As someone who had not read Virginia Woolf before this class, I found the first reading incredibly difficult to follow. I dismissed a lot of the metaphors that she used but one statement struck me as odd: “…standing there at the open window, that something awful was about to happen…” Why would fields of beautiful flowers make Clarissa feel so anxious? It was such a peculiar conclusion to draw from the scene. I can understand a form of melancholy, but feeling like something bad is going to happen is a little more intense.
While I read further through the book, I forgot about Clarissa's statement. I didn’t think to draw the conclusion between Septimus and Clarissa’s window scenes. When my group was reading articles for our panel presentation, one of them emphasized the similarities between the first page of the book and Septimus’ suicide. (This was the article we presented btw)
How could Clarissa, at age 18, not yet in London, empathize with an action that has not yet transpired, but will effect her to an enormous degree once she hears that it has happened? It’s been stated in class that mysticism is a possible explanation for Clarissa’s profound reaction to hearing Lady Bradshaw’s mention of suicide. Is it possible that Clarissa is psychic?
I found other evidence throughout Mrs. Dalloway that could support this claim, but while gathering quotes and page numbers, my argument went from psychic ability (though I still see it as a possibility and maybe after reading this so will you) to investigating her talent of knowing people by instinct. A much more likely, though still a somewhat mystical, unexplained ability.
Why mention knowing people by instinct in the novel if it wasn’t going to hold some kind of significance? Could this instinct be how she was able to draw out Septimus’ death from just hearing of his passing? Her ability to see other’s personalities without spending a lot of time with them could be another symptom of her possible psychic talent.
Her knowledge of others may explain the quirky indirect exchange between Clarissa and Peter in which on page 35 Clarissa asks herself, “What would he think, she wondered, when he came back? That she had grown older? Would he say that, or would she see him thinking when he came back, that she had grown older?” Then, in almost an echo of her own thoughts, the first thing Peter thinks to himself when he sees her 4 pages later after years of being apart is, “She’s grown older, he thought, sitting down. I shan’t tell her anything about it, he thought, for she’s grown older. She’s looking at me, he thought, a sudden embarrassment coming over him…” The thought of age, the decision to not mention it, and then Clarissa’s ability to notice he’s thinking of her age and make him feel embarrassed is either a symbol of their closeness if youth or her ability to know people by instinct.
This of course could be a stylistic choice of Woolf, as a form of her humor, but it could also be a potential explanation to why Clarissa was able to be so shocked after hearing of Septimus’ suicide.
Her instinct still does not explain why she felt so dreadful in front of her window in Bourton so many years before Septimus fell to his death. Maybe calling it an instinct is the only way she knows how to describe her peeks into the future?
You make a really good point, and I think that this psychic ability has so much more meaning in this book than in any other book. In a "normal" fiction story with what we would call plot, I would usually call this foreshadowing, but since we have free indirect discourse and we are able to see inside Clarissa's mind it means more than that. The fact that she is able to know these things sends chills through our spines, have we actually spent over 50 pages in the mind of some supernatural being? Unlikely, but still good to think about. I rather agree with you that this all stems from her ability to understand people just by looking at them. Although this book is about ordinary people in London, once we have been in their heads for long enough we realize there is nothing ordinary about any of these characters.
ReplyDeleteThere are a lot of different theories and explanations for Clarissa and Septimus' connection, and I find them all as confusing as the next. While working on our panel presentation, our group found a similar article that takes their connection in a religious context. Clarissa's theory and talent of connecting with people is taken as sacred. The article that you found explaining Clarissa's ability as psychic seems just as likely.
ReplyDeleteClarissa's theory when she was young definitely seems to support her social skills as sacred. As it says in the book: "...So that to know her, or any one, one must seek out the people who completed them... Odd affinities she had with people she had never spoken to, some woman in the street, some man behind a counter.... It ended in a transcendental theory which, with her horror of death, allowed her to believe... that since our apparitions... are so momentary compared with the other, the unseen part of us...the unseen might survive, be recovered somehow attached to this person or that, or even haunting certain places after death . . ." For this, it seems like the more people Clarissa meets and the more connections she makes, no matter how trivial, the more she leaves an impression on the world that could stick around after she has gone. Knowing that Clarissa is an atheist, this theory seems to be the closest connection to religion that she has.
DeleteLark, you never fail to bring in a fascinating theory to the table to be considered. While there is a possibility that Clarissa is actually "psychic" (that would be so interesting, imagine Clarissa experiencing bouts of Septimus' distorted reality), there are so many options out there for this connection between Clarissa and Septimus, we'll (sadly) never know.
ReplyDeleteSince this novel is a work of realistic fiction, I of course and quick to dismiss any mention of characters being "psychic." However, you brought up some great points about the connection between Clarissa and Septimus. I think all of the similarities were purposefully written by Woolf in order to draw a comparison between them as two seriously depressed people. While Septimus' mental illness is blatantly obvious, in my opinion Clarissa is also a deeply unhappy and depressed person and these connections between the two characters help drive that point home.
ReplyDeleteI don't know how seriously Woolf would have taken the phenomenon of extra-sensory perception, but this novel is very much attuned to these invisible "threads" that link characters together, and Woolf is certainly interested in exploring the nonrational aspects of human consciousness. There aren't usually clear "reasons" for why her characters have sudden thoughts or feelings--the mind is depicted as controlling the character, to a significant degree. In Woolf's view, we just have strong feelings sometimes (of dread, of elation, of both at the same time), and these don't always have a clearly identifiable "cause" in the external world. The effect is indeed something like "psychic" perception--and this seems especially the case with Septimus. But the "psychic" herself doesn't know how to interpret these perceptions--only the reader can see the "parallels" with Septimus, for example.
ReplyDeleteInteresting point, but I disagree. I don't think Clarissa is psychic, or even just socially perceptive, I think these hints that you've mentioned are more of a writing technique than anything else. Foreshadowing is a common technique used by writers, and I feel that Virginia Woolf is just very subtle in her foreshadowing, so much to the point that it does seem at some point in the book that Clarissa is psychic.
ReplyDelete