How to Live for Even One Day
Michael Morrison
The London of Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway is an epic place. The city, like everything else, was changed by the events of World War I. It can be overwhelming with its noise and bustle. Clarissa suspects that it is “very, very dangerous to live even one day” (Woolf 2390). The citizens of London must now learn how to cope in the new world. Some, such as Lady Bruton and Sir William, remain unchanged and already seem like relics of another age. Septimus Smith has been so changed that he is no longer himself, and he has lost touch with the world around him. Clarissa feels the world very deeply, yet she is able to hold on. In fact, Clarissa provides a model for dealing with this post-War world. She is aware of its changes but still can find happiness, a feat that no one else in the novel is able to accomplish.
Life in England has changed since the War, even “dear” Richard realizes that “really it was a miracle thinking of the War, and the thousands of poor chaps with all their lives before them, shoveled together, already half forgotten; it was a miracle” that he could walk home holding flowers (Woolf 2445). Several characters are unaffected by the seismic change in the world; they do not see the miracle. They remain secure in their old certainties of right and wrong and ideas of patriotism and nationalism.
Lady Bruton is a powerful woman. She is so sure of herself and her plan for the emigration of young people to Canada that even she admits, “She had perhaps lost her sense of proportion” (Woolf 2442). This is potentially dangerous because being a part of the old guard requires one to maintain a sense of proportion at all times. Lady Bruton defines herself by her certainty and her proportion. In fact, she looks down on introspection, “broad and simple – why could not everyone be broad and simple?” (Woolf 2442). This new world requires introspection; the old certainties have been destroyed so they can no longer be relied upon.
Sir William also believes in proportion. Divine proportion in fact, is Sir William’s “goddess,” achieved by living a proper life. He believes that by “worshipping proportion, Sir William not only prospered himself but made England prosper” (Woolf 2437). This may have once been true but no longer. He is too blind to see what he has done to his own wife: “nothing you could put your finger on; there had been no scene, no snap’ only the slow sinking, water-logged, of her will into his” (Woolf 2438). He is so wrapped-up in his own image of himself that his thoughts verge on parody. If it were not for the power he wields as a doctor he would be as amusing and harmless as Hugh; instead he is frightening.
Lady Bruton and Sir William are dinosaurs. They do not recognize the world in which they live; both are trapped in an England that no longer exists. If they have changed too little, Septimus Smith has changed too much. He once was able to find enjoyment and pleasure in life, but the war has robbed him of that. Septimus once loved Shakespeare, but now “That boy’s business of the intoxication of language had shriveled utterly” (Woolf 2431). Septimus does not engage with his surroundings, he can only observe from the distance of his own mind. Even his own wife is now only a distraction from his thoughts. He is capable of introspection only, and is as paralyzed as Sir William. As Morris Philipson says in his essay “‘Mrs. Dalloway’, ‘What’s the Sense of Your Parties,’” “Septimus Warren Smith is overwhelmingly fractured by forces he cannot control; to be overwhelmed is to suffer impressions without having the counterbalancing powers of a personality to absorb them” (129).
Clarissa also knows that things can no longer be counted and quantified. She cannot even know her own mind; “she would not say of herself, I am this, I am that” (Woolf 2390). She does not believe in patriotism or proportion; Jacob Littleton says in his essay “Mrs. Dalloway: Portrait of the Artist as a Middle-Aged Woman,” “As a result, she must face disordered reality without accepted props and create her own meaning for it” (37). Like the other characters who do not believe in the old conventions, Clarissa must find a new way to stay grounded in this world of troubles.
Peter criticizes Clarissa for her shallowness, her marriage to Richard, and her parties, “the perfect hostess he called her” (Woolf 2389). He could not be more wrong; a woman who contemplates humanity while going flower shopping must have depth. “Such fools we are. For Heaven only knows why one loves it so, how one sees it so, making it up, building it round one” (Woolf 2387). Yet Peter does not really think that Clarissa is shallow; he knows that “she had her reserves; it was a mere sketch, he often felt, that even he after all these years, could make of Clarissa” (Woolf 2426). Peter thinks her choices have been shallow, that she has settled by choosing Richard and worrying about parties. He does not understand her reasoning behind these choices. They are too plain and ordinary for his tastes.
Abstractions do not help Clarissa. In her eyes philosophy, patriotism, and religion hold no power; Clarissa relies upon the tactile and the real. “Perhaps the most fundamental fact of Clarissa’s psyche is the pleasure she takes in physical, sensual existence” (Littleton 37). This is how she deals with this newly fractured world, by using the mundane and everyday to make herself happy.
After thinking about her daughter and Miss Kilman, Clarissa is upset but allows herself to be lost among the flowers “as if this beauty, this scent this colour, and Miss Pym liking her, trusting her, were a wave which she let flow over her and surmount that hatred, that monster, surmount it all; and it lifted her up and up” (Woolf 2392). This is what buoys her throughout the novel. It is the same sensation she feels when she sees the “fat lady in the cab” for “she loved; life; London; this moment in June” (Woolf 2388).
She is not like Septimus or even Peter because of her ability to find pleasure in her surroundings. Peter’s walk through London contrasts her own. He too reflects on what he sees and occasionally finds pleasure in it, but it is not the same. He internalizes it too much, never able to turn off his running criticism. Instead of enjoying the beautiful woman who walks by, he must create a narrative, and by doing so own her and the moment. Like Septimus, Peter’s introspection prevents him from enjoying the world as Clarissa does.
Clarissa does not need that. “Her appreciation depends only on experience. In fact, her delight is free of self-interest or discrimination. She does not appreciate the scene for what it is, but simply because it is” (Littleton 37). This is her breakthrough, that even a world as difficult as this can be embraced simply as it is. This is why Clarissa’s parties are not shallow exercises in vanity. They are a way for her to create the moments she so treasures. While reflecting on both Richard’s and Peter’s criticism of her parties, Clarissa responds that, “both were quite wrong. What she liked was simply life” (Woolf 2448). In her imagination, Peter asks her, “What’s the sense of your parties?” and all she can say is, “They’re an offering” (Woolf 2448). Some aspects of the parties may be shallow, but Clarissa is offering her guests a chance at her happiness, to partake in the sensual pleasure of being with people.