Stream of Consciousness and Sapphics

Being new to Virginia Woolf’s prose, I am fascinated by and obsessed with her style. If you don’t like feeling like a spectre that simultaneously follows and observes the stream of consciousness of people, this book probably isn’t for you. As a stylistic choice, stream-of-consciousness-style writing perfectly develops a slice-of-life story. How better to make the daily routines and activities of life seem momentous than through delving into the innermost thoughts of the story’s characters? Page-breaks are rare and the story does not include chapters, which gives the book the sense of having a very fluid plotline that tethered to neither the present, past, nor future.


The story is centered around its namesake protagonist, Mrs. Dalloway. Clarissa Dalloway struggles between being fully present and being caught in the past. She spends a chunk of the first part of the book reflecting on her past love interests, which include Peter Walsh, Sally Seton, and her now-husband Richard. As she walks towards her errand at the flower shop, she wonders, “[if Peter] were with me now what would he say?” (7). Clarissa ponders her chronic remembering of people, thinking, “some days, some sights [brought Peter] back to her calmly, without the old bitterness; which perhaps was the reward of having cared for people” (7). This characterizes Clarissa as being one to care deeply and wholly for her loved ones, and her tendency to remain nostalgic. At this point in the book, Peter is on a voyage in India, but still comes back to Clarissa in memory “in the middle of St. James’s Park on a fine morning,” and Clarissa still finds herself “arguing... that she had been right... not to marry him” (7). Being indefinitely lost in thought, Clarissa’s stream of consciousness leads us through her life, from the past to the present and back again. While she spends a lot of time reflecting on the past, she also states her attachment to the present, thinking, “everyone remembered. What she loved was this, here, now, in front of her” (9). Clarissa seems to find a sort of balance between being in the present moment and being lost in an analysis of her past. She even manages to reflect on the future from time to time, wondering, does it “matter that she must inevitably cease completely; all this must go on without her; did she resent it; or did it not become consoling to believe that death ended absolutely?” (9). The fact that these ponderings occur in successive paragraphs gives us not only an insight into Clarissa’s mind but an insight into the movement of the entire story. Clarissa is someone who thinks and feels deeply, with a multitude of philosophical perspectives. 

Clarissa also considers society as a whole—the British population in post-World War I London—how “this late age of the world’s experience had bred in them all... a well of tears. Tears and sorrows; courage and endurance; a perfectly upright and stoical bearing” (9-10). This contextualization of the story is important because, stylistically, it characterizes Clarissa by indicating that her thoughts sometimes include the effect her society’s traumatic experiences have had as a whole. It also brings attention to the way in which generations of British people were affected as a result of the wars at the beginning of the 20th century and therefore the way in which the reader ought to view the characters of the story. The stoic nature and melancholic endurance of these English characters is a reflection of their war-time experiences. Such an event should be expected to have an effect on the whole population. This is not a war story and does not heavily reflect on the war itself but is rather, at least in part, an examination of people in post-War England.

Similarly, the story is not thus far a love story, but rather an examination of love in one middle-aged woman’s life. As mentioned, Clarissa has a passionate yet platonic relationship with Peter Walsh, whose marriage proposal she turned down on account of their lack of compatibility. With Peter, she says, “everything had to be gone into,” and the lack of personal space and independence their relationship offered was, for Clarissa, “intolerable” (8). While there were love and tension between them, Clarissa felt that “she had to break with him or they would have been destroyed, both of them ruined” (8). Her relationship with her husband seems totally different. Clarissa and Richard give each other “license” and “independence” (7-8). “No vulgar jealousy could separate her from Richard” (30), whereas when she learns that Peter became engaged to another woman en route to India, she felt only “horror” (8). She does not seem to share a bed with Richard, who insists, “after her illness, that she must sleep undisturbed” (31). There appears to be a respectful but not altogether warm commitment between Richard and Clarissa. In comparison, when Peter dramatically arrives at Clarissa’s home and eventually proclaims his love for a married woman in India, Clarissa thinks, “if I had married [Peter], this gaiety would have been mine all day!” (47). The contrast between these men helps to develop Clarissa as a character; she is independent and rational, but can't resist a bit of drama in her personal life every now and again.

Perhaps the most beautiful love Clarissa describes is for Sally Seton. Clarissa admits that she herself cannot “resist sometimes yielding to the charm of a woman” (32). Clearly, this interest in women goes beyond platonic love, as Clarissa says, she “did undoubtedly feel what men felt [towards women]... a sudden revelation, a tinge like a blush which one tried to check and then, as it spread, one yielded to its expansion, and rushed to the farthest verge... and gushed and poured with an extraordinary alleviation...” (32). This imagery wonderfully captures the sensation of falling in love or falling into a romance. Considering Sally Seton, Clarissa thinks, “had not that, after all, been love?” (32). She quotes Shakespeare, remembering her relationship with Sally, “‘if it were now to die ’twere now to be most happy...’ all because she was coming down to dinner in a white frock to meet Sally Seton!” (35). Later that same evening “came the most exquisite moment of her whole life passing a stone urn with flowers in it. Sally stopped; picked a flower; kissed [Clarissa] on the lips. The whole world might have turned upside down!” (35). The integrity and sweetness of their relationship, as Clarissa describes it, is simply unmatched. For one thing, the level of sapphic-ness that Virginia Woolf radiates through her writing is wonderful. For another, the relationship Clarissa has with Sally seems to be the purest and most healthy love she has had in her whole life, a love that formed her for the better. At this point in the story, it is unclear how the two parted ways and how Clarissa came to fall in love or at least into partnership with Richard. 

Stylistically, the love stories thus far in the book being written in retrospect has an impact on the pacing and feel of the book. The reader does not view these experiences as they unfold in a book’s “real-time,” rather we look back on these tales with the narrator, which brings a more analytical and reflective sense to the story as a whole. In the kind of book most of us are used to reading, the plot seems to happen in real-time, and a third-person omniscient point of view is usually used to best describe the thoughts and actions of the characters. Mrs. Dalloway is inexplicably different. As a book, it is unique, and thus far, as an experience, is wonderful.

Works Cited

Woolf, Virginia. Mrs. Dalloway. Harcourt, 1925.