Discussion Topic

The significance of war and the title in Mrs. Dalloway

Summary:

The significance of war in Mrs. Dalloway is profound, as it impacts the characters' lives and mental states, particularly Septimus Warren Smith, a war veteran suffering from PTSD. The title reflects Clarissa Dalloway's role in society and her personal reflections on her life, juxtaposed with the broader effects of the war on individuals and society.

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What is the significance of the title Mrs. Dalloway?

It would be easy to say that the novel is titled Mrs. Dalloway because it is the name of the main character; and while this is true, it does not adequately convey just how central Mrs. Dalloway herself is to the novel, bringing together the different perspectives and themes. She is so central, in fact, that her name replaced the working title.

Woolf's working title for Mrs. Dalloway was The Hours: the novel chronicles the hours of a single day, marked by the chiming of Big Ben, as experienced inwardly by a variety of different characters. She wrote, too, that her novel was meant to be "a study of the world seen by sane and insane side by side." As such, she created the "sane" Mrs. Dalloway and the shell-shocked Septimus Smith as the novel's two primary studies.

While Woolf does not explicitly explain her change of title, her life and the novel itself offers clues. Mrs. Dalloway emerges, in fact, as the central character, the force tying together the disparate strands of the stream-of-consciousness novel. Even though she and Septimus never meet, it is at her party that the two intertwine—at her party, she hears and reacts strongly to his suicide, an act she herself has contemplated by never gone through with (in her initial concept, Woolf did envision Mrs. Dalloway killing herself). In the character Mrs. Dalloway, not only do all the strands of the day intersect, but so do the "sane" and the "insane," destabilizing these categories.

It is also worth noting that Mrs. Dalloway is a character that had long interested Woolf and haunted her imagination. Mrs. Dalloway has a strong minor role in Woolf's first novel, The Voyage Out, as well as in a short story. As a feminist, Woolf was interested in exploring women like Mrs. Dalloway because she felt so ambivalently about them. They represented her mother's generation (and her mother) embodying the kind of female subservience of always working for others that Woolf wanted to "kill" inside herself. At the same time, her feminist self wanted to celebrate the work, the skill, and the talent that throwing a successful party entails, rather than regarding such efforts as trivial, as male writers often did. It is clear that Woolf realized the centrality of Mrs. Dalloway, a mere woman, to the novel and reflected that in her title.

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What is the significance of the title Mrs. Dalloway?

On the face of it, Mrs. Dalloway would seem to be fairly obvious title for a novel whose main character is Mrs. Dalloway. Plenty of novels are named for their protagonist. In order to understand Woolf's choice, it might be helpful to consider a name she did not choose. For instance, she did not choose to name it Clarissa, Mrs. Dalloway's first name. It seems instantly clear that this would be a bad choice. "Clarissa" is too familiar. It implies or promises a status of friendship with the character, which the novel does not deliver, exactly. It seems insincere.

Seen in this light, the formality that Mrs. Dalloway suggests becomes telling. The name Mrs. Dalloway is a kind of mask that Clarissa wears; not only does it suggest that her identity is subordinate to or contained by Mr. Dalloway's identity, it also is a kind of protection or armor. That is, "Mrs. Dalloway" can function in a world that would destroy "Clarissa." The title is an acknowledgement of this "role" Clarissa must always play.

In another sense, we can understand the title as a kind of invitation or promise. The formality of the title is intriguing; while at first glance it seems trivial, or even a little boring, it also seems possible that in naming the book Mrs. Dalloway there must be something about this person that warrants such an honor. In this sense, the surname is irrelevant: it could easily have been any Anglo name. The point is that the name and the person are different, and the title is an ironic comment on that fact.

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What is the significance of the title Mrs. Dalloway?

The title of Woolf's story, though consisting of a mere two words, tells us an awful lot about the book's central character and the society in which she lives. For one thing, it tells us about the effacement of women's identity in 1920s England.

Clarissa, like all married women at this time, is known only through her husband. She is not expected to have an identity of her own. In the rarefied, upper-class world in which she moves, she is Mrs. Dalloway, the husband of Richard, rather than plain old Clarissa. Ironically, this phenomenon, of a woman being known mainly through her relationship to male characters, is a prominent complaint in Woolf's A Room of One's Own.

And yet Clarissa seems, on the face of it, to embrace this identity. She did, after all, choose to be Mrs. Dalloway, preferring to be Richard's wife rather than Peter Walsh's. In opting to be Mrs. Dalloway, Clarissa knew that in doing so she'd be able to maintain a style to which she'd become accustomed, continuing to live in a world of wealth, privilege, and power. That she should have made this choice indicates the lack of real options available to women at that time.

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What is the significance of the title Mrs. Dalloway?

Woolf's novel is about the interior life of Clarissa Dalloway. Much of the internal action of the book centers on Clarissa's reminiscence about her previous love affair with Peter Walsh, who returns from India during the book. As she plans to see Peter again, she contemplates her former love affair with him and her choice to marry the better-connected and wealthier Richard Dalloway instead of Peter. In the end, she confirms her choice, though Peter still cares for her. However, her marriage with Richard, while loving, is somewhat stilted. Still, she prefers a marriage to the stalwart and decent Richard to the poor Peter.

The title of the book affirms Clarissa's choice to marry Richard. The title is not Clarissa Dalloway but Mrs. Dalloway, an assertion of the main character's identity as someone who is married to a well-connected and wealthy man.

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What is the significance of the title Mrs. Dalloway?

Woolf once wrote that, "All human relations have shifted—those between masters and servants, husbands and wives, parents and children. And when human relations change there is at the same time a change in religion, conduct, politics, and literature."  If this is to be understood in its fullest form, then then title being the name of Clarissa Dalloway is important because it is through Clarissa and her party that we fully understand the force of Woolf's statement.  The title becomes very appropriate because it is through Clarissa that we see how all "relations" have changed.  Clarissa is the prism by which we see women and their roles change, people and their perceptions change, and it is through Clarissa and the people who attend her party that we fully grasp the divergence, and possible fragmentation, of society and human psyches.  Her name should be in the title because she occupies the central force of the novel.

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What is the significance of war in Mrs. Dalloway?

The setting of Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway takes place in London, during the Summer of 1923. This time frame sets the novel approximately six years after the end of World War I which, in itself, was an event that set off a transforming paradigm shift across society. As it is often the case in post War societies, the roles of those who compose it change as their importance is questioned. 

In post-War London, particularly in the area of Westminster where the novel develops, the Dalloways would have represented the stratum of high society that showed itself to the people as unscathed from the horrible effects of war.

The War was over, except for some one like Mrs. Foxcroft at the Embassy last night eating her heart out because that nice boy was killed and now the old Manor House must go to a cousin; or Lady Bexborough who opened a bazaar, they said, with the telegram in her hand, John, her favourite, killed; but it was over; thank Heaven — over.

Regardless of the fact that a major world conflict has taken place not long before the novel begins, the upper classes of London's fashionable set stick stubbornly to their established social dynamics, choosing to be oblivious to what "the others" feel. For this reason, Woolf integrates the character of Septimus as a way to create contrast between those who intend to move forward, and live life as they know it, and those who are too unfortunate to be able to do so. 

Septimus comes in as a contrasting and somewhat existential twin of the character of Mrs. Dalloway. They never meet in the story, but his experiences metaphysically affect Mrs. Dalloway and her questions about life, choices, and fate.

A soldier who witnessed the death of his comrade, Septimus is suffering from an obvious case of severe Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). As a result of the ignorance for his condition, there is an overall inability to analyze the extent of his illness. This is what leads him to end his life violently.However, it is the sum of Septimus's observations about people, life, and death what makes up for the meat of the novel; his partial insanity helps him see life the way that it really is. 

Conclusively, the importance of War in the novel is that it serves as the conduit through which the character of Septimus develops philosophically and psychologically. His traumatic emotions and constant reminders of death are juxtaposed to Mrs. Dalloway's questions about the meaning of life. However, when Mrs. Dalloway hears about his death she finally recognizes the reality of it, and therefore the importance of valuing life the way it comes our way, regardless of what we expect it to be like. Therefore, war is the agent of change in the main characters of the story. 

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