Journal of Positive School Psychology http://journalppw.

com
2022, Vol. 6, No. 4, 7289 – 7292

Virginia Woolf’s use of time in Mrs. Dalloway

1T. Vasantha Prabha, 2P. Thiyagarajan

1
Assistant Professor of English, H. H. The Rajah’s College (Autonomous) Pudukkottai.
Research Scholar, Rajah Serfoji Government College (Autonomous), Thanjavur (Affiliated to Bharathidasan
University, Tiruchirappalli).
2
Research Advisor & Assistant Professor of English, Rajah Serfoji Government College (Autonomous),
Thanjavur. (Affiliated to Bharathidasan University, Tiruchirappalli)

Abstract
Mrs. Dalloway is the first of Virginia Woolf’s successful, mature, experimental novels. It uses
impressionistic techniques and interior monologues to reveal her characters’ personalities, Mrs.
Dalloway, Peter Walsh, and Septimus Smith. In Mrs. Dalloway the events take place within a single
day. This uncommon strategy displays the novel’s complication of time in general. For example,
while human beings tend to assume of time in terms of the steady ticking of the clock - seconds,
minutes, hours, and days - Mrs. Dalloway tells how people can relive, through memory, whole years
inside the space of minutes.

Keywords: Mrs. Dalloway, novel’s, Virginia Woolf’.

INTRODUCTION of plot, almost complete elimination of action,

and the detailed description of characters by
Time plays a vital role in the Stream-of-
describing their appearances, gestures,
Consciousness novels. The Stream-of-
circumstances and physical habits. Before
Consciousness novelists never think that the
Virginia Woolf, the novelists did not care much
morning and the evening are one day; evening
for manipulating Time in the novels. They
or morning or any part of either might represent
limited them¬selves to the sequence of events.
eternity or less than a single pulse-beat. They
For example, the novels of Dickens, Thackeray
deviate from the convention of chronological
and Trollope can be seen as mere serials. The
continuity. They broke up time into atomic bits
reader will like to know what will come next in
and scattered them as they liked, whereas the
the arrangement of the sequence, and the
Victorian novelists ‘clung on to the calendar
novelist had under meticulous compulsion to
and clock.’ The exponents of this new
stick to a stiff scheme of continued in our next
technique believe that all reality lies in
instalment. There was no scope for experiment
consciousness and that our consciousness does
and development in such a framework.
not proceed logically and coherently.
Therefore, Virginia Woolf contemplated Scott
In traditional novels, the actions span over as a storyteller and nothing more.
years or generations. The Stream of
Mrs. Woolf considers the story as the lowest
Consciousness novelists are not constrained
form of the literary organism; the novelist’s
chronologically from the cradle to the grave.
preoccupation with love is importantly a
He flashes back; he looks before, he shifts
reflection of his state of mind. At the same
backwards and forwards. The destruction of the
time, he creates every page has a hint or a
tyranny of time necessitated the minimization
suggestion that makes us stop to think or to
T. Vasantha Prabha 7290

dispute. Therefore, she advised the novelist to his flowers; half-past three when Mrs.
come into the light of things and cut Dalloway sees the old lady move away from
unanchored from the eternal tea-table and the the window; six when Septimus kills himself
credible and successful formulas that represent and Peter thinks with ad¬miration of
the whole of our human adventure. The human civilization. So the clock-time is a relentless
psyche, one’s concept of self (being), and time stream knotting together the incongruous,
are all intertwined in Woolf’s mind. For Woolf, separating friends, and making nonsense of
the past and present coexist in the human mind, emotions. In a single day, one may live a
and the self is more of a series of continuing lifetime. The reference to the clock-time, now
processes than a definite point. We are the sum and then, is meaningful. It denotes a break in
of our experiences, ideas, decisions, hopes, the continuity of time from the past to the
fears, and imaginations at any given time. present and serves an artistic purpose, enabling
the author to portray the shift of thoughts. For
Bernard Blackstone considers Mrs. Dalloway
instance, we can quote two of several passages
an experiment with time. Time is generally
like this from the novel.
understood in three aspects- ‘mechanical’ or
‘clock time; psychological or inner time, or Clock time is neutral, impersonal, and
what Bergson calls ‘duree’ or inner duration; implacable; it affects all who have physical
and historic time, or time in relation to existence. Using a device later adopted by
nationwide or worldwide events. Whereas the motion films, Mrs. Woolf occasionally will
clock-time and the psychological time have stop the novel from fixing her character in a
been skillfully manipulated in Mrs. Dalloway; moment of this clock time as they pursue
there are casual ref¬erences to the historical disparate aims simultaneously. At the
time, i.e., events like the war, etc. The clock- beginning of this century, modern
time concerns with passing moments or hours, psychologists showed that consciousness did
measured by the mechanical clock. The not move in a straight line. Mrs. Woolf was
psychological or inner time is the voyage from further influenced by Bergson’s concept of
youth to age; from the present to the past and fluidity and transcendentalism, as well as his
the future. The ‘historic time covers nationwide ideas of time. Outer time intrudes with the
and worldwide events of the past and the striking of Big Ben, whose leaden circles,
present. The clock-time and the psychological punctuating the reverie of Mrs. Dalloway, mark
time have been skillfully handled by Mrs. the disparity between actual and mechanical
Woolf in her novel Mrs. Dalloway; there are time. Parts one and three of To the Lighthouse
very casual references to the historical time. are duration or time lived through, but the
middle section, called ‘Time Passes’, is
As an example of clock-time, the novel’s action
external time in which the decay of the empty
takes place in a single day, and all the
house takes the place of the clock. In The
transitions of characters and events are
Waves, the interlude of wave, sun, snail, and
indicated by the chiming of Big Ben and other
vegetable represents external time, while the
clocks of London. It is early morning when
rest of the book records the more elastic
Clarissa steps out of her house in Westminster;
progress of duration. Mrs. Woolf plays with
eleven o’clock when Peter bursts in; half-past
Bergson’s times. Born in the age of Elizabeth,
eleven when Peter in Trafalgar Square receives
Orlando is thirty-six years old in October 1928.
a strange hallucination; a quarter to twelve
Three hundred years and thirty-six represent
when Septimus smiles at the man in the grey
inner time and outer time or vice versa. And
suit who is dead; precisely twelve o’clock when
time is complicated by memory, through which
Septimus and Rezia enter Sir William
several times, says, Mrs. Woolf, may proceed
Bradshaw’s house and Clarissa Dalloway lays
together.
her green dress on the bed; half-past one when
Hugh Whitbread and Richard Dalloway meet The expansion or contraction of inner time with
for luncheon at Lady Bruton’s in Brook Street; the intensity of ex¬perience is discussed in the
three o’clock when Richard comes home with essays on clock time and inner time that she
7291 Journal of Positive School Psychology

inserted to perplex the unphilosophical reader. love for Clarissa, and her change. He sees
The transitions from the past to the present or things in retrospect. His pined moves
from one consciousness to another become backwards to the con-ditions in India; then it
easy, smooth and natural, and the nar¬ration moves towards the present from the past when
gains clarity. Part of the effectiveness of the he thinks of the speed of the motor car seen by
manipulation of time as it affects the lives of him. The chiming of the bell reminds Peter
Mrs. Woolf’s characters comes from her Walsh of his past intimate attachment with
frequent confrontation of ‘real’ clock time with Clarissa. The memory is visual. The
the ‘unreal’ or psychological sense of past and chronological sequence of time has not been
future, infinitely stretchable, now so far away adopted. Time symbolizes eternal time. A day
in infancy, now so close in the present, when represents the whole life of a person. All the
the mood demands. The confrontation of transitions of events and characters take place
mechanical time or clock time and when the clock chimes. A clock chiming
psychological time is one of the novelist’s indicates almost every fifteen minutes.
significant devices to discipline and order the
By compounding past and present, Virginia
formless and chaotic stream-of-consciousness
Woolf can concentrate the entire career of a
novel.
character into a moment in which the reader
The time in Mrs. Dalloway moves forward and catches him. His whole past is behind him, and
backwards. The process is an alternating one. the whole future is before. Sweet and sour
In the words of R.L. Chambers that a point is memories of the past and the tickling
fixed, first a point of consciousness, Clarissa aspirations of the future keep on crossing his
Dalloway, from that point the movement mind, and anything at any moment might
swings, back through time, away in space, establish an association with something in the
opening vistas and displaying experience and past. This is something in the past which, to the
character, then forward again to the present character, is more significant than the present
moment; second, a point in time and space, moment, which a mere instrument connects the
Bond Street on this morning in June; from that reader’s thought-stream with the vital moment
point the movement swings again this time in the past. The barriers between the past and
through different points of consciousness, present are no longer there. The character’s
Edgar J. Watkins, Septimus and Lucrezia, mind operating at any particular moment has to
Sarah Bletchley, Mr. Bowley, and so on; then work under the impact of his total experience.
thirdly, another point of consciousness, this
In Mrs. Dalloway, chronological time is solely
time Septimus and Lucrezia, from which the
one sense of time. On a related theme, the book
movement can swing back in time again; then
multiplies time by presenting diverse
the point in present time once more, with the
characters’ ideas, each of whom take note and
aeroplane sky-writing over London; and so the
experience time, the previous and the present,
move¬ment swings back to the point of
in different ways. The characters deliver the
consciousness, Clarissa Dalloway. On this
past into the present, enable the meaning and
pattern, the whole structure of the book is
remembrance of the current to be shaped using
carefully built up.
the past, and shape reminiscences of and
In Mrs. Dalloway, Virginia Woolf shows the feelings about the previous with experience in
consciousness of Mrs. Dalloway and the the present.
characters such as Peter Walsh and Septimus
Warren Smith. Peter Walsh, a former lover of
Mrs. Dalloway, has come back from India and Reference
is likely to attend her garden party. Mrs.
Dalloway asks him not to forget her party. [1] Allen, Walter. The English Novel: A Short
From this point of view, Peter Walsh’s thought Critical History. Penguin, 1958.
shifts backwards in time. He recollects his
experiences in India, the diseases there, the
T. Vasantha Prabha 7292

[2] Blackstone, Bernard. Virginia Woolf A

Commentary. The Hogarth Press Ltd
London, 1949.
[3] Woolf, Virginia. Mrs Dalloway. Penguin
Books, 2020.