The Self Imprisoned Clarissa Dalloway - Framingham State University

The Self Imprisoned Clarissa Dalloway
Mellissa Worster
Department of English
The protagonist of the book Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf exists as a character
intended to reveal the previously unexposed truths of a woman‟s struggle to find her
identity within a patriarchal society. Instead of embracing her strengths, and evolving
past what is expected of her as a woman in the early 20 th century, Clarissa Dalloway
meagerly examines the conditions of her life and resignedly submerges herself beneath
the shallow façade of “the perfect housewife.” The struggle she experiences with
pinpointing her identity throughout the novel stems from her constant manipulation of
the truth in her own mind more than any influence of the male dominated society she
lives in.
The choices that Clarissa makes both in her youth and in her elder years have a heavy
influence over her feelings of failure and impounded identity. At every turn, Clarissa
elects to take the path of comfort over one that she perceives as higher in moral ground.
She chooses material status over love, ignorance over intelligence, and passive voice
over conscious objective. The decisions she makes plague her conscience because of
the one-dimensional life that results. Clarissa admits, within the first ten pages in this
work of fiction, that she “had the oddest sense of being herself invisible, unseen;
unknown …” (Woolf 202), and that the only thing left of her “is being Mrs. Dalloway; not
even Clarissa anymore; this being Mrs. Richard Dalloway” (Woolf 202).
However, she can never claim full responsibility for her circumstances without
unraveling the delusion she forms for herself. The book opens with her morning journey
through the streets of London. As she narrates her steps, the reader gets a sense of
Clarissa‟s mental process. Her inner dialogue toggles between sincere contemplative
reflection and superficial commentary. Every time she nearly reaches personal
epiphany, her own mind distracts her from the essential root of any problem she feels

she has. To avoid prolonged exposure to the hard reality of her life she quickly returns
to her more romantic state of mind. Before the journey‟s end, she is back to focusing on
superficial subjects such as her fascination with Bond St., her uncle‟s position on
gloves, and her daughter‟s resistance to femininity. All through the novel Clarissa
offsets her negative views with these more surface orientated thoughts.
Since Woolf‟s characterization of Clarissa primarily occurs within Clarissa‟s own
perspective, it is important to keep in mind that, “first person narratives, in particular,
demand critical scrutiny. Individuals often forget some of the most significant
occurrences in their lives and even lie (to themselves as well as to others) about fears
and desires” (Hall 106). Clarissa Dalloway should not be trusted to render her own
faults directly. Instead, a proper perspective can be gained when Clarissa‟s justifications
are examined.
Her first documented choice to give up any possibility of a strong identity is her decision
to marry Richard Dalloway over Peter Walsh, or even to further explore the taboo
relationship that she so often reminisces about with Sally Seaton: “For Mrs. Dalloway …
erotic love requires too much of one‟s heart and soul; it was far better to marry the
undemanding Richard, who did not care weather she loved him or not, than to risk her
fragile sense of self with the passion of Peter or the purity of Sally” (Magill 1514). This
choice is Clarissa‟s first step into the ho-hum shoes she wears in her latter years.
Her decision to marry Richard over Peter also stems from her strong cravings to be a
part of the upper class. It is true that, “most of us (perhaps all but the very wealthiest of
us) are aware that certain material realities help determine the quality of our lives and
the opportunities available to us. Clothing, housing, food, education, and so forth, can
be very costly, and while some individuals enjoy many luxuries, others cannot afford
even basic necessities” (Hall 76). As a result of her upbringing, combined with the time
period‟s restrictions on a woman, Clarissa saw fit to secure her social standing at an
early age.

As a young woman, Clarissa could not bear the thought of living in poverty. This anxiety
is the precise reason Clarissa begins to make decisions that ultimately leave her life
feeling superficial. However, in later reflections, she imagines that life is actually easier
for the poor. Compared to her own life, Clarissa visualizes poverty as freeing because
there are significantly less social values to uphold. Yet, Clarissa centers her life on
lavish parties and pleasing the rich. She cannot let go of her desire to be admired.
Donald Hall comments on one possible explanation for this:
An important concept in Marxist analysis is that of the “commodity fetish,” which refers
most specifically to our attribution of intrinsic value to commodities without recognition of
the labor that produced them. But the term “fetish” can also point to the magical
qualities associated with buying or owning a particular commodity- how we invest a
purchase or possession with the power to make us happy, secure, or complete. In doing
so, we sometimes come to value commodities even more highly than other human
beings. (Hall 76)
This is the reason that Clarissa ultimately can never choose the more difficult life of
poverty, and she can never grow to accept her daughter‟s tutor, Miss Kilman, as a
respectable human being. She has placed the value of commodity even over the value
of herself.
Clarissa‟s mixed emotions toward Miss Kilman afflict her throughout the novel. Only
when Clarissa‟s mind comes upon thoughts of her antagonist does she find an avenue
to recognize her own downfall. When her erroneous views of Miss Kilman will not be
quieted, Clarissa finally begins to see the reality of her own mindset. “Nonsense,
nonsense! she cried to herself,” in an attempt to push away these “monstrous” feelings
(Woolf 204).
To make herself feel better, Clarissa explains away these negative feelings by blaming
poverty ridden Miss Kilman herself for their existence: “and how she dressed, how she
treated people who came to lunch she did not care a bit, it being [Clarissa‟s] experience

that religious ecstasy made people callous … so insensitive was she, dressed in a
green mackintosh coat” (Woolf 203). These superfluous justifications for the origins of
her feelings are an example of how:
Dominant groups invariably have a rationale to justify their positions of power. The
theoretician Antonio Gramsci used the term „hegemony‟ to describe how powerful social
groups „naturalize‟ their domination of others. Unlike „ideology,‟ which refers to a specific
set of beliefs, „hegemony‟ refers to the system of interlocked institutions, practices,
world views, expectations, hopes, and fears, as well as specific ideologies, that make
the status quo and the stratification of power and economic resources within that status
quo seem natural and unchallengeable. (Hall 77)
Clarissa consistently attempts to justify the birth of such demeaning emotions but can
come up with no clear solution to quell them.
Another aspect of why Clarissa hates Miss Kilman is because Clarissa is jealous. Her
jealousy begins with Clarissa‟s desire for respect and intellectual integrity. This is
another example of a wrong choice she thinks she has made. Miss Kilman possesses
both intellectual and spiritual integrity. These are characteristics that Clarissa was never
able to attain in her pursuit of comfortable life. “Oh if she could have her life over again!”
Clarissa exclaimed to herself, “she could have looked even differently!” (Woolf 202).
In Clarissa‟s view, it is too late for her to achieve this type of status. This contributes to
her overall sense of failure because both her husband and her daughter, Elizabeth, see
her as a common housewife. Neither of them can understand why throwing parties has
become so very important to Clarissa. Woolf has used this trait in Clarissa to examine
the social norms of her society, “the class-interested critic will first establish the class
identity of the text‟s major and minor characters and then investigate how those
identities help account for attitudes, actions, hopes, and fears- in sum, how they
contribute to the explicit or implicit themes and messages of the text. (Hall 80)

Woolf intended Clarissa‟s personality to expose underlying themes of the upper class in
their ostentatious nature. Clarissa‟s obsession with her own social standing becomes
subject to ridicule to those around her thereby creating a context for Woolf‟s social
commentary.
With this novel, Woolf intended to make her contribution to society by attracting
“attention to the material conditions of life [thereby initiating] a critical engagement with
our attitudes about those conditions [that she saw was necessary] for achieving positive
social change” (Hall 76). Virginia Woolf does succeed insofar as she does call attention
to these matters:
… the story prods its readers into contemplating their own value systems;
indeed, Marxist and materialist critics commonly suggest that by becoming
conscious of the many ways in which our lives are affected by material realities,
anxieties, and aspirations, we are better able to change them, to sort out what is
truly important from what is selfish and hallow, and, ultimately, to make the world
a less oppressive place. (Hall 76)
The character scenarios that Woolf diagrams, however, fall short of positively identifying
society as the sole contributor to Clarissa Dalloway‟s circumstances.
Certainly, “deriving its title from the protagonist of the novel, Clarissa Dalloway, Mrs.
Dalloway is first of all a study of character” (Poupard 390). Clarissa‟s particular
character, while functioning under her own romanticized ideals, has not been so
altogether oppressed that she was never given the opportunity to make her own
decisions. At any time, Clarissa could have taken the path of Sally Seaton and defied
social norms to define her individuality or that of Miss Kilman and educated herself. The
idea of this plays through her mind repeatedly through the day, written through the span
of the novel, as she prepares for the evening‟s party.

Yet, through the ideals she has chosen to adopt, Clarissa remains trapped in her
current life. One could argue that Clarissa is in fact a prisoner of her adult life, but this
captivity is the direct result of choices she had the complete free will to make- not the
result of a life that was forced on her. Woolf counterbalances Clarissa‟s imprisonment
with the outrageous character Septimus Warren Smith.
Through Septimus, Woolf transforms the scanty identity of Clarissa:
Thus, Mrs. Dalloway‟s character may be symbolic of purity, sensitivity, and
reason, all of which lead her to accept her life without question, while her double,
Septimus Warren Smith, poignantly represents destruction, apathy, and a
passionate rejection of the fraud of civilization, the needs of love, and the despair
of life itself. Their juxtaposition is at the heart of Woolf‟s attempt to reveal
Clarissa Dalloway‟s true character as a woman in search for her self, threatened
by the demands of love and apathy, passion and reason. Whereas Smith
commits suicide by leaping out of his apartment window, Clarissa‟s is an
emotional suicide that allows her a chance to believe that she is in control of her
self, her nature, her identity. (Magill 1514)
Septimus embodies what Clarissa wishes she has the strength to be. That is why she is
so captivated by the knowledge of his death at the end of the novel.
Clarissa never knew this character but she was greatly affected by the news of his
suicide. Septimus‟ candid personality accentuates Clarissa‟s passive lifestyle. Where
she keeps her desires and afflictions to herself, he cannot control his outbursts when he
experiences varying emotions. While Clarissa never expresses her pain over her
husband‟s emotional, and physical, abandonment, Septimus declares every emotion
with great excitability.
Woolf uses their polarity to magnify the social norms that occur daily:

Septimus‟ suicide compares with Clarissa‟s „emotional suicide‟ as a way of
maintaining one‟s freedom from subversion and preserving one‟s integrity, even
against those whom one loves. It is this contradictory vision, coupled with the
psychological realism of the novel and the lyrically woven strings of thought, time,
experience, personalities, identities, love, and madness, that has made Mrs.
Dalloway one of the most significant books of the twentieth century. (Magill 1517)
Indeed, these polar individuals have a significant impact on the reader because suicide
of any kind is tragic. These events in both Clarissa and Septimus‟ life call to attention
the underlying motif of the early twentieth century:
“Like Irish writer James Joyce‟s Ulysses (1922), this is a „stream-of-
consciousness‟ novel, but the book really illustrates Virginia Woolf‟s notion of the
webs of humanity, love, hate, and even apathy that connect all people. This book
also clearly focuses on the metaphor of „the bubbles of selfhood‟ that surround
people and that even those who love them have difficulty penetrating.” (Magill
1513)
Woolf‟s literature examines the inner struggle of both men and women, of both the rich
and poor classes, in the novel Mrs. Dalloway.
Woolf has the ability to:
… explore [her] character‟s social context to see how it defines deviance (either
justly or unjustly in your opinion) and how the character is implicitly or explicitly
judged (or even self-judges) by those sometimes well-hidden norms. Symbols,
colors, imagery, and other textual details may provide clues to the unexpressed
but still powerful tensions or other forces underlying a character‟s actions or
pervading his or her milieu. (Hall 109)

This certifies her as an in depth psychological thinker. She carefully constructed her
manuscript to reflect “consciousness as it first comes into being, bubbling up from the
brain which generates it and constituting the stuff of which character is made” (Poupard
391).
Although, it is certain that “environment also plays a major role in the wide and dramatic
psychological variations that exist among individuals” (Hall 106), in Clarissa‟s case, she
was the chief influence in the direction of her own life. As a young adult, she spent a
great deal of time at her uncle‟s Bourton estate. Through her experiences there,
Clarissa was exposed to ideas that broke the barriers of social norms. Clarissa
interacted with the feministic defiance of Sally and the idealistic politics of Peter yet was
ultimately drawn to the conservative personality of Richard. Unlike most women of the
time period, she was aware of the lifestyle paths she could take. Furthermore, having a
choice as to where her life could be directed was a rare luxury for women of the time.
Clarissa could have chosen the passionate life of the activist she grows to admire in her
adult life. It would certainly have been a more difficult path, but, in accordance with her
latter day perspective, it would also have been a more fulfilling life to lead. Clarissa‟s
ability to choose is the chief reason Virginia Woolf‟s aim falls slightly short of her goal.
Had Clarissa been a character who never had a choice, or was never aware of the
possibility of a choice, the overall theme of the book would have been more effective as
a commentary on patriarchal oppression. As it is, the book stands as a social
commentary about inner struggle to find one‟s self. Clarissa‟s life task is to face herself
and decide whether she can ever truly be happy considering the choices she makes in
her youth. However, because of her value system, she could never have been happy
living in poverty. She fills her life with dreams of what she cannot have as a scapegoat.
What she should be doing is focusing on the life she does have and examine what she
can salvage from it.

By the end of the novella, Clarissa never fully takes responsibility for her own
unhappiness. She never acknowledges that her choice to live a simple and comfortable
life is the primary reason she continues to doubt her self worth. Everyone else in her
life, those she envies and those she despises, have a working portfolio of the important
things they have done. Clarissa will never let go of her desire to be admired and loved
by others, despite how superficial their admiration may be. She needs to be validated in
this way in order to feel whole. Had she taken a more sacrificial road in life at the
beginning, she would be able to become fulfilled in a more permanent way. It is by
putting herself first that Clarissa‟s life is bound to societal servitude and not because of
the patriarchal society she lives in.
Melissa Worster is an English major and wrote this paper for Professor Horn’s Literary
Studies class. After graduation she would like pursue a writing career as a full time
fiction novelist. One of her other ambitions is to own an organic farm.

References
Hall, Donald E. “Marxist and Material Analysis” Literary and Cultural Theory: From
Basic
Principles to Advanced Applications. New York, NY: Houghton Mifflin, 2001.
-- “Psychoanalytic Analysis” Literary and Cultural Theory: From Basic Principles to
Advanced Applications. New York, NY: Houghton Mifflin, 2001.
Poupard, Dennis. Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism, Vol. 20. Detroit, MI: Gale
Research, 1986.
Magill, Frank N. Masterplots II: Women’s Literature Series 4. Englewood Cliffs, NJ:
Salem
Press, 1995.
Woolf, Virginia, et al. The Mrs. Dalloway Reader. Orlando, FL: First Harvest, 2003.