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How Does Clarissa Dalloway Change Throughout The Novel

644 Words3 Pages

The setting of Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolfe began in Westminster, England. The main character, Clarissa Dalloway, suddenly bought herself some flowers one morning. Although she is a rich, high-class woman and has a servant named Lucy, she bought herself her own flowers that day and then began to reminisce of her younger days in Bourton (Woolfe 1). This scene demonstrates that she is not content with her life, and feels as if she made regretful decisions that led her to backtrack her life. Clarissa was able to achieve higher status by essentially forfeiting her personal happiness. Virginia Woolfe exposes Clarissa Dalloway’s character by portraying Dalloway’s anxiety from past relationships and repression as a female in a patriarchal society. …show more content…

Because of this, she makes decisions based on statuss and not love. Her fear of intimacy was apparent when she chose Richard Dalloway over her former lover Peter Walsh, “But with Peter everything had to be shared; everything gone into” (Woolf 8). The thought of having a real relationship petrified her, consequently choosing privacy over affection. The relationship between Richard and herself are solitary, they do not communicate physically, however they have a mutual understanding of their relationship, “she understood without his speaking; his Clarissa” (Woolf 118). Clarissa has shown her insecurities when she unconsciously debates on whether she has made the right decision in marrying Richard, “Still making out that she had been right- and she had too- not marry him” (Woolfe 10). Obviously marrying Richard, she can evade her personal feelings with the privacy that he provides. Choosing a conservative marriage with Richard illustrates Clarissa insecurities, acknowledging that Peter will be able to hurt her because she truly cares for him, “Clarissa had cared for him more than she had ever cared for Richard. Sally was positive of that” (Woolf

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In this passage Clarissa reflects on her decision of not getting married to Peter and she decides that she is happy she did not. It sounds like she was doubting herself, as most people would with a major decision like this, but upon hearing of Peter’s actions after she rejected him, those doubts were gone. Clarissa is an independent woman so she would of had issues being with Peter because he is clingy, while Richard gives her the space she needs to be happy. Though, I feel that she would have been a much different person if she had married Peter; she would of had a more attached husband

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Peter on the other hand was not fearful of homosexuality and he expected the same from Clarissa. Clarissa tried to explain this to Peter but all her efforts were in vain. This negligence of Peter towards Clarissa’s concerns resulted in Clarissa marrying Richard. Clarissa do not regrets

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Clarissa clearly rejects heterosexual relations according to Gay (2007), Gay continues with stating that Clarissa doesn’t sleep with her husband which could indicate that she is a virgin. Even though Clarissa is presented as the perfect society wife, Woolf offers alternative potentialities of Clarissa’s attraction for Sally Seaton (Gay 89). Woolf has illustrated homoerotic desires in a very subtle way; it feels like she is testing the field. Homosexuality was not acceptable during her days, this is also one way for her connecting the past and the present because homosexuality among men was common in Greek literature. It seems like she has twisted things to make a point, women are commonly seen as mentally ill in books and in life and men were ‘accepted’ as homosexuals in ancient Greek.

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Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf depicts a day of a high-society women running errands in preparation for an evening party, in companion with Septimus Warren Smith, a veteran of the First World War, who is suffering from shell shock. The novella embraces a Bergsonian sense of time through the distinction Woolf makes between time on the clock and time in the mind, which directly correlates to Bergson 's notion of temps and duree. Woolf’s predominant concern with time is firstly delineated through the time on the clock, or temps. In the novella, temps not only act as a source of disturbance to Clarissa, but also account for Septimus’ death. By using the clock symbol, Woolf draws a discrepancy between the clock-time, temps and the mind-time, or duree.

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