Communication, Manners, and the Meaning of Life in the Novel Mrs. Dalloway

In Virginia Woolf's novel Mrs. Dalloway, a range of characters-representing the rich and the poor, the patriotic and the critical, the bored and the insane-serve as narrators who detail the problems inherent in the British middle class of the nineteenth century. Woolf's novel highlights the middle-class search for meaning, the ridiculous institution of "the gentleman," and the struggle to communicate in a society devoted to maintaining appearances.

Many characters in Mrs. Dalloway wrestle with a feeling of emptiness or worthlessness. When the poor and bitter Miss Kilman thinks of Clarissa Dalloway as a "fool" and "simpleton" who has "trifled [her] life away" (189), she not only expresses the feeling of the lower classes toward all middle-class society, but speaks of a dilemma that worries the middle classes as well. Clarissa, in meditating on what her life has been worth, finds herself unable to answer her own question: "And what had she made of it? What, indeed?" (64). Her response is to withdraw into the protective membrane of high society, where all actions are prescribed and all reactions habitual. Clarissa tries to find solace in giving parties-the only gift she has to offer to the world, as an effort to "kindle and illuminate" (6). Her goal is to donate "a meeting-point, a radiancy ... in some dull lives, a refuge for the lonely to come to" (55); and thus she supplies the justification for an activity that gratifies everyone but accomplishes nothing. To Clarissa, it is "an offering for the sake of offering" (185). Later in the novel, she realizes the emptiness of the gesture: "[A]nybody could do it" (259). Yet while she perpetuates the meaningless cycle of mannered socialization, Clarissa is providing a forum for the true vices of each guest to show through: "Every time she gave a party she had this feeling of being something not herself, and that every one was unreal in one way; much more real in another" (259). Near the end of the novel, Clarissa hears of the suicide of Septimus Warren Smith and suddenly understands that society's soul is dead, that she herself has "defaced" and "obscured" what is most important: the fact that her loved ones will one day die. This knowledge is something she has "let drop every day in corruption, lies, chatter" (280). Even earlier, Clarissa has a moment of clarity when "in a clap" she sees how her life would have been different had she married Peter Marsh-and how her choice to marry Richard has trapped her: "It was all over for her. The sheet was stretched and the bed narrow" (70).

Richard Dalloway is struck by a feeling of meaninglessness while accompanying Hugh Whitbread to a jewelry store to buy a necklace for his wife Evelyn (172). Evelyn already owns numerous pieces of jewelry, and Richard can see no point in such a worthless exercise as buying another one. However, he is overcome by a sudden desire to "open the drawing-room door and come in holding out something; a present for Clarissa" (173). The knowledge that Peter Marsh is back in town spurs Richard to demonstrate his love to his wife. He finds sudden happiness in the act of "setting off...to Westminster to say straight out in so many words (whatever she might think of him), ... 'I love you'" (174). For Richard Dalloway, nothing is important except the well-being of his family. He does not understand Clarissa's need to entertain everyone in London or her need to control who attends and who does not-"it was a very odd thing how much Clarissa minded about her parties, he thought" (180)-but he happily acquiesces to his wife's desires.

Even Peter Marsh, despite his distance from the follies of English society, muses upon the "worthlessness" of "going on being in love; going on quarrelling; going on making it up" (90) and wonders "why, after all, does one do it?" (78); but it becomes clear that being in love with Clarissa does provide meaning in Peter's life. Peter is a critic of English society who nevertheless is drawn into the gestures he despises because of his love for Clarissa. Most of Peter's presence in the novel is devoted to his critical ruminations about Clarissa-her worldliness, insincerity, effusive charm, and snobbery (115-16; 254; 84); his criticism of her individual faults also serves as a critical look at the faults of the English middle class as a whole. Because she has nothing to do, Peter notes, Clarissa (like her peers) "frittered her time away...giving these incessant parties of hers, talking nonsense, saying things she didn't mean" (118-19).

Insincerity is also found in the novel's epitome of "the gentleman," Hugh Whitbread. In Hugh's first appearance in Mrs. Dalloway, he is described by Clarissa as "extremely handsome" and "perfectly upholstered" (7), qualities that apply as much to Hugh's personality as his looks. Hugh could be the textbook illustration of gentlemanly behavior: he does anything his mother asks of him (8) and has a reputation for small courtesies which he "observed punctiliously even when not absolutely necessary" (156). These gestures, along with his marriage to the "Honourable Evelyn" (111), have kept him "afloat on the cream of English society" all his life (156). Yet Peter Marsh and Sally Seton, the two most perceptive characters in the novel, recognize the fact that Hugh is incapable of individual thought or ambition; though he holds a job at Court, it is an insignificant one (111), and he "brushed surfaces" rather than "go deeply" into anything (155). Peter remembers a day in their youth when "Sally suddenly lost her temper...and told Hugh that he represented all that was most detestable in British middle-class life"-notably a lack of thought, feeling, or true education (110).

There are other gentlemen represented in the novel, though none so obviously stereotypical as Hugh Whitbread. Richard Dalloway, though more genuine and likable than Hugh, still has the characteristics of a gentleman; he is mild-mannered, well-liked, and belongs to committees, but is not ambitious, as shown by his failure to gain a seat in the Cabinet (273); and he attempts (though unsuccessfully) to rescue the outcast Ellie Henderson from solitude at Clarissa's party (258).Peter Walsh represents the virtuous elements of gentlemanly behavior; however, his "susceptibility" to improper emotion (230), his "silly unconventionality" (69) and his lack of self-conscious ambition (10-11) have made him a misfit and apparent failure in the eyes of Clarissa (and hence society as a whole). The doctors who attend to Septimus Warren Smith are representative of the gentlemanly desire to evade all talk of abnormality. Like Hugh's delicate reference to his wife's being "a good deal out of sorts" at the beginning of the story (7), all references to illness must be cloaked in ambiguous terms; furthermore, if one is not physically sick, then one is told (as Dr. Holmes says to Septimus) that "there was nothing whatever the matter with him" (139). Holmes shows his prejudice against abnormal behavior by suggesting such cheering elements as going to a concert, playing golf, having an extra helping at breakfast, or drinking a glass of water with bromide tablets dissolved in it (137-8). Sir William Bradshaw, the second doctor, is described by Clarissa as being "without sex or lust, extremely polite to women" (280)-characteristics of a gentleman.

The struggle between Bradshaw/Holmes and Septimus Warren Smith is central to the novel's discussion of communication within the middle class. Bradshaw is not interested in healing his patients, only shutting them up (154). Rezia Smith knows that her husband is mad, but her instinct is continually contradicted by Holmes, who suggests that Septimus need only be distracted by things outside himself (31), and by Bradshaw, who will speak of her husband's illness only in terms of an imbalance of proportion (225). Though Rezia is initially taken in by the doctors' advice and believes her husband to be simply selfish (34), she begins to put more faith in her relationship with Septimus. Rezia promises to stay with Septimus and never be separated from him (224); meanwhile, Septimus regards Rezia as far stronger than Holmes or Bradshaw: "'Must' they said. Over them she triumphed" (225). Even as he throws himself out the window, Septimus feels he and Rezia are together and that he has been forced to silence himself by "human nature," or Dr. Holmes (138; 226). Septimus's mumbled statement that "'Communication is health; communication is happiness'" (141) shows that he, far from being mad, is saner than either of the doctors who attend him, who "saw nothing clear, yet ruled, yet inflicted" (225). Only Clarissa Dalloway understands the young man's suicide:

Death was defiance. Death was an attempt to
communicate... Suppose he had that passion,
and had gone to Sir William Bradshaw, a great
doctor yet to her obscurely evil...capable of some
indescribable outrage-forcing your soul, that
was it-if this young man had gone to him, and
Sir William had impressed him, like that, with
his power, might he not then have said (indeed
she felt it now), Life is made intolerable; they make
life intolerable, men like that? (280-81)

The very fact of her husband's madness serves to silence Rezia, who "to her own mother" can only say that "'Septimus has been working too hard'" (22).

Meanwhile, Clarissa, Peter, and Richard are torn between their need to communicate and the unspoken middle-class code of silence. Richard Dalloway's strongest urge comes in the form of a need to tell Clarissa he loves her, but he fails in this simple mission (179) despite his belief that "it is a thousand pities never to say what one feels" (175). Clarissa herself justifies the silence between herself and Richard by calling on a "gulf" existing between a married couple that "one must respect" for the sake of "one's independence, one's self-respect" (181). But Clarissa envies Sally Seton in part because of her quality "of abandonment, as if she could say anything" (48), and yet the same quality in Peter Walsh is "intolerable" because "everything had to be shared; everything gone into" (10). Clarissa's resistance to communication is maddening for Peter, who rails against her "impenetrability" and bemoans the impossibility of confronting Clarissa with his feelings (91). He recalls the day of their parting years ago, when he repeatedly begged Clarissa to "tell me the truth" (96). Yet Clarissa is his greatest hope of true communication; they share an "exquisite intimacy" that he has felt with no one else and that she cannot entirely deny (68). The end of Clarissa's party, which coincides with the end of the novel, brings Peter and Clarissa together, with the promise of true communication in sight (296).

Mrs. Dalloway makes a very critical statement about human nature, especially as Septimus equates the self-absorbed, unsympathetic Dr. Holmes with human nature (138). But Woolf is understanding of her characters, as well. Is it Hugh Whitbread's fault that he has turned out perfect on the outside and empty on the inside? Can Peter Marsh help being half-in, half-out of societal circles, and can Clarissa Dalloway change her contradictory ways? Like life, the novel ends on a note of both uncertainty and hope. With true communication comes the potential for finding meaning in one's life.

Work Cited Woolf, Virginia. Mrs. Dalloway. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc., 1925.