In examining a particular passage of Mrs. Dalloway , we can begin to get a sense of the poetics of the novel. But a book is not poetry and no matter how beautiful and shimmering an effect it may have upon us, it also guides us teleologically through larger events and themes. Style and substance are hardly exclusive: the style of this brief passage its aesthetic effect upon us readers demonstrates the larger thematic tensions which drive the story. This style is centered around the everyday thoughts of everyday characters in postwar London. At the center is Clarissa Dalloway, who serves as our introduction to this novel of consciousness. She muses:
For having lived in Westminster how many years now? over twenty, one feels even in the midst of the traffic, or walking at night, Clarissa was positive, a particular hush, or solemnity; an indescribable pause; a suspense (but that might be her heart, affected, they said, by the influenza) before Big Ben strikes. There! Out it boomed. First a warning, musical; then the hour, irrevocable. (4)
The success of this first passage, like all good poetry, is as Professor Stephen Booth puts it " the poem's ability to let us understand something that does not make sense as if it did make sense [italics in original]." This "something" that does not make sense is what Woolf alludes to in her essay "Modern Fiction" when she asks, "Is it not the task of the novelist to convey this varying, this unknown and uncircumscribed spirit, whatever aberration or complexity it may display, with as little mixture of the alien and external as possible?" Put another way, Woolf is taking up the self-defined artistic task of making the impossible seem easy, the artificial natural, and the "indescribable," "positive."
The effect of this first segment is to convince us readers that we have a firm grasp, indeed, an "irrevocable" grasp, upon a very infirm moment of expectancy - that, "particular hush, or solemnity; an indescribable pause; a suspense " Notice first that this "indescribable" pause is surrounded by a lot of descriptive, "particular" words. Furthermore, the whole section is bracketed by "convictions" in Clarissa's mind, like, "For having lived in Westminster - how many years now? over twenty ," which rings with the certitude of a specific name "Westminster" and specific number "twenty." On the opposite end is, "Big Ben" landmark of landmarks in London - and a nicely alliterative name. As an added layer of "certainty," the narrator interjects in third person just before and just after this line: "Clarissa was positive," and "(but that might be her heart, affected, they said, by the influenza)." That "Clarissa was positive," on authority of the omniscient narrator, invites us to be equally convinced of what is to follow a moment of describing "this varying, this unknown and uncircumscribed spirit." Afterwards this moment is dismissed by a very scientific observation one based on what "they said" - that it all might be physiological - simply, "her heart." That the heart is the seat of human emotions is as well established in literature as its circulatory function is established in medical science. That it is related to influenza a particular, named disease - dismisses the pathological element from our minds when we come to it, signaling the end, as Big Ben signals it, of our moment of emotional expectancy: "There! Out it boomed." The effect of "there" is fantastic - it gives exact location to an unlocateable literary event. Nowhere in our minds are we left wondering, "Where?" we have been told: it is, "There!" and "Out it boomed." Then Woolf backs up momentarily in time to describe the "warning," "musical;" that proceeds the "hour," "irrevocable." Yet however irrevocable the hour may seem to us at this point, the next sentence not only revokes it, but serves as a symbol for the kind of stylistic and thematic project Woolf has undertaken in Mrs. Dalloway: "The leaden circles dissolved in the air." (4)
This sentence is to recur throughout the novel, a kind of repeat-chorus to the theme song of the book. Its significance is that it is emblematic of the novel a "leaden circle" in a circular plot narrative that seems to compare human thought to circular smoke rings (p. 54) and calls to question the fixity and function of social "circles" (p. 175). Though lead is not air-soluble, the reference recalls the metal construction of Big Ben's bells (albeit imperfectly) as well as the quality of musical weight referenced in Dickinson's poem number 258. The success in both "poems" lies in irony - sound is physically weightless, but emotionally impactful - and dissolves less "in air" than in our consciousness.
Already we have been introduced to a slew of thematic tensions in a few brief, beautiful sentences. The overarching tension rests between what we know, or think we know gnosis, and what is unknown or unknowable, unscientific or nescience. Detailing these themes based on our brief passage of analysis might look like this:
| Gnosis | Nescience |
| The named | The indescribable |
| Quantified time | The moment |
| Science | Suspense |
| Weight | Lightness |
| Center | Periphery |
Woolf is not attempting so much to showcase the "yin and yang" polarities listed off above as she is using a sense of gnosis to demonstrate the beauty of nescience. As Maureen Howard puts it in her introduction, "easy lines" are, "Placed like stones at the rim of a billowing tent " (vii) Indeed, it is an apt metaphor, as the whole of the book is bracketed (or held down) by, "easy lines:" "Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself," (3) and "It is Clarissa, he said. / For there she was." (194) I would suggest that the stylistic simplicity felt in these brief lines is akin to the thematic simplicity of gnosis - which Woolf employs in names, dates, scientific explanations, illusions of mass attributed to sound, and specific centers ("There!") to acentral events. Yet it is an uneasy relationship. By no means is Woolf championing the certain. Rather, she is championing the uncertain. Stylistically this is clear in our passage of analysis, because it succeeds aesthetically independent of what is to come. Like the first movement of a concerto, it lays groundwork.
Unlike poetry, which must strive to conceal its conceits, this novel "bears the device" outright in addressing the issues of gnosis and nescience. In doing so, the gnostic takes on a mundane quality whereas the nescient takes on a poetic or spiritual quality. Peter, for example, begins a long, poetic trip down memory lane much the way Clarissa began musing about expectancy: "There was Regent's Park. Yes. As a child he had walked in Regents park " (55) - as if the conviction ("Yes."), naming, and dating of the event could revive the splendors of childhood. Naming becomes even more absurdly treated as spectators attempt to discern smoke-writing, thinking it says, "Glaxo," and "Kreemo." (20) The most parodic convictions, however, come from Septimus Smith. He serves as counterpoint to Clarissa where she is clear, social, and feminine, he is an obscure, inward, shell-shocked man. His coherence:
Men must not cut down trees. There is a God. (He noted such revelations on the backs of envelopes.) Change the world. No one kills from hatred.. Make it known (he wrote it down). (24)
quickly degenerates into babble, even as the upstanding socialettes were seen shouting gibberish at an aeroplane demonstrating personal and social nonsense of a very different very ugly kind. Indeed, Septimus is both personal and social to the extent that he is emblematic society - as much a psychological casualty of war as London itself was.
These are only a few examples of the stylistic interplay and thematic tension between gnosis and nescience at work in Mrs. Dalloway that seem to echo our passage of analysis. The greatest moment of expectancy, almost mirroring the sounding of Big Ben, comes with Sally Seton's kiss:
Then came the most exquisite moment of her whole life passing a stone urn with flowers in it. Sally stopped; picked a flower; kissed her on the lips. The whole world might have turned upside down! The others disappeared; there she was alone with Sally. And she felt that she had been given a present, wrapped up, and told just to keep it, not to look at it a diamond, something infinitely precious, wrapped up, which, as they walked (up and down, up and down), she uncovered, or the radiance burnt through, the revelation, the religious feeling! when old Joseph and Peter faced them: (35-36)
The fact of passing a stone urn with flowers is entirely incidental to the event, but remains as a kind of gnostic, fetishistic symbol. As a result, flowers abound in the novel. Here Wolf expounds on a longer passage describing, "this varying, this unknown and uncircumscribed spirit" she likens to "something infinitely precious, wrapped up." Yet she again can not help but temper the passage with mundane detail a precise if simplistic description of how they walked ("up and down, up and down"). Note also that this passage is also bracketed by specifics - the stone urn (a solid vessel), and "Peter," and "old Joseph" on the other (solid men). Here, amid the same stylistic device, a new set of themes emerges:
| Gnosis | Nescience |
| Stone | Flowers |
| Men | Women |
| Heterosexuality | Homoeroticism |
| Linear motion | Burning radiance |
| Religion | Religious feeling |
| The obvious | The "wrapped up" |
Once again the style of this passage demonstrates the larger thematic tensions between gnosis and nescience which drive the story to its conclusion. Though reductive to call it a poem, this book shimmers like a poem, playing as much on our emotions and perceptions as on our mind. We are left feeling the same kinds of paradoxes about the novel that Clarissa felt about herself:
She felt very young; at the same time unspeakably aged. She sliced like a knife through everything; at the same time was outside, looking on. She had a perpetual sense, as she watched the taxi cabs, of being out, out, far out to sea and alone; she always had the feeling that it was very, very dangerous to live even one day. (8)
Here we have an apt description of the work: vivacious but timely, perceptive but peripheral, conveying a dangerous sense of aloneness which drove Septimus, perhaps even Woolf herself, to suicide - all represented in a brilliant interplay of style and substance all in a single day.