Thoughts on Mrs. Dalloway (2012)

The most insurmountable conflict in the novel is between two extreme desires: connection to others and privacy of the soul. While Clarissa and Septimus are both in conflict with these two desires, they are both examples of the extreme. Each one of them chooses one end of the spectrum on which to act. Clarissa gives in to connection due to fear of isolation and loneliness, while Septimus stands his ground, believing that no one could even begin comprehend the matters of his soul. Despite their decisions on how to act on these desires, there are times where Septimus stammers to get his words out to no avail as well as times where Clarissa contemplates completely shutting herself off from others. For example, Clarissa sees a neighbor, who happens to be an elderly woman, through a window and thinks that somehow she “respected that—that old woman looking out of the window, quite unconscious that she was being watched.” Clarissa thinks, “there was something solemn in it—but love and religion would destroy that, whatever it was, the privacy of the soul.” Clarissa even identifies with Septimus’s suicide, his death representing the ultimate act of defiance. She considers that the “young man who had killed himself had plunged holding his treasure.” However, Clarissa, who is in conflict with her own desires, thinks of the situation through a different light as well. She allows her self to consider that “death is an attempt to communicate.“ As much of a defiance as Septimus’s death was, Clarissa contemplates the possibility that it may have been a final, extremely tragic, attempt to speak to others about the inexpressibility of his war-damaged soul. The many thoughts that both Clarissa and Septimus have regarding which of these two desires is the better choice for life are reversible between the two characters and call into question the damaging effects of the extremities of both connection and isolation. Clarissa finally decides that while being “a perfect hostess” is less than desirable for someone who has a rather reserved, independent nature, it is better than the alienation Septimus experienced that eventually led to his death. Perhaps there is a balance between these two reappearing, conflicting desires. However, Woolf suggests, through the fragmented and interchangeable thoughts of Clarissa and Septimus, that this balance is not easy to achieve and that it may be a bit more complicated than most people assume.

Clarissa and Septimus are not the only characters to struggle with the issues of time, power, connection and privacy. Every single character in the novel does to some degree. While not everyone experiences life in the same way, Woolf points out that there is one common experience in life and that is chaos. No one is free from life’s impending facets of uncertainty and everyone will struggle at one point or another to make sense of the utter confusion and conflict that life holds, both external and internal. Nothing is ever neat and clearly defined. However, Woolf attempts to define the indefinable through a series of powerful motifs that speak of the human condition in ways that a clearly organized story could never attempt to do. Because of this, Mrs. Dalloway sheds light on pieces of the human mind that are rarely accessible and hardly even recognized. Perhaps there is a balance between connection and privacy. Perhaps there is order to mayhem. But searching for these things is akin to finding something that does not want to be found. All one can do is listen and attempt to make sense of the unknown.