Can you find a passage from Mrs. Dalloway illustrating the challenge of modernist writing?
Speaking of the "challenge of modernist writing", we might be discussing 1) how modernist writers used stream-of-consciousness narrative and other techniques to present challenges to the reader in terms of cohesiveness, logical narrative flow, etc., or 2) how modernist writers took up the challenge of expressing the inner life and subjective experiences of characters in fiction.
This passage from Mrs. Dalloway reflects both of these challenges and takes place about two-thirds of the way into the novel.
"...it is the privilege of loneliness; in privacy one may do as one chooses. One might weep if no one saw. It had been his undoing - this susceptibility - in Anglo-Indian society; not weeping at the right time, or laughing either. I have that in me, he thought standing by the pillar-box, which could now dissolve in tears. Why, Heaven knows. Beauty of some sort probably, and the weight of the...
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day, which beginning with that visit to Clarissa had exhausted him with its heat, its intensity, and the drip, drip, of one impression after another down into that cellar where they stood, deep, dark, and no one would ever know. Partly for that reason, its secrecy, complete and inviolable, he had found life like an unknown garden, full of turns and corners, surprising, yes; really it took one's breath away, these moments; there coming to him by the pillar box opposite the British Museum one of them, a moment in which things came together; this ambulance; and life and death."
In this passage, the past and present are considered almost simultaneously as the character attempts to make sense of a life and a world where impressions come "one after another" yet do not fully coalesce into a coherent unit of experience. Feelings and thoughts exist side by side in the prose, operating as a system of revelation and obscurity as the mind of the character attempts to understand itself and its environment, its history, and its nature.
Which passage from Mrs. Dalloway best exemplifies the novel’s use of modernism?
A passage from Mrs. Dalloway that exemplifies the novel’s use of modernism is when Clarissa imagines that Peter is with her in St. James’s Park.
One key aspect of modernism was the lack of a cohesive reality. For modernists, reality was subjective—it depended on the perspective, psyche, and feelings of the person. In other words, reality was in the eye of the beholder and based on the subjective individual.
Clarissa’s stream of consciousness creates her distinct reality. At the same time, she’s aware that others see different things and experience contrasting realities. Imagining that her ex-boyfriend Peter is with her, Clarissa writes,
They came back in the middle of St. James's Park on a fine morning—indeed they did. But Peter—however beautiful the day might be, and the trees and the grass, and the little girl in pink—Peter never saw a thing of all that.
In this passage, Clarissa and Peter experience the reality of the park differently. Clarissa thinks it’s “beautiful,” while Peter doesn’t think much at all about the park and is indifferent to the supposedly lovely setting.
A couple of paragraphs later, the narrator notes that Clarissa “would still find herself arguing in St. James’s Park, still making out that she had been right—and she had too—not to marry him.” This passage exemplifies modernism since it speaks to Clarissa’s psychological state and how Peter continues to influence it. Modernists were interested in psychology and the theories of the famous psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud. More so, this passage reinforces the fragmented reality of modern life, since Clarissa is quarreling with someone who isn’t physically present.