Changing Gender Roles Between Emma and Mrs. Dalloway

The way in which Jane Austen’s Emma and Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf display genders allows us to examine the ways in which gender roles changed between the early 1800s and early 1900s. In this century great progress was made towards the equality of the sexes and independence of women. Woolf explicitly intended to contrast her book with the traditional views of the roles of women. In doing so, she presents to us many instances, which may be taken and used in order to increase our understanding of the subject. These instances are even more valuable upon being contrasted with the earlier representations we see in Emma.

In Emma we can observe the restrictions placed on women and the expectations society pressed onto the sex in the early 1800s. First and foremost, women are not to marry downward. In order to keep the family name among the higher ranks, women must marry within or above their class. We see this in Emma when Mr. Elton proposes to Emma in the carriage. She proceeds to point out his lower (though probably acceptable) status. Her resistance to the idea of marriage to a man even a step below her in status gives us an idea of the stress placed on women to uphold the family name. As a result, we may also note that marriages are not always made according to affection. Oftentimes, these marriages occur between people who do not even have any attraction towards each other. In these years, marriage was seen as a duty. In another section of the novel, we observe another restriction placed on women in this time period. Women are not to walk alone or in general be alone. We typically see Emma accompanied for her walks. In one particular scene, she is unaccompanied, which leads to suspicion. The reasoning behind this is that the families did not want women to become pregnant with an illegitimate child. These children were outside of the family and most likely of a lower man’s blood. In this era, we are presented with a view of women that is restricted and very much pressured by class standing.

Mrs. Dalloway on the other hand presents us with a contrasting view in lieu of Emma. At the very beginning of the novel, we accompany Clarissa on a walk to pick up some flowers in London for a party she’s throwing. Her errand seems a simple task. Yet, this task is something unspeakable for women in the era of Emma. The ability for women to walk out in public by themselves is in a large part due to the growth of the culture of shopping. Shops became an acceptable place for women to go by themselves. Also purposefully contrasted with the old era are the limits of proper public discussion. Peter observes this when he is aghast upon seeing “water closets” mentioned in the newspaper. He also notices boys and girls flirting in public and finds it appalling. Peter claims that years earlier nothing like this would have happened. Here Woolf is hinting at the change that has begun. Publicly acceptable behavior for the genders has gradually loosened from the times of Emma, and it continues to loosen to this day.

Gender and Death

One of the most fascinating characters in Mrs. Dalloway seems to be Peter Walsch. His ambivalence and ability to not make a decision makes him such a relatable character to the audience. At the same time Peter represents the male gender well with the way his personality seems to be masked by a hard shell that cannot let people in. Peter represents the male gender while Mrs. Dalloway represents the female gender. Virginia Woolf shows cultural differences between these two characters in Mrs. Dalloway. What is expected by society of the two characters, their interests, and mental thoughts differ greatly. As much as these two characters differ though, they are similar in their thoughts of death.

Men during the 1920’s are fascinated in innovation. Airplanes are flying overhead like never before and buildings are going up taller and thinner. They are the master of their industry. This male fascination with machinery can be seen when Peter is going on his walk of London. He stops to regard the monuments left after warfare and also notices the new technological developments around London from when he was last there. Probably more important to Peter than any of these previous sights is the sight of a woman who he is obviously attracted to as he is on his walk. His drive and interest in this woman causes him to follow this woman for a good mile or two in downtown London.

Clarissa goes on a walk similar to Peter’s. They occur at separate times but go through about the same area. It is interesting to note what Clarissa notices during her walk compared to the masculine representations Peter sees during his walk. Clarissa instead sees flowers. She sees beautiful sights and focuses in on the shops and boutiques she passes by. Clarissa’s representation of the female gender does it justice. The women of her class during this time would be concerned with the outer appearance of things just as Clarissa is.

While these two characters represent two opposite genders, they are similar in the way they both think about death. Peter carries his pocketknife around as if it is a weapon and he is defenseless without it. When Woolf goes inside Peter’s thoughts we see he is almost always going back to the idea of death. The female he follows during his walk seems to be a brief distraction from the thoughts of impending death. Clarissa has her weapon too when Peter comes to visit but hers is a sewing needle, thus supporting Clarissa’s representation of the female gender. And when Woolf leaves the mind of Peter for Clarissa, we see that Clarissa has experienced a good deal of death in her family already yet she is no more comfortable with the idea than when we see Peter’s thoughts. Woolf has made a very interesting point with her gender representations using these characters. People during the time must have had these impending thoughts of death probably due to the poor working conditions at the turn of the century. It seems that distraction to the idea of death is the only way to live life with some sort of peace.

Space, Time, War

In the last section of his book, The Culture of Time & Space 1880-1918, Kern talks of war. Not just any war, but the Great War. It was called the Great War, because it was thought to have been the war to end all wars. The technology jump into this war was gigantic and changed how we looked at war since. Kern specifically goes into how war’s sense of time and space was altered.

Time was affected by a few main technologies, the advent of standard time, the rapidity of communication, and the displacement of leadership from the battlefield. Standard time allowed coordinated attacks to occur, and increased coordination in troop deployment. Thanks to trains and the associated technologies, troops could be rapidly deployed to the front lines. Rapid communication also helped the coordination along long battle fronts. Fortunately or unfortunately this allowed the high ranking officials to make plans far away from the front lines. This distanced them from the horrors of war and perhaps led to orders that were not optimal. Since main command was further away there was also an increase in smaller units who had to make decisions for themselves in real time. This was especially important when the line was breached or heavy fire was raining down.

While the changes in time were great, the changes in space were arguably even greater. Weapons had improved dramatically since the Napoleon era. Guns were not limited to a couple hundred yards, but rather a couple thousand. This lead to wide zones between the trenches called “No Man’s Land,” where there was not a living soul. Artillery could now fire beyond their sight. The artillery men felt detached from combat as they neither knew those they who they were firing upon nor those who were firing upon them. Airplanes also changed the landscaped of war, as neither trenches nor walls nor any sort of barrier could stop their attack. The range of attack of these bombings blurred the lines of home and front, soldier and citizen. When war could reach home, the effects of war seemed that more personal.

War has continued to change since then. It was thought that there would be no more wars after that one considering how much more devastating they had become. Obviously this is not the case as it was merely World War I, with at least another to follow. Now we can have combatants fighting from half-way around the world thanks to combat drone technology. Warfare has progressed beyond just the physical and has moved on to the digital, information, and economic. War has become less about broad motions and more about precise tactical use of force. Hopefully this change in tactics will lead to less civilian involvement.

It is both exciting and terrifying to try and imagine the war of the future. Will it be fought with killer androids, or deadly diseases? Just how quickly could the world end in a nuclear holocaust? These are questions that I hope I will never know the answers to.

Space and Privacy

As one reads further and further into Mrs. Dalloway, the technological references seem to be growing. The book has an airplane fly over the head of Mrs. Dalloway. The city architecture has become more efficient than ever. But along with these physical accomplishments that are occurring at the time of Mrs. Dalloway, there are also the accomplishments in the field of science, specifically psychological counseling. All these changes in technology in Mrs. Dalloway seem to be changing the structure of society at the same time. Atleast with what we see in London when comparing the books Emma and Mrs. Dalloway, this shift in the culture changes the way people interact. This appears to finally lead to a change in what is considered privacy.

Privacy is the state of being free from intrusion, and we probably see the best example of this in Mrs. Dalloway with Septimus. Septimus served in the war and has come back a mental wreck. He is guided to see a new doctor of sorts by his current one that has not been able to help with Septimus’ problem. After seeing Sir William Bradshaw, Septimus is diagnosed as being on the verge of a mental breakdown that could happen any minute. He is sent to the country where he will rest and be isolated from the community. Septimus feels tortured by Sir Bradshaw but goes along with it just as his other patients have.

Conversely, the audience seems to see very little intrusion of privacy in Emma. The best example of the fact is that the audience never sees Emma in her bedroom. She lives in a very large house and only has but a few people living in it, with servants she never sees. People do not walk into other peoples bedrooms during this time. We do not see Emma’s bathroom. Anything near the lavatory would be out of the question. But these were just the customs of the times, or the norms.

As time passed and the audience switched back to Mrs. Dalloway, London has grown exponentially. Of course this was in part due to the technological advances of travel, buildings, and science. With the growth in London, the city has become denser in the process. This is the first time we get the sense that space is limited. In Emma, it is all rural living. She lives on the outskirts of London in the country. Space seems infinite. People communicate with each other in the most polite of ways and never probe too far into the sensitive personal lives of others. This differs greatly from Mrs. Dalloway, where the doctors that can’t get into the minds of their patients seemingly just send their patients into isolation. Just like the military forced their way on Septimus, the doctors seems to be doing the same thing. Their patients have to conform to the conventions the doctors think are correct, and if the patients can’t, then they are labeled as different. There is obviously minimal privacy during the time of Mrs. Dalloway, but this lack of privacy seems to be the result of a lack of space. When people are drawn into closer quarters with each other: hundreds of people living within a block, the difficulty to keep items private becomes most difficult.

The Portrayal of Time and Space in Emma and Mrs. Dalloway

There is a significant difference between the portrayal of time and space in the novels Emma and Mrs. Dalloway. This stems from the writers being from different eras. Jane Austin is a more traditional writer while Virginia Woolf wrote during a time of change. We will examine each work separately then analyze the differences.

Emma is a solid example of classic literature. The space is limited due to the constraints on travel for the era. People could only travel by foot or horse so distances were much more significant than they are today. Since distances were greater so were the time spans involved. The novel takes place over a series of months with implied downtime. There are sometime weeks between events with no real indication of the passing. Another notable point is that the entire book takes place in a public time and space. We never get to examine the more private functions of the characters. This exclusion is primarily related to the social norms of the time. One simply did not talk about such happenings in polite company. The book is narrated in a third person limited perspective with a very linear order.

Mrs. Dalloway is an example of a new style followed by the Georgians. The story takes place in an urban setting and really captures the hustle and bustle of such a setting. The main story takes place in a single day but there are numerous flash backs and such giving a much broader sense of time. We also get to follow the characters into more private settings as the social norms had changed over the hundred years. The scene transitions are fluid yet jarring by how sudden they are. This might seem like a contradiction but it works. If one reads carefully the transitions are similar to those that are popular convention in modern film yet can be easily missed if not enough attention is given.

So both of these stories take place in England in or near London. The relative space that the characters travel in is about the same between the two works. There is a female lead character and talks of marriage. That is about where the similarities end. Where Emma’s time is linear, Mrs. Dalloway’s is nowhere near linear with trips to the past of thirty years gone. Travel and time are slower in Emma as reflects the rural setting. Places are not as close together and travel speed is limited. Going out of the area is a big deal, while people can move around rapidly on public transport in Mrs. Dalloway. The social perceptions changed significantly over the course of the hundred years, especially for women. It used to be considered objectionable to have woman walk around by themselves. It was also uncouth to talk about private necessary functions such as eating and sleeping. This is different in Mrs. Dalloway, as Mrs. Dalloway goes out to purchase flowers in the city by herself and we eventually follow her into her bedroom. It is interesting to see these changes in culture come through the literature of the time. The changes in the way space and time is changing all the way through today.

Space and Time; Emma and Mrs. Dalloway

In the book Emma by Jane Austen and Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf, we are presented with two contrasting representations of time and space. A great deal of this difference is due in part to the time period. Also worth noting are the authors of each book. Virginia Woolf especially makes sure to contrast herself against writers of the older eras as we witnessed in reading her essay “Character in Fiction.” The authors as well as the one hundred years difference between the publications of Mrs. Dalloway and Emma account for the stark opposition in the way space and time are represented in each.

Beginning with space, we find many basic differences between the books from setting to perspective and technology. In Emma, we note that characters are located on the outskirts of London and use the carriage or horses are the primary form of transportation. This mode of transportation makes sense for a book published in 1815. With Mrs. Dalloway being published in 1925, we are presented motorized transport and a more connected world than that of Emma. When your only form of transportation is by horse and carriage, eight miles seems incredibly far. When you have a car that can travel at least 20 miles per hour, the distance is cut incredibly short. Also noteworthy is how Mrs. Dalloway takes place in or around the crowded city of London whereas the world of Emma is set in the sparse open spaces of the English countryside. Though most importantly of all, we have the concepts of interior and exterior spaces. Virginia Woolf gets inside the heads of her characters and subjects us to their train of thought as they wander through their daily lives. Austen on the other hand maintains a steady point of view outside of the characters’ minds. Due to this point of view, we only understand the characters from what they say, do, or how they are presented to us by the narration. Woolf believes that by being inside the minds of the characters, they become real. This logic, along with the general settings of the novels, impacts the opposing presentations of space.

In tying with many of the earlier concepts discussed surrounding space, we may also consider the differences in time representation between the books. From Emma we may clearly observe that the book is written in a very straight solid time line with no interruptions. Woolf instead breaks that boundary by intertwining space and time just as we may reminisce from time to time. By subjecting us to the mind of the character, Woolf forces us to follow their wavering conscious from memory to reality. Also worth noting is that the time in Mrs. Dalloway passes much more slowly from page to page when compared to Emma. In addition to this fact, we note that time in Emma is defined by the daily rituals and customs of the characters. As a more modern novel, Woolf’s characters run by public time. Public time can be defined as the general time as set by work and the daily schedule of a city. These differences as well as those differences in space between Emma and Mrs. Dalloway characterize these two books as contrasting works.

Big Ben and Mrs. Dalloway

Virginia Woolf does an excellent job introducing Big Ben, the giant tower clock, in a scene of London from Mrs. Dalloway: “A suspense (but that might be her heart, affected, they said, by influenza), before Big Ben strikes(4).” Big Ben was constructed in 1834 so was fairly new at the time of this book. It was such a revolutionary idea at the time: to have a device produce and show universal time to the people of the area. Universal time is time that is the same no matter where you are. So in this case time is the same wherever you can see Big Ben. It is located in Westminster so only a certain area can use the information from the clock but it seems to be a symbol more than anything else.

Referring back to the original quote describing the ringing of Big Ben, there is an uneasiness sensed in Mrs. Dalloway. She cannot tell whether or not it is still from her sickness that she is feeling uneasy, or she is uneasy because Big Ben is reminding her time is still going. At 52 years old, Mrs. Dalloway is seen to have a good deal of thoughts about death, especially when she decides to go shopping for some flowers. The clock tower rings again. It seems almost like the reminder of death. Mrs. Dalloway seems to be feeling very emotional and shaky on the inside but is doing everything she can to hold it together. She has social obligations she has to attend to, parties to set up, people to talk to, so she puts death out of her mind for a little.

Mrs. Dalloway even seems to know exactly when the bells are going to ring: “a suspense”. Everyone has a sort of biological clock and if we experience a recognizable event everyday at the exact same time, we remember right before it happens. So she becomes uneasy. This is seen quite a bit with Mrs. Dalloway. She feels one way, but acts a different. She obviously loves her upper class life style but early in the story she runs into Peter Walsh. She was in love with Peter at some point but married a rich politician instead. She made the decision of social class over true love. This sounds a lot like Emma. It is interesting how the social tendencies of rich women stay the same from Emma to Mrs. Dalloway. The difference seems to be in the economy and technology.

Space is much more constricted in Mrs. Dalloway. It would do no good to put a giant clock on the street level in London. Instead builders are learning to build taller, using towers. Perhaps this is the beginning of buildings as we know them today. Now there is only one way to go, that way is up. Buildings have to be taller, stronger, and built quicker, all adjusting to our societies growing demand for space. So as Big Ben is a representation of universal time, it also seems like a representation of space during this time period.