In the early twentieth century, Europe endured the pain of World War I, due to
which the traditional social structure was under the threat of falling apart. The
social unrest triggered the advancement of Western literature. Some avant-garde
writers broke through the tradition of fiction writing with bold innovations,
focusing their works on the complicated inner world of individuals and trying to
depict their ever-changing thought process. Thus, stream-of-consciousness, a
new narrative mode took shape. Among these innovative writers, Virginia
Woolf was regarded as one of the greatest modernist literary figures of the
twentieth century. “Mrs Dalloway in Bond Street”, a short story was one of her
earliest experiments with stream-of-consciousness. In the story, she discarded
the traditional structure of stories which based on plot or time sequence. Instead,
by following the narrator’s flow of consciousness, which is arbitrary and ever-
changing, Woolf reflected her intricate while delicate feelings towards life and
reality.
Virginia Woolf succeeds in the using of stream of consciousness in her works.
“Mrs. Dalloway in the Bond Street” is the best example of stream of
consciousness technique. Stream of consciousness technique is characterized by
the thoughts of the main character. The character goes back in the past
memories and comes back in the present. Through stream of consciousness
technique, Virginia Woolf shows readers the actual spoken dialogue and what
the different characters are actually thinking. Her works has a unique narrative
style, salient for its shifts in a point of view to occur within one same paragraph,
accentuating the psychological and analytical nature of the narrative. Virginia
Woolf uses a literary technique called free indirect speech to achieve the quick
transition. Mrs Dalloway in the Bond Street is the story, that captures a
character’s thoughts and uses them to tell a story.
The most striking thing about the beginning of “Mrs. Dalloway in Bond Street”
is how it begins as if Virginia Woolf has already established context: “Mrs.
Dalloway said she would buy the gloves herself.” The first sentence is not
establishing this character, nor why she needs gloves. The gloves are referred to
as “the gloves” and not just “gloves,” meaning that there is some specific
importance to her need for these gloves, but that importance has not been
established. I would assume that this somewhat jarring beginning is purposeful
in creating the impression that the following story will be a stream of
consciousness. Since streams of consciousness have no beginning and no end,
the first line clearly seems to be concluding a thought that was never heard by
the readers. This storytelling tactic in which we have received no context about
the gloves is integral to the fact that the actual gloves are completely arbitrary in
the function of the story.
By pointing at certain aspects of her contemporary fiction and drawing attention
to different methods used by innovative young writers, Woolf indirectly defines
the direction taken by her own fiction and the impulse she aims at giving her
character, Clarissa Dalloway. Clarissa’s progression parallels Woolf’s
arguments and theoretical preoccupations, ideas and ideals of the new “modern”
fiction and mirrors the author’s concerns with the conventions of the novel and
of character creation.
Woolf intends to capture Mrs Dalloway mainly by diving deeper into her
consciousness. “Modern Novels” includes recommendations to writers of her
generation to fight their own battles, combat mediocrity, try new methods and
discard the traditional conventions commonly observed by her contemporary
writers. Following her own revolutionary principles, her character of Clarissa
Dalloway is no longer “dressed down to the last button in the fashion of the
hour”.
In Woolf’s “Mrs Dalloway in Bond Street” writer develops the limited role. The
character is extracted from the original score, is transposed to another place and
context and acquires a more extended and deeper scope. Woolf creates a
specific space for Mrs Dalloway to evolve and develop: London, and more
specifically Bond Street. The city is intrinsically associated to Clarissa and
becomes the spatial container of her contemplations and memories. Her
itinerary, occasionally punctuated by outside events and Big Ben striking, is
concomitant with an abundance of thoughts crossing her mind.
Clarissa is portrayed as a less shallow character, as Woolf shifts the focus on
Clarissa’s deeper, rich inner life. By plunging inside, she gives the reader direct
access, through Clarissa’s thoughts, to her joys, pleasant memories, but also
fears and terrors. Clarissa is also given temporal depth: numerous incursions in
the past through her memories reveal notable events. Her past is brought to the
fore in instalments through Woolf’s “tunnelling” technique. The character is
physically sketchy but the abundant incursions in her thoughts give her
consistency and substance.
The short story overall made it harder to follow anything. There was a lot going
on because she was traveling, seeing different people, different places, and
living in different moments. Some of the language was unfamiliar and the
transitions consistently ran into each other. It’s almost as if Mrs. Dalloway is
trying to escape her own life through thinking of the past and worrying about
other people. A minor detail is how she always had an opinion about everyone
she encountered. Mrs. Dalloway in Bond Street is a bit like having a
conversation with someone who doesn’t want to talk to you. The details are not
forthcoming, everything they are thinking is happening in their head. We don’t
hear much about characters as they are introduced, giving us no space to
connect with them. Maybe it’s just the nature of a five-page story to not feel
invested in any of the characters, but the introspection of Clarissa came off as
almost nihilistic.
The method she used, the representation of the stream of consciousness,
reflected her need to go beyond the clumsiness of the factual realism in the
novels of her Edwardian precursors, such as Wells, Bennett and Galsworthy,
and find a more sensitive, artistic and profound way to represent character, an
effort shared with her contemporaries D H Lawrence, Dorothy
Richardson, Katherine Mansfield and Marcel Proust.
