My Impression of "Mrs. Dalloway"

Transitioning from The Mezzanine by Nicholson Baker to Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf was significantly challenging for me.

Howie, the "protagonist," if you will, was extremely straightforward in his explanations and presentation of the world. He had a lot to say about, well, everything! He filled the reader in non-linearly on background and context of what was happening with surface reactions. For example, in his conversations with his coworkers, he carefully pulls apart the societal concerns, wondering whether or not things would be proper improper or awkward. I liked how things were narrated; even though there were long and winding sentences, they were straightforward and easily graspable.

However, Mrs. Dalloway was a completely different novel in terms of narration. Woolf enjoys long, winding sentences, connected with a long series of semicolons. In terms of narration... there isn't really a definitive narrator. The phrase mentioned in class was "free indirect discourse," which Woolf uses to delve into the personal lives and thoughts of several characters, as opposed to just one as we see in commonly with first/third person speech.

We discussed Woolf's goal of being able to capture the human essence, and to really explore what characters were like, and her use of free indirect discourse captures this well. At first, it was really hard to adjust to the fact that I was getting a look at not only Clarissa's point of view (which I had expected), but characters like Peter Walsh and Sally Seton. It's integral to the plot to be able to see how characters other than Clarissa move about their day; we wouldn't be able to fully understand just how caught up Peter was with Clarissa, or background information on other characters.

Seeing Clarissa from another perspective is integral. We already know what Clarissa and her motives appear to be just based on what she's thinking about her parties, but knowing Peter's perspective is invaluable. We see Clarissa notice Peter, who is sulking and watching her at her party. However, we also see Peter scoff and curse Clarissa as she travels between her guests, being the "perfect hostess." It causes the reader to notice how unaligned the characters are; not only in their own thoughts, but in how they think other characters might be thinking about them.

This back-and-forth narration could definitely be confusing, but overall, I think it's what the novel needed to get Woolf's point across: all characters are somehow interconnected, and this connection is important to understanding people themselves. From Clarissa's housemaid and her fascination with Elizabeth to Septimus and his case against humanity, all characters are related. With many other novels it would be impossible to see this link between characters when we're mostly only presented with their surface actions and the thoughts of only a single person or two.