Critical Analysis of Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway
Brittney Dube
Virginia
Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway inserts itself
into the literary cannon that would otherwise have rejected not only Mrs. Dalloway, but Virginia Woolf’s
works as a whole due to the content and the fact that it was written by a woman.
The novel’s ability to insert itself into a place that it feels it deserves to
be comes from its commentary on several societal aspects to ultimately work on
deconstructing throughout the course of the novel. This deconstruction is done
in several different ways. Overall, there are themes of heteronormativity,
psychoanalysis, and toxic masculinity that Woolf deals with throughout the
course of the novel.
Literature
Review
For the purpose of a critical
analysis of Mrs. Dalloway,
psychological analyses cannot be ignored – especially considering that one of
the main characters, Septimus, suffers from several different forms of psychosis.
In “Railed in by a Maddening Reason: Septimus Smith and His Role in Virginia
Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway,” Sabine
Sautter-Leger comments on Septimus by stating, “But the problem, again, is on
another level: Septimus thinks he
cannot feel – and this intellectual conception of himself as one who is
incapable of feeling underlies his psychosis,” (12-13). This inability to accept the fact that he has
feelings can be attributed to a centuries-long issue of societal expectations
being placed on men – one of which is that men should not show emotions, nor should
they act on those emotions. This issue of toxic masculinity is one that comes
up repeatedly throughout the novel in several different situations. Leger makes
the comment about Septimus accepting his emotions after pulling in
psychological analyses from both Sass and Lina Spoerl that diagnose Septimus
with a form of mental dysmorphia and/or schizophrenia. Leger continues to argue
the aspect of psychology that most people have an issue with determining: the
conflict between rationality and irrationality and the presence of intention. Leger
states,
If
we use Sass’s account of the condition, we have an alternative and provocative
way of understanding Septimus. Indeed, the aspect of Septimus linking him to
Sass’s version of the schizophrenic and which is essential to understanding his
character is that he insists, despite the anguish it paradoxically causes him
and alienation he feels as a result, on the necessity of taking a rational
approach to understanding his psychological state and the universe as a whole
(13)
The topic of psychological disorders and their
existence is one that most people shy away from when having a conversation
about various issues. This comes from the lack of exposure to truths and facts
about the topic, and the over-exposure to horrible assumptions that most people
make about those who suffer from the various disorders. This issue of
misconceptions becomes much worse when people start taking into account
everything that they have ever seen in the media about people struggling with
illnesses. A majority of the time, there is no discussion of the fact that
these sufferers may not actually be suffering from a diagnosed illness, but
rather they are suffering as a product of their environment. Take Bronte’s Jane Eyre for example. Throughout the
entire novel, Bertha is seen as being “mad” when in reality, she was just a
product of the environment that Mr. Rochester created for her. This is the
exact same situation with Septimus. He is a product of the environment that
society has created and the lack of empathy that exists for those who suffer
and are not deemed as being “allowed” to suffer (women are expected to be
emotional while men are expected to complete shut out any types of emotions or
feelings whatsoever).
Another
issue facing the spectrum that Mrs.
Dalloway falls within is that of the presentation and reinforcement of
toxic masculinity. In “Feminism as Aesthetic Vision: A Study of Virginia
Woolf’s ‘Mrs. Dalloway,’” O. P. Sharma focuses mostly on the women of the
novel, but in one section, she comments on the climate of the interrelationships
of men within the novel, but also in a worldly sense as well. She states,
Besides,
she is forces into a situation by his illness, where she has to confront the
insensible and mechanistic world of Dr. William Bradshaw and Dr. Holmes. In
them masculinity is further corrupted by the mechanical and feelingless
reaction to human life. Dr. Bradshaw harangues to the patients and their
relations, in moments of acute tension and affliction, upon the virtues of
“proportion” and “conversion” – and the eternal efficacy of a long “rest in
bed,” (Sharma 69).
Sadly, this is the common conversation when it comes
to discussing hetero-normative issues in literature from all decades and
genres. If the literature is not being outright with its overflow of support of
hetero-normative behaviors, then it must be something of the feminist category
that is bound and determined to replace the patriarchy with a matriarchy. This
assumption, however, is extremely problematic in the sense that the ultimate
goal of feminist literature is not to create a matriarchy, but rather to
highlight the issues that women face, specifically their right to independence.
The notion that one system of power can be replaced with another is severely
flawed – especially if a person is to expect that there would be any
fundamental differences between the two power systems other that the gender of
the group running said system.
Regarding
the political climate of when Mrs.
Dalloway was published, readers can see that the world Septimus Smith and
Mrs. Dalloway exist in closely resembles the world that the reader themselves
are trying to escape from. Throughout the entire novel, Woolf takes the time to
carefully and meticulously deconstruct the government, society, and the
economy. For this, she uses Septimus to highlight the true issues facing the
citizens as a result of the society that they have created. The larger
importance here is that the conversation is open to change and interpretation.
If the conversation gets shut down by the elitists involved, then that
completely rejects the point of the conversation as a whole. The importance of
understanding not only the conversation, but the heart of the text as well
comes from the Universality of Truth regarding social and political issues that
many do not want to address. The importance of studying the text is to see how,
in a fairly practical way, a reader can deconstruct a text (which can become
practice for the future deconstruction of a society) through the study of
hetero-normative behaviors and representations, feminist psychoanalyses, and
toxic masculinity. This can then be translated into the current climate that
our society rests within to be used as a tool for teaching the ability to
reject systems of power and change social norms through the use of
conversational discourse and deconstruction.
Methods
The biggest method for research
that I will be using for collecting data for this thesis project will be
something, simply put, like reading through a specific lens. When it comes to
looking at the deconstruction of heteronormative behaviors in Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway, specific textual evidence
will be focused on and unpacked throughout the process. I will be specifically
looking at text that demonstrate a very certain set of gender roles throughout
the story and how each one of those instances either supports, or discredits
the current social constructs of the time in which the story is taking place.
Specifically, I will be focusing on Septimus and how his mental health suffers
due to his attempt to upkeep the perfect facade of masculinity.
*{Another area that I would like to
do more research in is the idea of gender commodification. When looking at
Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway, there are
several moments where the reading of the novel through both the lenses created
by Karl Marx and Teresa de Lauretis is a practice that is extremely applicable.
In several cases, however, we get to see these pieces of evidence back to back
on the same page right from the beginning. One of the first pieces that we see
is when the narrator is describing a woman passing by in the setting of the
story. Her description consists of, “a lady is known by her shoes and her
gloves,” (Woolf 15). This is a representation of both Marxism and gender-specific
classism simultaneously. Marxism comes up with the distinction of not only the
classes of society, but the qualifications of those classes as well. A woman
can reach the highest class or be known to identify with the highest class
based off of what she is wearing and the quality of the things that she owns. This
need to be accepted with the highest social class can often turn into a
fetishism of that social class. This then places an absurd value on things that
can be regarded as accessories, just because they are something that will help
a woman reach a higher class. Marx not only comments on our inherent need to be
within a class, but our inability to control our fetishism of that class with
“The categories of bourgeois economy consist of such like forms. They are forms
of thought expressing with social validity the conditions and relations of a
definite, historically determined mode of production, viz., he production of
commodities. The whole mystery of commodities, all the magic and necromancy
that surrounds the products of labor as long as they take the form of
commodities, vanishes therefore, so soon as we come to other forms of
production,” (273). With this commentary from Marx, one can tell that Mrs. Dalloway stems from a place that
wants to deconstruct the patriarchal system in hopes of a better society to
come out of it at the end of the process. Both in Marx’s commentary and Mrs. Dalloway, there is a huge amount of
importance placed on validation by others. This validation can come in several
forms, but one of the most common is the acceptance into a community or class
of people.
With
the Marxist deconstruction of this literature, there is also commentary of the
sex-gender system and the patriarchal system that de Lauretis discusses. In
conjunction with Marxism, the answer to the patriarchy is not the matriarchy.
The problem in general is the institutionalized societal structure that
degrades one group while promoting another. De Lauretis states, “To continue to
pose the question of gender in either of these terms, once the critique of
patriarchy has been fully outlines, keeps feminists thinking bound to the terms
of Western Patriarchy itself, contained within the frame of a conceptual
opposition,” (713). Through this, we can see the close relationship that exists
between patriarchy and capitalism. However, we cannot fully blame the
patriarchy for the issue because the same issues would exist if there was a
matriarchy instead. The issue is not necessarily with the gender itself, but
rather with the usage of systems of power that has been happening for all too
long.}
Analysis/Data
For
the purpose of this proposal, I have narrowed down my data collection to just
the introduction of the novel. This will not only serve as evidence for my
thesis, but will also serve as a demonstration as to how I will be
deconstructing the rest of my text. When looking at the introduction, which
Virginia Woolf wrote herself, I noticed that there were a lot of gendered
pronouns used when referring to non-specific people such as “the author,” “the
reader,” “the audience,” etc. Instead of using the terms previously listed,
Woolf uses male pronouns more often than female pronouns, or gender-neutral
pronouns. During this, I disregarded when Woolf directly identifies a specific
character in the novel, or a specific author by their respective genders rather
than using their names over and over again.
During
the research, I found that Woolf uses a total of 44 pronouns throughout the 5
pages of the introduction. Of those 44 pronouns, 27 of them are gendered and 17
are gender-neutral. Of the 27 gendered pronouns, only 3 are female and 24 are
male. When looking at the overall number of pronouns and how out of balance the
male to female pronoun ratio is, there is not a struggle to see that the male
pronoun is favored over the female pronoun. Additionally, whenever a female
pronoun is used, it is always within the context of traditional gender roles
and what a mother, daughter, wife should be. Whenever a male pronoun is used,
it is within the context of academia and knowledge. Woolf constantly refers to
her audience as a group of males, rather than a group of both males and
females.
This
becomes interesting for a variety of different reasons. One could look at
Woolf’s introduction and just read it as though she was writing in a way that
would adhere to societal standards and keep people interested in her novel.
Another way to read this introduction is that she truly believes that men are
the only ones reading her novel, so she writes to please them and get them
engaged with the novel from the very beginning. However, both of these theories
get clouded with the fact that Virginia Woolf is a woman. One could come to
expect that since she is a woman writing from a very marginalized group of
authors, she would write in a way that would include both genders of a possible
audience.
Conclusion
In conclusion, Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway proves to be a novel that
is fruitful with commentary not only on heteronormativity, but also societal
structure, and gender commodification. Furthermore, there is something to be
said about the expectation of emotional responses from either gender and what
is considered to be appropriate for not only the situation, but for the gender
of the person expressing those emotions. Throughout the deconstruction of the
novel, one can begin to see the ways in which Woolf presents the reader with
several different outlets for discussion, review, and reflection.
Throughout
the course of the novel, Virginia Woolf poses several different issues for the
reader to digest. Ultimately, she leaves the work of resolving the issues to
that of the reader rather than resolving the issues herself and handing the
reader a perfect society. Without the critical thinking that Woolf evokes from
the reader, there would not be a genuine understanding of the way that the
political and social climate affect one’s life in ways such as their mental or
physical health. Overall, the avenues that I want to explore include Woolf’s
critical take on heteronormativity, societal and political systems of power, toxic
masculinity, gender norms, and gender commodification. I then want to use various
lenses such as psychoanalysis and Marxism to discover what her commentary means
for the future of the situations that she addresses. I am not completely sure
as to what she is meaning to do with Mrs.
Dalloway, but I do know that it is not something that should be ignored,
nor is it something that will be easy to deal with and digest. There is a sense
of awakening that she seems to be evoking with the reader and the real question
now is what to do with it.
References
Brontë Charlotte, and Richard J. Dunn. Jane Eyre: an Authoritative Text, Context,
Criticism. Norton, 2001.
De Lauretis, Theresa. “The Technology of Gender.” pp.
713-720.
Marx, Karl. “Capital.” pp. 268-276.
SAUTTER-LÉGER, SABINE. Papers on Language &
Literature, Winter2017, Vol. 53 Issue 1, p3-31, 29p.
Sharma, O.P.. Women's Studies, Dec1975, Vol. 3 Issue 1,
p61, 13p.
Woolf, Virginia. First Modern Library. Edited by H. Wolff,
The Modern Library Publishers, 1922
Woolf, Virginia. The
Modern Library. The Modern Library Publishers: New York, 1922.
*Note: The chunk of text in the Methods section that is in brackets was pulled from another paper
that I wrote for my Literary Theory class
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