Modernism text under study: an extract from Mrs.

Dalloway by Virginia Woolf

“Modernism” is a word that is used to describe these changes in literature. Some critics -
start modernism with the death of Queen Victoria, it is usually considered to have ended before
W.W.II. other critics point out that “the Great War” played a major role, in the sense that it
shattered the vision of the world people had.
19th century novelists created complex but coherent worlds (a village life, the lives of young
men becoming adult in London), characters (Jane Eyre whose life we follow from her school to
Mr Rochester’s house) and plots. In literary history, the next period is referred to as the Edwardian
Era (after the death of Queen Victoria and before World War I.) As this was the beginning of the
20th century, intellectuals and artists believed in this new, modern age, and to challenge Victorian
norms and values. Their novels still had plots and social issues – including social classes—they
were interested in how social classes met (and clashed) as more and more people, including
women, worked. By contrast to the Victorian world, new interests emerged, or new values: the
individual, over the group, the personal over any form of bondage, like religion for instance.
Novels could still focus on a character, but rather than simply tracing the character’s life (as
Brontë did with Jane Eyre), they focused on how the character could become independent, free
herself from old-fashioned values and have a mind of her own—E.M.Forster’s A Room with a View
for instance).
The world itself was changing--women became more independent, city life grew. A lot of
people lived in cities, and lost touch with their families and so centered their lives around their
social urban life rather than their families. This was very different from the world depicted in
Clarissa, which was centered on family life. The citizens of great cities discovered that they had
new, impersonal, relationships with each other. They realized that they could interact with
individuals with whom they had no intimate personal connection (for instance: bus drivers,
postmen, newspaper vendors, office clerks etc). In this new and now mostly urban environment,
the modern individual could feel BOTH isolated and free. = > Consequently, in novels, new types
of people and characters appeared such as the young struggling woman, a clerk, a salesgirl, etc.
And novelists were interested in these possibilities of feeling both anonymous and part of a great
city—focusing on the types of relationships in offices, but also, simply on the streets and shops—
how people saw other people for a brief moment, how their lives crossed for a brief moment.
We have to realized that compared with the 19th century, the world was changing and
changing fast. People traveled more, both in the city -with streetcars- or outside with trains and
the bicycle was being replaced by the automobile. These new modes of transport (such as trains,
streetcars and planes) increased the speed of transport and thus changed the traveller’s physical
apprehension of the landscape or the cityscape. = > So novelists emphasized the city’s changing
landscape—in Forster’s Howard’s End, we see London’s old buildings being torn down and
replaced by new modern building. City life, including its automobiles, tramways, shop windows,
and busy streets, features in novels—see Night and Day by Virginia Woolf. James Joyce’s Ulysses
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is often said to be about Dublin, but it is the town of Dublin as experienced by the protagonists
who walks its streets. His vision is partial, fragmentary—it is nothing like the views of London
Dickens offered.
The experience of the modern age was also transformed by the development of new
technologies: The development of the mass media (the press, photography and film) influenced
how people perceived their surroundings = > novelists started to experiment with collage,
including headlines or extract from newspapers, or snatches of radio speeches in their novels.

Modernism is also linked to the rise in popularity of Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalytical

theory of the unconscious became quite popular throughout Europe in the 1920s and the 1930s.
Freud acknowledged the existence of what the conscious subject is reluctant to voice, to admit,
of what cannot even be consciously known and yet is always trying to come to the surface of
consciousness (in dreams, in neurotic symptoms, in linguistic slips and in personality traits). This
theory changed the way some artists created fictional characters: rather than create a character
as Dickens did as a consistent, unified whole, they created characters as fragmented beings,
whose mind and body reflected their irrational drives. In turn this influenced the way they wrote
as they attempted to reflect this fragmentation. You can see it in paintings as well. Vanessa Bell’s
“Still life on corner of a mantelpiece” (1914) uses the traditional of the still life—bowls of fruit, or
vases of flowers, or dead animals, typically, replacing the objects with abstract shapes. Shapes
also dominate on her screen (1913)

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Tents and Figures, 1913, folding screen, Victoria and Albert Museum

20 years later, Ceri Richards’s painting, “The Female Contains All Qualities” further
challenges representations of women

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 Tate Gallery
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Of course, World War I could only increase these feelings—alienation, fragmentation, a sense
that the previous world (the Victorian world) was based on beliefs and values that were not
relevant anymore. The Great War and its shock waves feature in many paintings, novels and
poetry too. A whole generation known as the War Poets radically changed British poetry. They
challenged the heroic, epic & patriotic vision of war the government had promoted. During the
Great War, British politicians and generals had sent hundreds of thousands of young men to their
deaths in the terrible conditions of trench warfare. Especially after 1917, they were seen as the
older generation who had betrayed the generation of the sons – the private soldiers whom they
had dispatched to the battlefield like cannon fodder. So the soldiers who were also poets wrote
about the war, debunking the patriotic myths of masculine, military valour through which epic
poets used to beautify the battlefield and turn it into a glorious epic scene. Thus they attempted
to invent a poetic style that could fit the entirely new horror of modern warfare. You can compare
these first stanzas of Anthem for Doomed Youth by Wilfrid Owen to Keats’s Ode to Autumn for
instance, here the Ode has been replaced by an Anthem, and the evocation of nature in early
Autumn by human bodies, the gentle murmur of the /m/ sounds and sibilants evoking bees by
the rattle of the machine guns and the shrill sounds of the falling shells (obus):
Anthem for Doomed Youth By Wilfred Owen

What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?

— Only the monstrous anger of the guns.
Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle
Can patter out their hasty orisons.
No mockeries now for them; no prayers nor bells;
Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs,—
The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;
And bugles calling for them from sad shires.

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 After the war, it was quite obvious that the world had changed for ever. Artists came to
challenge the idea that history could make sense and could be turned into a meaningful, orderly
series of events ultimately leading to progress. After all, technological progress had led to mass
killings.

Here a painting by Christopher Richard Wynne NEVINSON, “At Dawn, 1914.” The soldiers
(French poilus) are just shapes as they march towards “life” in the trenches.

After the war modernist artists felt that they had to create radically new art forms,
experimenting with new formal devices, new ways of telling a story and building characters, in
order to make sense of a chaotic, unstable world and to invent some order for it. When they
returned to or used “great narratives” such as Greco-Roman myths or Biblical stories, they used
them to play games. This is best illustrated by James Joyce’s Ulysses (1922). Joyce’s hero is not
the Greek hero but a drunkard who wanders around Dublin.

Modernist artists attempted to render the particular experience of this isolated, sometimes
alienated individual who now lived in a quickly changing environment – in short they attempted
to render the unstable, chaotic, overwhelming flow of sensations, perceptions and thoughts
assailing a modern subject. To assail is like to attack – this means that they felt surrounded by
this flow of sensations, which attacked them, penetrated their minds and thoughts.
These writers also challenged the rules of the 19th century novel—which is quite logical
since these novels depicted coherent worlds. They also challenged the “traditional plot” (a
traditional plot means that there is an initial situation, a problem—the death of the protagonist’s
parents for instance- and after many chapters, a point of maximum tension (Jane Eyre falls in love
with her master, only to discover he has a hidden wife; Oliver Twist is kidnapped again) followed
by a reversal of situation and a conclusion.
Many modernist writers shifted the emphasis from this kind of plot to the interiority of the
focal character, from the situation itself to the awareness which the character has of the situation
and of himself. So characters’ impressions and thoughts matter more than anything else. The

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word “plotless novel” is often used to describe them. The extract we are studying is one good
example of this.

In Ulysses by James Joyce and in Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf, the narrators use the ‘stream
of consciousness’ technique to convey the ceaseless flow of the character’s thoughts. The
phrase “stream of consciousness was coined (invented) by the philosopher Williams James in
1890. He wrote, “consciousness, then, does not appear to itself as chopped up in bits ... it is
nothing joined; it flows. A 'river' or a 'stream' are the metaphors by which it is most naturally
described. In talking of it hereafter, let's call it the stream of thought, consciousness, or
subjective life. The idea (in real life) is that our minds, our consciousness, when we breathe, look
at things around us, notice them, move quickly, from one thing to the next, in a constant flow.

As a narrative technique, the stream of consciousness means that the author gives the
readers the impression that the narrator and the reader are inside their heads. The technique is
quite complex, and very often the very rhythm of a sentence seems to mimic the way the
character’s mind and thought move. The narrator can use verbs such as “she thought” or “felt”
or “it seemed to her” introduce their thoughts but very soon, it seems that we are inside the
character’s head mind and heart – and the narrator does not even use these verbs. This means
that the distinction between indirect and direct speech are blurred, and narrator alternate
omniscient narration and indirect interior monologue.
Virginia Woolf (25 January 1882 – 28 March 194) is considered one of Britain’s major modernist
writer and representative of the stream of consciousness technique.

In her novel To The Lighthouse, Woolf used a very complex form of stream of consciousness
as the narrator seems to jump from one character’s mind into another character’s mind.
One short story by Woolf, “String Quartets” gives us a very good illustration of interior
monologue, as the narrator is sitting on a chair, listening to what people say, and bits of dialogue
appear, mixing the words someone says to her with words from other conversations—the words
in bold for instance belong to another conversation:
“Seven years since we met!”
“The last time in Venice!”
“And where are you living now?”
“Well, the late afternoon suits me the best, though, if it weren’t asking too much—”
“But I knew you at once!”
“Still, the war made a break—”

The narrator then looks around her, imagining what other people are thinking:
It is all a matter of flats and hats, or so it seems to be for a hundred of people sitting here,
well-dressed, walled in, furred, replete. I too sit passive on a gilt chair, only turning the earth above
a buried memory, as we all do, for there are signs, if I’m not mistaken, that we’re all recalling
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something, furtively seeking something. Why fidget? Why so anxious about the situation of cloaks;
and gloves—whether to button or unbutton?

She then notices the arrival of the musicians and describes the moment they start to play but
rather than describing the effect the music has on her – instead of saying “it was beautiful” or
sad, the narrator simply writes of what she sees when she hears the music as if it were real:
the first violin counts one, two three—
Flourish, spring, burgeon, burst! The pear tree on the top of the mountain. Fountain jet;
drops descend. But the waters of the Rhone flow swift and deep, race under the arches, and sweep
the trailing water leaves, washing shadows over the silver fish, the spotted fish rushed down by
the swift waters, now swept into an eddy where—it’s difficult this—conglomeration of fish all in
a pool; leaping, splashing, scraping sharp fins; and such a boil of current that the yellow pebbles
are churned round and round—free now, rushing downwards, or even somehow ascending in
exquisite spirals into the air; curled like thin shavings from under a lane; up and up
The waters are those the narrator imagines when she hears the music – and the passage is also
a good example of how the writer plays with punctuation and rhythm: the sentence starting
with “But the waters of” is very long and there are only semi colons and dashes. This is a good
example of the stream of consciousness technique. Her mind wanders or rather flows with the
music.
When we read Virginia Woolf, we have to mention the The Bloomsbury Group— a group of
writers and artists who lived or worked near Bloosmbury in London. They met and discussed the
issues of the day. Woolf, her sister the painter Vanessa Bell and her husband Leonard Woolf
were key members. The Woolfs also founded a publishing house, which published many key
works of the time.

Virginia Woolf is also famous for one essay entitled “A Room of One’s Own” (1929) in which she
imagines that Shakespeare had a gifted sister who could not, who was not allowed to write
because she was a woman. In the essay, she attacks men’s views on women (“women can’t
write,” “women can’t paint”). She also advocates their right to privacy, hence a room of one’s
own which women need. It is still today a very famous essay.

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Woolf herself had attended King’s College London –the so-called ‘ladies’ Department- where
she studied classics, while her brothers attended Cambridge. As a child, she could not go to
school, while her brothers did, as girls were educated at home. Fortunately their father let the
girls use his vast library. Her brothers would also introduce their Cambridge friends to their
sisters who could participate in intellectual discussions with the young men.

She came in contact with reformer of women’s higher education and women’s rights in London.
Her father was a writer, historian and biographer and encouraged her to write professionally

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(as early as 1900). Her first novels are rather more traditional in style but reflect the changing
world—Night and Day for instance. Her work then became more modern, more innovative,

She also wrote many short stories, focusing on little things such as a mark on the wall, or Kew
Gardens, which describes various people passing by a bush of flowers, moving on, being
replaced by others. the reader only reads fragments of their conversations, catches glimpses of
their lives.

The text we are reading is an extract from Mrs Dalloway, which is often described as a good
example of the plotless novel she advocated. It is the story of one day in the life of a woman,
Mrs. Dalloway, who is giving a party. The story of her day is interconnected with the story (also
on the same day) of another character who eventually kills himself. There is no plot, as readers
follow the characters’ thoughts. Here, Mrs. Dalloway, who receives the visit of her former lover,
Peter, and then goes out.

Extract:

So she would still find herself arguing in St. James's Park, still making out that she had been
right--and she had too--not to marry him. For in marriage a little licence, a little independence
there must be between people living together day in day out in the same house; which Richard
gave her, and she him. (Where was he this morning for instance? Some committee, she never
asked what.) But with Peter everything had to be shared; everything gone into. And it was
intolerable, and when it came to that scene in the little garden by the fountain, she had to break
with him or they would have been destroyed, both of them ruined, she was convinced; though
she had borne about with her for years like an arrow sticking in her heart the grief, the anguish;
and then the horror of the moment when some one told her at a concert that he had married a
woman met on the boat going to India! Never should she forget all that! Cold, heartless, a
prude, he called her. Never could she understand how he cared. But those Indian women did
presumably--silly, pretty, flimsy nincompoops. And she wasted her pity. For he was quite happy,
he assured her--perfectly happy, though he had never done a thing that they talked of; his
whole life had been a failure. It made her angry still.
She had reached the Park gates. She stood for a moment, looking at the omnibuses in Piccadilly.
She would not say of any one in the world now that they were this or were that. She felt very
young; at the same time unspeakably aged. She sliced like a knife through everything; at the
same time was outside, looking on. She had a perpetual sense, as she watched the taxi cabs, of
being out, out, far out to sea and alone; she always had the feeling that it was very, very
dangerous to live even one day. Not that she thought herself clever, or much out of the
ordinary. How she had got through life on the few twigs of knowledge Fräulein Daniels gave
them she could not think. She knew nothing; no language, no history; she scarcely read a book

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now, except memoirs in bed; and yet to her it was absolutely absorbing; all this; the cabs
passing; and she would not say of Peter, she would not say of herself, I am this, I am that.
Her only gift was knowing people almost by instinct, she thought, walking on. If you put her in a
room with some one, up went her back like a cat's; or she purred. Devonshire House, Bath
House, the house with the china cockatoo, she had seen them all lit up once; and remembered
Sylvia, Fred, Sally Seton--such hosts of people; and dancing all night; and the waggons plodding
past to market; and driving home across the Park. She remembered once throwing a shilling into
the Serpentine. But every one remembered; what she loved was this, here, now, in front of her;
the fat lady in the cab. Did it matter then, she asked herself, walking towards Bond Street, did it
matter that she must inevitably cease completely; all this must go on without her; did she
resent it; or did it not become consoling to believe that death ended absolutely? but that
somehow in the streets of London, on the ebb and flow of things, here, there, she survived,
Peter survived, lived in each other, she being part, she was positive, of the trees at home; of the
house there, ugly, rambling all to bits and pieces as it was; part of people she had never met;
being laid out like a mist between the people she knew best, who lifted her on their branches as
she had seen the trees lift the mist, but it spread ever so far, her life, herself. But what was she
dreaming as she looked into Hatchards' shop window? What was she trying to recover? What
image of white dawn in the country, as she read in the book spread open:
Fear no more the heat o' the sun
Nor the furious winter's rages.
This late age of the world's experience had bred in them all, all men and women, a well of tears.
Tears and sorrows; courage and endurance; a perfectly upright and stoical bearing.
Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway, 1924.

= > what elements show that this is an extract from a modernist novel.
pay attention to city life, focalization, how memories and vision alternate, in such a way as to
blur boundaries between them. Also the boundaries between the subject and the outside.
Pay attention to style, including punctuation => what effect is achieved.