After reading the first thirty or so pages of Mrs. Dalloway, we are met with a starkly different portrayal of time and space in lieu of Emma. Mrs. Dalloway, written by Virginia Woolf, takes on a third person unlimited point of view making the reader somewhat of a god. We are able to jump in and out of the minds of each character. Emma was written in third person limited, which meant we were only able to view the world as Emma viewed it while encountering the opinions of others only as they are spoken aloud.
This ability to jump in and out of people’s heads leads to a bending of time and space as the reader is subjected to the conscious of the character whose eyes the world is portrayed through at the time. We see this in Mrs. Dalloway when we are viewing London through the eyes of Lucrezia Smith. In her eyes, we see that men are selfish. We see London as a lonely and foreign place. We view the people in the streets as “half alive” compared to the “people walking, laughing out loud” in Italy (23). On the other hand, when we are in the mind of Clarissa Dalloway we see the world differently. London is a familiar sight, but not necessarily comforting. We wish we “could have had [our] life over again” (10). Each character perceives space differently and as a result we end up with various descriptions of the same place, twisted by the beholder to whom we are tied.
Also twisted to the will of Virginia Woolf is time. Once again, the character viewing the world can bend this aspect of Mrs. Dalloway. For example, Clarissa is constantly bringing up images of the past as they come to her mind, and we are thereby subjected to her detailed stories recalled from her memory. A specific instance of this is Clarissa’s recounting of Sally Seton. Here we are suddenly different time and place viewing Sally as a girl who “sat on the floor” and was “smoking a cigarette” at the time. The book even goes as far as to subject us to Clarissa’s lack of memory as she attempts to remember, “Where could it have been? The Mannings” (32)? In yet another passage, we recall with Clarissa how Hugh and Peter were quite different: “She could remember scene after scene at Bourton – Peter furious; Hugh not, of course” (6).
The ability to warp space through the memory of the current primary character can make the book quite confusing, but it accomplishes exactly what Woolf wants. In Woolf’s view, it is viewing the world through a character’s eyes and perspective that makes them so life-like. In Mrs. Dalloway, she takes this idea to the extreme. We not only view the world as they do, we think what they think. We recount events just as they do. Through hearing tales of their past as told through their bias, we get a feel for the type of person they are. The bending of time and space in this book is almost entirely due to the changing perspectives employed by Woolf in the creation of this literary work.
This blog does an excellent job discussing how time is effected by Woolf's character descriptions. By always switching in and out of characters the reader is given the perspective of a person who can see all the thoughts of the characters as well as their outside appearances. This is relevant because if a person can see what a person is thinking and their appearance, a person then knows how truthful the character's thoughts are. A lot of the time we see ourselves in better light than we really are. This will make for a very interesting novel, seeing how people's attitudes of each other play out.
ReplyDeleteThird person limited is perhaps my favorite perspective to read. It gives a strong emotional connection with a character and allows for suspense and surprise in the reader. I do not enjoy the feel of first person as I prefer the feel of an observer and first person can often cloud the matter unnecessarily.
ReplyDeleteI enjoy shifting third person limited as well though the lack of clear distinction between these shifts in Mrs. Dalloway makes it confusing rather than entertaining.