suddenly, as if a shelf were shot forth and she stood on it, she said
how she was his wife, married years ago in Milan, his wife, and would never, never tell
that he was mad! Turning, the shelf fell; down, down she dropped. For he was gone, she
thought — gone, as he threatened, to kill himself — to throw himself under a cart! But
no; there he was; still sitting alone on the seat, in his shabby overcoat, his legs crossed,
staring, talking aloud.

The narrator moves out of the mind of Septimus to the mind of Rezia.
She describes her solitary existence and her problem with Septimus.
The misery of her life is similar to the darkness of the country as the Romans see it in its
ancient shape.

The phrase "there he was" will be the closing sentence of the novel when Clarissa hears
of the death of Septimus and she is spiritually dead.
Then Peter looks at her and says "there she was."

(p. 19) Men must not cut down trees. There is a God. (He noted such revelations on the
backs of envelopes.) Change the world. No one kills from hatred. Make it known (he
wrote it down). He waited. He listened. A sparrow perched on the railing opposite
chirped Septimus, Septimus, four or five times over and went on, drawing its notes out,
to sing freshly and piercingly in Greek words how there is no crime and, joined by
another sparrow, they sang in voices prolonged and piercing in Greek words, from trees
in the meadow of life beyond a river where the dead walk, how there is no death.

There was his hand; there the dead. White things were assembling behind the railings
opposite. But he dared not look. Evans was behind the railings!

The narrator guides the reader again into the mind of Septimus to register his interior
monologue.
He imagines that he sees Evans his dead friend.
Evans was his friend in the War and he was killed by a shell.
Septimus keeps on seeing that man's ghost every now and then.

(p. 20) Look the unseen bade him, the voice which now communicated with him who
was the greatest of mankind, Septimus, lately taken from life to death, the Lord who had
come to renew society, who lay like a coverlet, a snow blanket smitten only by the sun,
for ever unwasted, suffering for ever, the scapegoat, the eternal sufferer, but he did not
want it, he moaned, putting from him with a wave of his hand that eternal suffering, that
eternal loneliness.

He imagines himself a messenger sent by God to save humanity.

His interior monologue is interrupted by Rezia asking him to loop up to see the airplane.

(p. 21) The way to Regent’s Park Tube station — could they tell her the way to Regent’s
Park Tube station — Maisie Johnson wanted to know. She was only up from Edinburgh
two days ago.

“Not this way — over there!” Rezia exclaimed, waving her aside, lest she should see
Septimus.
...
Horror! horror! she wanted to cry. (She had left her people; they had warned her what
would happen.)

The readers are introduced to a lady called Maisie Johnson.

She is just passing them by and asks them how to get to Regent's Park Station.
The readers are in the mind of Maisie Johnson to see her impression about Septimus and
Lucrezia.
She feels a sense of darkness and horror.

“What are they looking at?” said Clarissa Dalloway to the maid who opened her door.

The readers have left Clarissa at the beginning of the space-montage and they are back
with her when she arrives home.
Clarissa is going back home and she does not see the airplane but she notices some
people looking up at something.
When she gets home, the maid opens the door and Clarissa asks her: " What are they
looking at?"
function

Woolf accomplishes many purposes and the major purpose is to introduce the reades to
Septimus's psyche in the only overt relationship registered to Clarissa.
By means of this space-montage, she manages to bring them together although they do
not know each other and they never meet.
The linking of Septimus and Clarissa, which is at this stage accidental, has a profound
significance on the symbolic level.
The profound significance is the idea of the double; Septimus represents all the fears, the
anxieties, the loss, and the sense of emptiness at the heart of Clarissa's life.
Another purpose is the unified introduction of Septimus into Clarissa's story especially
the sharp shifting and quick cutting of his monologue in order to trace the movement of
Clarissa's consciousness.

Rhythmic Order
(p. 1) "And then, thought Clarissa Dalloway, what a morning — fresh as if issued to
children on a beach."

What a lark! What a plunge! For so it had always seemed to her, when, with a little
squeak of the hinges, which she could hear now, she had burst open the French windows
and plunged at Bourton into the open air. How fresh, how calm, stiller than this of
course, the air was in the early morning; like the flap of a wave; the kiss of a wave;

occasion

Clarissa experiences the morning of that June day as if it is a wave on the beach.
The feeling of that June day suggests images that are associated with the sea.
Another image that is connected to the sea is that she "plunges" into the morning.
She also plunges into the past and she remembers how she had plunged into the open air
at Bourton.
In her interior monologue, she recalls details about Bourton in the summer remembering
the fresh air of Bourton.

The elements that she recalls from the past days of Bourton are described in their
movement or rhythm.
This rhythm is the same of the movement of the waves.
She recalls her feelings towards that fresh air and she immediately connects it to
Bourton.
The air of Bourton was more quiet than the air of London, like the "flap of a wave"
rising and falling.
What is associated with the sea is not the place or the air itself but the remembered
feeling about the life that Clarissa had when she was eighteen years old.
It is not the remembered scene itself that is made vivid and rising and falling, but the
scene is invested by the remembered feelings or memory.

function
What characterizes Woolf's writing is the combination between the ordinary and the
extraordinary.
Clarissa's going out to prepare for her party is something ordinary.
The extraordinary lies in the vitality and mystery that are continually revealed within
these ordinary things.
One way in which Woolf reaches the extraordinary out of the ordinary is through the
rhythmic order that she detects through her imagination.
The rhythmic order is not necessarily inherent in these incidents but it is invested in them
by the power of imagination.
It is the mind of Clarissa as she responds to external stimuli and recollects things from
the past.
The rhythmic order as a technique is expressed through what Woolf calls the ebb and
flow of life that is within the individual and outside the individual.
This techniques enables Woolf to invest ordinary scenes with extraordinary meanings
which are mystic and extend beyond ordinary happenings.
It is through this rhythmic order that the lives of Clarissa and Septimus are connected.

(p. 1) "chill and sharp and yet (for a girl of eighteen as she then was) solemn, feeling as
she did, standing there at the open window, that something awful was about to happen;
looking at the flowers, at the trees with the smoke winding off them and the rooks rising,
falling; standing and looking until Peter Walsh said, “Musing among the vegetables?”—
was that it?—“I prefer men to cauliflowers”— was that it? "

occasion

The chill and sharpness of the air that is remembered by Clarissa is what she was aware
of when she was standing at the window in the morning.
This is associated with the chill and sharp feeling she felt that day of June that something
ominous is going to happen.
The moment she was remembering was a solemn moment because in that moment she
had to make the decision of her lifetime.
This particular summer she is recalling now tells how she refused Peter's proposal and
accepted Richard as her husband.
She does not mention anything through the narrative about such things.
The readers know about these things through the other characters.
Bourton is important because it is associated in Clarissa's mind with a decision that
changed the course of her life.
What Clarissa remembers is the details associated with the force of the inner life.

function

What characterizes Woolf's writing is the combination between the ordinary and the
extraordinary.
Clarissa's going out to prepare for her party is something ordinary.
The extraordinary lies in the vitality and mystery that are continually revealed within
these ordinary things.
One way in which Woolf reaches the extraordinary out of the ordinary is through the
rhythmic order that she detects through her imagination.
The rhythmic order as a technique is expressed through what Woolf calls the ebb and
flow of life that is within the individual and outside the individual.
It is through this rhythmic order that the lives of Clarissa and Septimus are connected.

(p. 26) "Only for a moment; but it was enough. It was a sudden revelation, a tinge like
a blush which one tried to check and then, as it spread, one yielded to its expansion, and
rushed to the farthest verge and there quivered and felt the world come closer, swollen
with some astonishing significance, some pressure of rapture, which split its thin skin
and gushed and poured with an extraordinary alleviation over the cracks and sores!
Then, for that moment, she had seen an illumination; a match burning in a crocus; an
inner meaning almost expressed. But the close withdrew; the hard softened. It was over
— the moment."

This passage shows an incident when Clarissa exchanges a kiss with Sally Seton at
Bourton.
It describes the physicality of emotional experience.
Clarissa remembers this moment and Woolf tries to reveal the connecting force of that
moment.
Woolf's moment is not a span of time. It is an experience of life in its fullness.
Clarissa experiences a whole life, hidden sensations, fancies, and impressions in only
one moment.
Clarissa's kiss with Sally is the most deeply felt moment in the novel.

fucntion

Woolf is a mystic writer. She is obsessed with the idea of capturing the moment.
Woolf tries to make the word "moment" a real tangible thing.
For her, the moment is an expression of life in which there is a connecting force that
heightens real sensations.
The moment is Woolf's depiction of shared thoughts, a shared experience, and a mystical
feeling.
The present moment in the mystic imagination is a moment of quick realization and
revelation.
It is a moment of epiphany where life is fulfilled and everything comes to existence in a
flash of a second.
Woolf problematizes one moment to refer to the whole life of Clarissa.

Narrative Structure
1. two narrative levels
2. two chaotic movements
3. unifying motifs
4. unifying symbols

In the novel, there are two narratives. The surface narrative is one single day of June
from the morning until someone comes with the new of Septimus's death.
The surface narrative is supported and enriched by a deeper narrative that comes from
the past of Clarissa extending over eighteen years.
Structurally speaking, the novel is working on two major movements: the inner mind of
the character registering the pre-speech level of the character, and then moving out to the
external world registering what is going on in the external world. The objective of the
narrative is the inner world and how it receives moments of revelation in its present
moment from the external world.

On the surface narrative, Clarissa is in the streets of Westminster going to buy flowers
and enjoying the day of June in London and then she goes home to prepare for the party
at night. At the same time, Septimus is in the park with his wife waiting for their
appointment with the doctor and then in the evening he kills himself.

The orientation of Clarissa's mind is directed to a particular point in the past when she
was eighteen years old living with her parents at Bourton.
At the party, the news of Septimus's death destroys Clarissa metaphorically.

The action takes place in the city of London. However, the place of incidents varies from
India where Peter is to Bourton where Clarissa used to live and to the world war
battlefield of France where Septimus was a soldier. All these places look scattered but
Woolf manages to unify them together.

This shows that Wolf is in total control of her narrative that she brings two chaotic
movements together.
Woolf is a mystic writer in the sense that she sees things as part of other things; nothing
is isolated.

When Clarissa invites people to her party, she keeps saying, "remember my party."
This is not just a reminder. It is a plea. She is begging them metaphorically to remember
her after her death.
This is how she is going to stay alive in the mind of other people.

The surface narrative lacks unity and Woolf imposes unity through the inner visions of
Clarissa.
She tries to impose order and meaning through motifs like "plunge".
Clarissa opens the window and she plunges into the past.
Septimus plunges from the window and the airplane plunges in the sky.
Big Ben striking the hour is another motif in the narrative.
All these motifs accumulate and create a force and they function as unifying devices.
Woolf relies also on symbols as structural patterns that bring everything in the narrative
together.

Memory
Woolf manages to bring Septimus and Clarissa together by connecting the caves in the
present.
She digs caves behind the characters and these caves are the memories of the past.
She uses memory as an aspect of consciousness.

Clarissa does not remember all her past. She selects only few images.
The past memories become part of the present moment.
When she opens the windows in London on that June day, she remembers how she
opened the windows at Bourton when she was eighteen.
All these memories influence the character's perception of her world.

Clarissa's thoughts do not highlight random events from the past.

They are very carefully selected.
All these memories center around the time when she was young living with her family at
Bourton.

Clarissa does not recall anything about her sisters death because she is always afraid of
death and she focuses only on life.
The readers know about her sister's death from Peter.
She never refers to any details about her marriage to Richard.
She does not even recall her recent illness or her daughter's birth and childhood.
Everything is recalled through other characters' recollections not through Clarissa.

Symbolic Significance of Septimus

[pp. 72-78]

occasion

Septimus goes to the war to defend Britain and its heritage.

Ironically, after the war he has lost his best friend and his mind as well.
He has collapsed mentally and he has lost connection with the outer world.

symbolic order

(p. 74) "For now that it was all over, truce signed, and the dead buried, he had, especially
in the evening, these sudden thunder-claps of fear. He could not feel."

(p. 75) "But he could not taste, he could not feel. In the tea-shop among the tables and
the chattering waiters the appalling fear came over him — he could not feel. He could
reason; he could read, Dante for example, quite easily (“Septimus, do put down your
book,” said Rezia, gently shutting the Inferno), he could add up his bill; his brain was
perfect; it must be the fault of the world then — that he could not feel."

Septimus is a threat to his society because he is out of the symbolic order and the
collective consciousness.
His character shows the failure of the symbolic order to control the deep dark psyche of
the individual.
This comes in the form of schizophrenia.

He identifies himself not with people around him, but rather with the trees, birds,
airplanes, his dead friend and all other inhuman things.
He feels tremendous oneness with the world of nature.
This means that he has lost his individuality. He has lost the symbolic order that defines
him as one of the social group.
This oneness of Septimus is associated with terror and joy.
There are moments when Septimus comes to nature and indulges himself with the trees
and birds.
These are moments of ecstasy. He loses his self in the power of nature.
He abandons his individuality and melts in something else.
There are moments of Septimus's depression and misery.
He dares consciously to confront the social system.

Doctors

(p. 77) "Nothing could rouse him. Rezia put him to bed. She sent for a doctor — Mrs.
Filmer’s Dr. Holmes. Dr. Holmes examined him. There was nothing whatever the matter,
said Dr. Holmes. Oh, what a relief! What a kind man, what a good man! thought Rezia."

(p. 78) "Human nature, in short, was on him — the repulsive brute, with the blood-red
nostrils. Holmes was on him. Dr. Holmes came quite regularly every day."

In order to bring Septimus back to the symbolic order or to the collective social
consciousness, his wife takes him to more than one doctor.
The social system is represented by by the clinic and the doctors where Septimus is taken
to try to get rid of his suffering.
Doctor Holmes represents the social system and the symbolic order the moments he
decides that Septimus is a schizophrenic person who needs an asylum.
Woolf directs severe criticism against the establishment of the symbolic order.
Septimus's gradual breakdown threatens what the two doctors represent.

Miss Pole

(p. 72) "He thought her beautiful, believed her impeccably wise; dreamed of her, wrote
poems to her, which, ignoring the subject, she corrected in red ink; he saw her, one
summer evening, walking in a green dress in a square."

(p. 73) "Septimus was one of the first to volunteer. He went to France to save an England
which consisted almost entirely of Shakespeare’s plays and Miss Isabel Pole in a green
dress walking in a square."

The symbolic order is represented by Miss Pole who keeps correcting Septimus's mystic
poems in red ink and scolding him for ignoring the subject.
The territories of language are another symbol of Septimus's losing contact with the
symbolic system.
The grammar of language is an essential part of the symbolic order.
Septimus escapes from the language and the grammar.
He runs away from the order of the language to another territory of language that is
fragmented.

Clarissa

Clarissa tries to construct things using her consciousness by moving from the past to the
present and even to the future.
Septimus does exactly the opposite. She unconsciously represents the symbolic order.
She collapses at the end by Septimus's death.

suicide

By making Septimus jump out of the window or plunge into the street, Woolf opens
another window or a vista where the social system collapses.
Everything even meaning and grammar collapses with the death of Septimus.
From Septimus's point of view, he is pushed to commit suicide.
It is only in death that he can escape the memories that isolate him from life and brings
the crazy images of the future of humanity.
So the only way to affirm his life is through death.

Clarissa's Epiphany
[158-161]

(p. 158) "A young man (that is what Sir William is telling Mr. Dalloway) had killed
himself. He had been in the army.” Oh! thought Clarissa, in the middle of my party,
here’s death, she thought."

occasion

The readers are inside the man of Clarissa. This is a moment of sudden revelation in
which she recognizes the truth.
Everything she does to make her party successful and make people remember her and to
forget about death and the passage of time comes to an end by the moment of Septimus's
death when she encounters everything she tries to escape. Clarissa is going to meet the
fate she is trying to escape from that is death.
She is going to die metaphorically the moment she hears the news of Septimus's death.

preparation for the epiphany

During the day, she enjoys life to the full and she immerses herself in that beautiful day
of June.
She is interesting in nothing but in the beautiful streets and her being in London at that
beautifu present day.
She also moves in time covering a span of eighteen years from the past to the present
picking up the moments that make her happy and alive.
She insists on the party because she wants to enjoy the present moment and to celebrate
that day of June.
Clarissa tries to escape death by orienting her mind to pleasant present issues like the
kiss scene with Sally, the beautiful day of June, and the party.
She pleads people to come to her party. This plea denotes that she is telling them to
remember her after her death.
She wants to live in the mind and the memory of the people around her by having the
party.
She wants to feel the happiness of her present life. She tries to ignore death but
everything in London symbolizes death, sickness and the passage of time, such as the
ambulance in the street, images of war, Big Ben striking the hour ominously, and finally
the plunge of Septimus.
The repetition of the word "bird" is a motif. The only way Septimus could find an escape
from his life is to fly like a bird out of the window and plunge into the street.
All these images cluster together to reach the final moment that is Septimus's death.

function

Woolf is a mystic writer because all her works focus on the processes that prepare the
character in certain circumstances and represent the character's inner realization of truth.
She traces and registers the inner realization of truth only on the level of the mind that is
not expressed.
She prepares Clarissa throughout the day to perceive her final vision about the truth of
her life.
The moment of seeing the final vision is a moment of epiphany that is a sudden
revelation of the truth.
The novel is about Clarissa who is prepared to see her final insight or illumination.

Peter's epiphany
[p.168]

“I will come,” said Peter, but he sat on for a moment. 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.

For there she was.

occasion

Clarissa's consciousness is enriched by other characters' consciousness that radiates

about Clarissa herself.
After the party, Clarissa becomes unable to see any future. She can see her metaphorical
death only.
This idea is strengthened by Peter's image of Clarissa which is his final vision of her.
The ending is a terrifying vision that Peter has of Clarissa.
His inner thought moves swiftly to a sudden vision of her death.
In Peter's moment of recognition, Clarissa still has extraordinary excitement she had in
her youth.
The terror of extraordinary excitement is related to something ominous that she feels
earlier.

vision

Woolf sums up the entire novel in the last two line.

In these two lines, the present tense is juxtaposed with the past tense.
In this final image, Clarissa "is" and "was".
Peter's final vision of Clarissa fuses these two moments and two identities into one.
Clarissa "is" and "was" are fused together like any other moments in the novel.
The entire past is recaptured by one present moment that has no future.
This is Clarissa's symbolic death in the narrative.

function

Woolf is a mystic writer because all her works focus on the processes that prepare the
character in certain circumstances and represent the character's inner realization of truth.
She traces and registers the inner realization of truth only on the level of the mind that is
not expressed.
She prepares Clarissa throughout the day to perceive her final vision about the truth of
her life.
The moment of seeing the final vision is a moment of epiphany that is a sudden
revelation of the truth.
The novel is about Clarissa who is prepared to see her final insight or illumination.

The End

Dr. Salman