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Virginia Woolf, in Mrs. Dalloway, calls attention to the oftentimes 'trivial' and self-absorbed nature of peoples' lives.
Clarissa Dalloway makes an offering to the world by throwing parties. Her life is described as "a tissue of vanity and
deceit" (Woolf 128). Peter Walsh is a failure and has "never done a thing that [he and Clarissa] talked of" (8). Hugh
Whitbread, "with his little job at court," and who is accused of having "no heart, no brain, nothing but the manners and
breeding of an English gentleman," is "almost always too well dressed" (6, 7). Dr. Holmes advises Septimus Smith to
"take up some hobby" when the war veteran declares that he is "the Lord who [has] come to renew society" (91, 67).
And Lucrezia wanders about the park looking at her thinning hands, positive "it [is] she who suffer[s]," while she cries
out, "I am alone; I am alone!" (24). Yet, it seems that every character in Woolf's novel is alone: alone in his or her own
thoughts, unable to get outside his or her mind in order to truly share experience with another. They are all wrapped
tightly up in their individual worlds, and while they might desire meaningful contact with others outside of their own
separate selves, when any type of connection does occur, it is only momentary and represented as more of an interruption
or an intrusion rather than as unity between people. The characters in Mrs. Dalloway are portrayed as trivial; however,
they experience real concerns, real regrets, real fears, doubts and anxieties. Although these aspects are hidden by more
trifling matters, they still exist, and not only do they exist, but they have real meaning for the people whom they involve.
In the later part of the book, Septimus delivers a line that could arguably serve as the thesis of the entire work: "It might
be possible that the world itself is without meaning," he considers, and over the course of her novel, Woolf affirms this
idea again and again (Woolf 88). The world itself is without absolute or intrinsic meaning, and it is only by our
oftentimes-trivial movement through life that we become capable of creating universal experience.
"Virginia Woolf's art tells us not about an external, objective Reality, but about our experience of the world. One of the
most salient points she has to make is that the experience of being in the world is different for everyone and is endless, a
process of constant creativity" (Hussy xiii). These different experiences create individual meaning for us, and this individual
meaning is all we can ever really know. As Woolf shows in the episode in the park between Septimus, Lucrezia and Peter,
we can never really get into another person's mind and out of our own, and oftentimes when we think we understand a
situation as it relates to other people, we are grossly mistaken. Peter walks through Regent's Park after his visit with
Clarissa, absorbed in his thoughts, reflecting on the choices he has made in the past, and as he passes Septimus and Lucrezia,
he sees what appears to him a lovers' quarrel and thinks:
And that is being young . . . to have an awful scene--the poor girl looked absolutely desperate--in the middle of the
morning. But what was it about, he wondered, what had the young man in the overcoat been saying to her to make
her look like that; what awful fix had they got themselves into, both to look so desperate as that on a fine summer
morning? The amusing thing. (Woolf 70-71)
Peter has absolutely no idea what is actually going on between Septimus and Lucrezia: the madness the veteran lives in
and the isolation the girl feels in a foreign country with a delusional husband. Peter momentarily considers the reason
for the quarrel between the two young people, and then his thoughts drift to what makes his return to London so amusing.
This scene represents the idea that we really have no true insight into the lives of others. When we hear about a person's
misfortunes or blessings, it never really directly touches us in any substantial or lasting way. It allows us an exit from
our own selves briefly, and then we are right back into our minds again. Nothing outside a person's immediate experience
can have a real and enduring effect on him or her; consequently, nothing holds any universal meaning because all we have is
what holds meaning to us as individuals.
This inability to transcend another's suffering is characterized as human cruelty throughout the novel. When Septimus finds
the housekeeper "reading one of [his] papers in fits of laughter," it makes him "cry out about human crueltyÐhow they tear
each other to pieces. The fallen, he [says] they tear to pieces" (140). In this heart-wrenching scene, one can see vividly,
painfully, the pathetic, shell-shocked veteran, tormented, raving, utterly alone. But at the same time we realize that the housekeeper
does not do this to be vindictive. Prior to this scene, we as readers have been shown what Septimus's writings look like; often,
they are incoherent jumblings of words and half-ideas: "the dead sing behind rhododendron bushes; odes to
Time; conversations with Shakespeare; Evans, Evans, EvansÐhis messages from the dead; do not cut down trees; tell the Prime
Minister" (147-148). To the reader, who is well aware of Septimus's torment, these scrawlings are almost humorous in their
absurdity. To a girl who cleans the house, who is totally ignorant of Septimus's history and his present agony, the words on
the paper understandably bring about a fit of laughter. We are cruel to each other because we cannot understand one another.
We have no way to get outside our selves and identify with other people. The only meaning we can make out of something
is what we, ourselves, can directly apply to it.
When we do identify with others, it is only on a superficial level, and it is still born of individual experience. As the mysterious
motorcar travels down Piccadilly, "[f]or a moment everyone is united by an elemental emotion of wonder and curiosity"
(Naremore 83). From Woolf's description of the scene, the reader can actually feel the strangers on the street forming a
common bond: "[e]veryone looked up at the motor car. Septimus looked. Boys on bicycles sprang off. Traffic accumulated,"
Woolf writes, "Passers-by who, of course, stopped and stared, had just time to see a face of the very greatest importance" (15, 14).
These by-standers all stop their lives for a moment and unite in their attempts to discover the identity of the passenger behind
the grey blinds. Their speculations provide them with the excitement of knowing that for a few moments they, "for the first
and last time, [were] within speaking distance of the majesty of England" (16). This is an event they will likely go home and
tell their family about over dinner or mention to their friends over tea. For a short while they were within a "hand's breath"
of greatness, and accordingly, they feel temporarily elated themselves (16). This is an individual experience that several people
share, and this, like the skywriting scene, in which everyone combines their efforts in making out the smoky letters in the sky,
"is a manifestation of the emotional undercurrent that seems to dissolve the boundaries between people" (Naremore 85).
However, this unity is only on a superficial level. In this novel, "strangers glance at one another, or are united by perceptions,
but only momentarily" (Hussy 49). This "shared meaning," this ephemeral connection between people is really only a coming
together of individual curiosity and excitement, and eventually "passes as all moments do" (48). We can make meaning solely
out of our own lives; any universal meaning is really just shared, or similar, personal experiences. When people can relate to one
another's feelings it is only because they, themselves, have had similar ones; as a result, a sense of "universal" experience ensues.
The bonding Woolf's characters undergo on account of the motorcar seems almost ridiculous in its triviality, but by creating this
sadly realistic scenario, Woolf is able to characterize, and to a certain extent satirize, all "universal meaning" as superficial shared
common interest.
Like other connections between people later in the novel, the momentary unity exhibited in the motorcar scene is portrayed as
more of an interruption in the individual experience than a common bonding between people. Woolf's characters are always
caught up in their own minds, in their own tasks; at the same time, they are constantly interrupted by external forces. "Septimus
. . . complains that his wife Rezia 'was always interrupting.' Struggling to maintain the continuity of his inward world,
with one important exception," at the end of the novel just before he commits suicide, "he resists her intervention" (Ruotolo 163).
Septimus, like the other characters, experiences an inability to get outside his own mind; however, it is clear he really does not
want to attempt it. Lucio P. Ruotolo argues,
To be open to life in Woolf's fictional world is to remain open to an aesthetic of disjunction situated at the heart of
human interplay. Those who allow the often-random intrusion of others to reshape their lives emerge at times heroically.
Those who voice a distaste for interruption fall back, invariably as it seems, into self-supporting insularity. (163)
That Septimus, who undoubtedly "voices a distaste for interruption," falls into "self-supporting insularity" is arguable; however,
the idea that the characters in this novel ever allow the "intrusion of others to" substantially "re-shape their lives" conflicts with
the very thoughts and actions of the characters into whom Woolf provides the reader with insight (163). Miss Kilman, for
example, feels cheated by life, mocked by the world, and she cannot refrain from the "egoism" she knows will be "her undoing,"
regardless of her faith in God with which Mr. Whittaker has inspired her. Mr. Whittaker has warned Miss Kilman about the
dangers of giving way to her resentment, her egoism, and "whenever the hot and painful feelings [boil] within her," she tries to
calm herself with the assurance that her life is "the hand of God" (Woolf 124). However, when it comes down to it, when she
is confronted with Elizabeth's repulsion, what lies beneath is her indignation, and that is all she can express; it is how she made
meaning out of her life, and no other person, not Elizabeth, not Mr. Whittaker, can really touch her enough to alter her direction.
The human mind cannot avoid external intrusion, whether the source is a motorcar with a mysterious passenger or a minister
preaching the perfection of God's plan. We live individually in our own minds, yet there are times when we inevitably run
into each other. This creates a sense of general meaning, which if shared amongst a large number of individuals, appears to resemble
some kind of universal meaning; however, Woolf shows this apparent connection between people to be only a momentary
interruption in the individual experience.
In her novel, Woolf attempts to bridge these gaps between individual experience by her transitions, highlighting the idea that despite
our inability to merge with one another on an internal level, which leads to an absence of universal meaning; "[l]ife, [nevertheless,]
is a shared web of experience," and that is what creates the "vague transcendental unity" that we, at times, feel (Naremore 103).
In her prose, a single occurrence will serve to connect one of Woolf's characters to another, and likewise, transition the reader from
scene to scene. "[L]ittle Elsie Mitchell . . . scudd[ing] off again full tilt into a lady's legs" creates a web between Peter and Lucrezia,
and their separate internal thoughts (Woolf 65). Richard and Hugh leave Lady Bruton's luncheon, going "further and further from
her, being attached to her by a thin thread (since they had lunched with her) which would stretch and stretch, get thinner and thinner
as they walked across London" (112). When Lady Bruton falls asleep, she "let[s] the thread snap," loses the connection between
her and the men, and the reader is shifted over to Richard Dalloway's thoughts (112). James Naremore points out that "such
transitions help Virginia Woolf to convey the impression that life is what Mrs. Ramsey will later describe as 'all one stream'" (87).
A common experience unites two people for a moment, and then they inevitably change direction.
The sea motif that drifts in and out of the characters' stream of consciousness is representative of this idea of momentary connection,
and it assists in establishing the theme of universal meaning through shared individual experience, thus questioning the very idea of
a trivial life. Looking down into the ocean, one immediately sees hundreds of little ripples on the top surface that seem to be moving
in generally the same direction. But looking closer and deeper down, another layer of ripples appears, and another, and another, all
running in different directions. The characters in Woolf's novel can be likened to these layers, their thoughts to the ripples. Each layer
does not really touch the other except for on its immediate surface; they brush softly past each other occasionally causing a slight
shift in direction. In a similar way, a common experience has the power to unite two or more people for a moment, but then they change
direction, leaving one another incapable of being permanately held by any one occurrence. The characters in Mrs. Dalloway "sometimes
seem to feel the same rhythmic pulse; but this does not mean that . . . the rhythm remains the same" (Naremore 88). Like the ocean
Woolf regularly references her characters exist "on the ebb and flow" of their worlds (Woolf 9). They are layers of waves that touch
each other only momentarily, but despite this individualistic tendency, each ripple contributes to the indivisible mass of the sea. Just
as an ocean cannot be separated into layers of waves, human reality cannot be separated into individual experience; however, it is only
combined individual experience, regardless of how trivial it might appear, that makes up the reality. It does not make sense to talk about
the direction of a wave in terms of its triviality or purpose, and it is equally absurd to think in this way with regards to the direction a
person pursues during the course of his life. Whether a person "care[s] much more for her roses than for the Armenians" is irrelevant;
our lives are all significant in some way, if only because each individual experience contributes to a reality that cannot exist in and of
itself (120). As the layers of waves make up an ocean, universal meaning consists entirely of individual experience.
In Mrs. Dalloway, Woolf shows that in our separate existences we create a mass of humanity, one pulsing sea; yet, there is by no
means one objective reality or universal meaning. The human relationships in this novel "are characterized by a lack, by a pointing
up of our absolute aloneness" (Hussy 50). This solitude is something we cannot transcend; we lack the ability to "know others as
'I.' . . . [T]he effect of this on human relations is pervasive: 'Nobody sees anyone as he is . . .' They see a whole--they see all sorts
of things," but at all times, in every external perception, "they see themselves" (47). Meaning is different for every individual character
because each one cannot seem to get past the idea of the "self;" consequently, there is a total want of universal meaning, as each
character has developed a reality of his own. Therefore, who is to say what is trivial; who decides what is significant? As Septimus
demands, "What right has Bradshaw to say 'must' to me?" (Woolf 147). We all view the world differently, and although at times we
come together, or are in essence, interrupted by other people, we never really connect with them, we never really understand them,
and they never really, significantly alter our lives. They might superficially change our direction as Mr. Whittaker does to Miss Kilman
with religion, but underneath we remain the only people we are able to make meaning out of. In this novel, the characters exist entirely
in and of themselves, with a few brief interruptions, and this emphasis on individual experience calls attention to the absence of
universal meaning, challenging labels such as "trivial" and "meaningful," which we might be tempted to apply when assessing the
nature of human experience.
Works Cited
Hussy, Mark. The Singing of the Real World: The Philosophy of Virginia Woolf's Fiction.
Columbus: Ohio State UP, 1986.
Naremore, James. The World Without a Self: Virginia Woolf and the Novel. New Haven: Yale
UP, 1973.
Ruotolo, Lucio P. "The Interrupted Moment: A View of Virginia Woolf's Novels." Virginia
Woolf: A Collection of Critical Essays. Ed. Margaret Homans. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall, 1993.
Woolf, Virginia. Mrs. Dalloway. 1925. San Diego: Harcourt, 1981.
Copyright © 2005 by Calaveras Station and the CSUS English Department.