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Fiction

Notes the smoking room. Hugh’s is the forced kiss of traditional English society, while the kiss with
Clarissa is a revelation. Ultimately, the society that spurs Hugh’s kiss prevails for both women.

Self Assessment

Fill in the blanks:
1. The novel is in part a ......... of the shallowness.

2. Clarissa is a ......... of the novel.
3. The esteemed psychologist who treats ......... after Dr. Holmes.
4. Plot in Mrs. Dalloway is essentially ......... .
5. ......... time does not progress steadily forward.

Richard Dalloway

Richard’s simplicity and steadfastness have enabled him to build a stable life for Clarissa, but
these same qualities represent the compromise that marrying him required. Richard is a simple,
hardworking, sensible husband who loves Clarissa and their daughter, Elizabeth. However,
he will never share Clarissa’s desire to truly and fully communicate, and he cannot appreciate
the beauty of life in the same way she can. At one point, Richard tries to overcome his habitual
stiffness and shyness by planning to tell Clarissa that he loves her, but he is ultimately too
repressed to say the words, in part because it has been so long since he last said them. Just
as he does not understand Clarissa’s desires, he does not recognize Elizabeth’s potential as a
woman. If he had had a son, he would have encouraged him to work, but he does not offer
the same encouragement to Elizabeth, even as she contemplates job options. His reticence on
the matter increases the likelihood that she will eventually be in the same predicament as
Clarissa, unable to support herself through a career and thus unable to gain the freedom to
follow her passions.
Richard considers tradition of prime importance, rather than passion or open communication.
He champions the traditions England went to war to preserve, in contrast to Septimus, and
does not recognize their destructive power. Despite his occasional misgivings, Richard has
close associations with members of English high society. He is critical of Hugh, but they
revere many of the same symbols, including the figure of the grand old lady with money, who
is helpless when it comes to surviving in a patriarchal society. Richard likes the fact that
women need him, but sometimes he wrongly assumes they do. For example, he does not
recognize that a female vagrant may not want his help but may instead enjoy living outside
the rules of his society. For Richard, this sort of freedom is unimaginable.

30.3 Virginia Woolf—Mrs. Dalloway: Style

In Mrs. Dalloway, all of the action, except flashbacks, takes place on a day in June. It is an
example of free indirect discourse storytelling (not stream of consciousness because this story
moves between the consciousnesses of every character in a form of discourse): every scene
closely tracks the momentary thoughts of a particular character. Woolf blurs the distinction
between direct and indirect speech throughout the novel, alternating her narration with omniscient
description, indirect interior monologue, direct interior narration follows at least twenty characters
in this way but the bulk of the novel is spent with Clarissa Dalloway and Septimus Smith.

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