Free English Literature Dissertations - The Inter-war Social Structure Is Captured, Not Through Chronological And
The inter-war social structure is captured, not through chronological and conventional narration, but by accessing the consciousness of several characters. In the process, issues of sexual and economic repression are highlighted, as Clarissa’s vivid recollections of her adolescence and of Peter Walsh, surface.
Bloom asserts (1990, p 24) moreover, that time and place are circumscribed, the story covering one day though recapturing a whole lifetime in memory, and the movement in space is limited to London. The integrating principle here becomes Mrs. Dalloway's personality. Bloom also notes (1990 p 38) that, Virginia Woolf realised how, in the "perfect rag-bag of odds and ends" of which our memory is the seamstress, "the most ordinary movement in the world ... may agitate a thousand odd, disconnected fragments"
Thus Clarissa, by performing such a commonplace act as doing her hair, experiences sensations similar to the ones she had felt many years before, and these sensations lead to a complete recapture of the past. It is not only the manner of recapture that is Proustian; so is the use to which the recapture is put, for it starts a flashback that provides us with some very important facts about Clarissa's life.
Furthermore, Bloom (1990 p 39) indicates that Clarissa's fears of old age and her "horror of death," cause her to develop a transcendental theory. This allows her to believe that, once having had contact with people or things, we may survive after death in the memories of this or that person, or even haunt certain places.
Bloom further notes that (1990 p 58) when she returns home to discover that her husband, Richard, has been invited to lunch without her, Clarissa feels empty and lost: her identity once more drains away, because she has not been included. To regain her sense of identity she detaches herself from the present and dips into the past, into her memories. As the sense of a rich relationship (with Sally Seton) and a moment of vision returns to her, the emptiness occasioned by her exclusion fills. She abruptly returns to the present, and "plunged into the very heart of the moment, transfixed it, therethe moment of this June morning on which was the pressure of all the other mornings." This circling of the moment with all the other moments of life gives her identity point and continuity.
Therefore, it is evident that memory thus plays a double role, both disturbing and restoring the individual's sense of identity. Littleton (1995 p 1) states while in most respects Woolf does show memory as spontaneous, she too deals with intermittencies. There are instances of profound lapses of memory, as when Lady Bruton remembers Hugh's kindness, but not the occasion for it (Mrs. Dalloway p 104).
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