THE CANONICAL HOURS IN "MRS. DALLOWAY" Author(s): HARVENA RICHTER Source: Modern Fiction Studies, Vol. 28, No. 2 (Summer 1982), pp. 236-240 Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/26280915 Accessed: 28-10-2019 13:19 UTC

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at https://about.jstor.org/terms

The Johns Hopkins University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Modern Fiction Studies

This content downloaded from 143.107.3.152 on Mon, 28 Oct 2019 13:19:41 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms new Hand, gives her new art. "IT can paint!" (C, p. 242). Like the utterly blank Semira, Clea in the end becomes a perfectly sculpted figure, a breathing objet d'art.

JANE LAGOUDIS PINCHIN

rrfr

THE CANONICAL HOURS IN MRS. DALLOWAY

Virginia Woolfs use of "The Hours" as a working title for Mrs. Dalloway over the period of some sixteen months—from June 1923 through October 19241—suggests a significance to the novel's time structure which so far has escaped notice. Evidence that Mrs. Woolf planned a special role for the hours appears in the difference between early references to those hours on 9 November 1922, when the book was tentatively thought of as "At Home: or The Party," and their schematic use in the finished work. The sequence is listed thus: "Hours: 10. 11. 12. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 1. 2.," followed by a brief charting of what will happen at each striking of the clock.2 In contrast, Mrs. Dalloway's morning in the published novel begins most probably at 9 a.m. instead of 10 and finishes at 3 a.m. the next morning, not at 2. During that time span of eight een hours, only certain ones are stressed. Therefore it might be safe to assume that some new concept of a temporal pattern, which would relate to the symbolic meaning of the novel, was devised by the time the book was started in 1923. When this pattern is examined, it comes surprisingly close to that of the canonical hours. The hours that divide the religious day of both Catholic and early Anglican monastic life may at first seem far from the novel's frame of reference. But as

'Diary entries of 19 June and 6, 29, and 30 August 1923 and of 23 January, 9 February, and 26 May 1924 mention The Hours (The Diary of Virginia Woolf, edited by Anne Olivier Bell, [New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1978], II). In the Dalloway ms. in the British Museum, London, the novel is titled The Hours? in vol. I, begun 27 June 1923; The Hours or Mrs. Dalloway in vol. II, begun 18 April 1924; and Mrs. Dalloway or the Hours in vol. Ill, begun 31 July 1924. A revision tided The Hours, Chapter I, was begun 20 October 1924. 2The note referring to "At Home: or The Party" is dated 6 October 1922 and appears in the third Jacob's Room ms. notebook containing preliminary notes on Mrs. Dalloway; the list of hours is in a small maroon leather working notebook which also contains notes on Aeschylus (see footnote eight). Both are part of the Berg Collection, New York Public Library.

Modem Fiction Studies, Volume 28, Number 2, Summer 1982. Copyright © 1982 by Purdue Research Foundation. All rights to reproduction in any form reserved.

236 MODERN FICTION STUDIES

This content downloaded from 143.107.3.152 on Mon, 28 Oct 2019 13:19:41 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms a celebration of daily life, they are consonant with Clarissa's own élan vital and the many images of a virginal and monastic existence clustering around her. Virginia Woolf, too, was fond of cycles, whether diurnal or seasonal, and she inserted in her fiction an assortment of concealed meanings or mysteries, perhaps only to amuse herself or friends, perhaps to lend yet another layer to the already complex structure. The pattern of the canonical hours in Mrs. Dalloway appears to be just such a hidden puzzle. The canonical hours are matins, prime, tierce, sext, nones, vespers, and com plin. Fortunately for Virginia Woolf, their schedule, especially for the early morn ing service, follows the whim of the particular religious house. For example, matins occasionally start at midnight, sometimes at 2 or 4 a.m., never later than 6. Matins can be sung alone or in conjunction with lauds (praises). In a literary sense, "daybreak" is their symbolic time. So it is with matins that the novel opens as Clarissa's memory returns to Bourton in the "early morning." "What a lark!" she thinks, using a word which appropriately signals the hour of sunrise ("Hark, hark! the lark at heaven's gate sings, And Phoebus 'gins arise").' "Early morn ing" is echoed later by "white dawn" (p. 12). Tierce marks the beginning of Clarissa's walk to Bond Street. The hour is struck ("There! Out it boomed"). Most critics place this time at 10 a.m., but a careful scrutiny of what Clarissa Dalloway would have to accomplish in one hour—cross Victoria Street in Westminster, walk through St. James Park, chat with Hugh Whitbread, window-shop in and around Bond Street, choose her flowers, go home, consult with Lucy, change her clothes, and start mending her green dress—in order "to be interrupted at eleven o'clock" by Peter Walsh (p. 59) makes 10 a.m. most unlikely. Moreover, the important events in the novel take place in threes or multiples thereof (3 a.m. or p.m., noon, 6 p.m., and so on), so the hour struck by Big Ben would probably be 9. Virginia Woolf makes clear that it is "still so early" (p. 6); later, p. 15, it is "Bond Street early in the morn ing." Shopkeepers are only "fidgeting in their windows" with the displays, though the flower shops, to deliver before the heat of the day, would have been open for some time. It is at the moment which is "still so early" that the praise, or lauds, of life and London are sung in Clarissa's thoughts with the extraordinary lyric passage beginning with the striking of the clock and continuing until the interruption by Hugh Whitbread. In the Catholic canon, lauds would be out of sequence. But in the Anglican observance of the canonical hours, matins with lauds are frequently sung as late as 9:30 a.m. Sext, or noon, the fourth canonical hour, is next in importance and contrasts with Clarissa's joyful morning. It is the time of Septimus' appointment with Dr. Bradshaw and, significantly, the hour of the crucifixion of the Christ with whom Septimus identifies. The position of the clock hands at noon, as well as the motif of martyrdom, will be repeated when Clarissa feels herself "a stake driven in at the top of her stairs" (p. 259), a metaphor suggestive of midnight, the image of the stake analogous to that of the clock hands at the top of the dial (stairs)

.'The opening lines of the song from Shakespeare's Cymbeline, from which the novel's primary leitmotif, "Fear no more the heat o' the sun," is taken. Clarissa reads the latter line, pp. 12 and 13, in Hatchard's shop window on her walk. Page references are from Mrs. Dalloway (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1925)—which is identical to the Harvest paperback—and will hereafter be included parentheti cally within the text.

NOTES AND DISCUSSION 237

This content downloaded from 143.107.3.152 on Mon, 28 Oct 2019 13:19:41 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms but with the pointed end reversed. On an equally tragic note is nones, the fifth canonical hour, or 3 p.m. Nones implies none, nothing, a time of nonbeing. It is the hour when the fateful break with Peter Walsh takes place; when Richard brings Clarissa flowers and cannot say he loves her; and, in its mirror image of 3 a.m., when Clarissa ponders the death of Septimus. 6 p.m. is the sixth canonical hour, vespers, the time of Septimus Smith's suicide: the end of day as of life.4 Complin, the seventh and last canonical hour, falls somewhat later and may be said to indicate the completion of the day's prepara tions for the party, for it is here that the social evening begins. Only one canonical hour remains unaccounted for: the second hour of prime. Falling sometimes at daybreak, always after matins and breakfast, it has been called "the first daylight hour." Prime belongs to the Prime Minister. The ap pearance of the " 'Proime Minister's kyar' " introduces Septimus Warren-Smith and begins his morning in the novel. The Prime Minister's arrival also ushers in the "second morning," that of the party, because he comes after Mrs. Dalloway feels like a stake at the top of her stairs. As Clarissa hears the clock strike 3 a.m. in the little room to which she has gone to contemplate however briefly the death of the young man with whom she felt a kinship, the seven hours have had their say. Sometime thereafter, the party ends, held on by the "fairy lamps," the "enchainted" quality of the evening created by the "magician" Clarissa. The mood is that of the early morning whose time span is likewise expanded at the opening of the book; the round is complete. It remains, however, to be emphasized that the number of the canonical hours is traditionally seven. The number of Septimus (Sept = seven), they honor him in a religious sense. Accordingly, Septimus appears in the novel in seven scenes: the first, when the Prime Minister's car appears (pp. 20-23); the second, watching the airplane skywriting (pp. 31-38); the third, in Regent's Park, ending when "the quarter struck—the quarter to twelve" (pp. 98-106); the fourth, leaving the park for Sir William Bradshaw's (pp. 125-142); the fifth (separated by a space in the Hogarth Press edition which does not exist in the Harcourt Brace), in Dr. Bradshaw's office (pp. 144-150); the sixth, at the flat, culminating in the suicide (pp. 211-228); the seventh, his symbolic appearance at the party in the Brad shaws' conversation and Clarissa's thoughts (pp. 279-284). Virginia Woolf structured the novel so that not only does Septimus have his seven "hours," but Clarissa and Peter likewise have seven each. The sections devoted to them are not as distinctly set apart from the rest of the novel as those of Septimus; Clarissa's last three "hours" appear during different stages of her party: the beginning, going upstairs; Clarissa with her Prime Minister and other friends; Clarissa concerned with the death of Septimus, corresponding with Sep timus' own seventh hour, the time when the two symbolically join.5 But the shifts

46 p.m. is also the hour when Clarissa's letter reaches Peter, pp. 234-235, painful and upsetting to him. 'Clarissa's hours: first, the walk to Bond Street, pp. 3-21; second, watching the Prime Minister's/Queen's car, pp. 23-25; third, at home and with Peter, pp. 42-72; fourth, when Richard brings her flowers, her afternoon rest, and seeing Elizabeth go off with Kilman, pp. 178-194; fifth, at the party's beginning, pp. 254-261; sixth, with the Prime Minister and so on, pp. 264-273; seventh, greeting Sally and the Bradshaws, thinking about Septimus, pp. 275-284. Peter's hours: first, the meeting with Clarissa, pp. 59-72; second, Peter's reminiscence in the park, pp. 72-85; third, Peter's memories

238 MODERN FICTION STUDIES

This content downloaded from 143.107.3.152 on Mon, 28 Oct 2019 13:19:41 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms in point of view help to separate the scenes, as well as the difference in their emotional content; to clarify the break between Clarissa's and Peter's final hours, a space is again added in the Hogarth Press edition. Thus the use of the hours in Mrs. Dalloway emerges not merely as a technical device to emphasize the unity of time in the novel, but as a means of illuminating the events themselves, much as medieval manuscripts of the hours are embellished by elaborate designs. They serve to contrast the emotional quality of their durée. They comment on the place those hours have in the characters' day and by extension in their lives, because all their past is contained in the present mo ment. Their essence is the devotion to life which Clarissa feels (compare her "response to old devotions," p. 42). Because Virginia Woolf was an agnostic, it is tempting to bypass any religious symbolism. But that is to miss the light ironic contrast, as well as a certain gravity, which the use of the canonical hours brings to the secular day. The canonical hours also infuse the structure of Mrs. Dalloway with an order that is personal and psychological, yet contained within the temporal frame. Seven is the number of perfect order, symbolically speaking, a universal number reflected in the seven directions of space, the basic series of musical notes, of colors, of the ancient planetary spheres.6 It represents a complete period or cycle, as do the events of Mrs. Dalloway in respect to each of the major characters. Clarissa completes herself not only in a social sense (that is, with the successful party) but in a spiritual sense as she takes on unity with the death of Septimus. Sep timus finishes his life cycle. Peter's love for Clarissa, returned in part by the letter she writes him, comes full turn at the novel's end with his feeling of terror and ecstasy. In Virginia Woolfs opening essay in The Moment, she stresses the psychological duration of the moment-of-being. Here the moment is extended to a qualitative (not quantitative) hour to examine fully its contents. Still another symbolic aspect of the hours may have entered into the novel: their personification as the Horae, deities of times and seasons who, in the Homeric poems, opened and closed the gates of Olympus and attended the throne of the sun-god. Even before the short stories "Mrs. Dalloway in Bond Street" and "The Prime Minister" turned into The Hours, Woolf was refurbishing her reading for the essay "On Not Knowing Greek"7 and drawing at least one idea from her reading of Aeschylus for use in Mrs. Dalloway.8 Three aspects of the Horae are relevant: their relation to the sun, the central symbol of the novel; their connec tion with moral values (Eunomia, Dike, and Irene, representing Law, Justice, and Peace, echo the novel's moral concerns9); and perhaps most important, their significance as cosmic forces that personify not only the moments in time in which these forces act but create opportunity for this action, a concept which also underlies

of the break with Clarissa, pp. 88-98; fourth, following the girl, pp. 106-122; fifth, going to his hotel, to dinner, and to the party, pp. 229-250; sixth, at the party, pp. 262-264; seventh, at the party, pp. 284-296. 6J. E. Cirlot, A Dictionary of Symbols (New York: Philosophical Library, 1962), p. 223. 7The Dalloway ms. notebook II—titled Reviews, 1924, Berg Collection, New York Public Library—contains notes for this essay. 8See Virginia Woolfs diary, vol. II, 28 August and 4 and 14 October 1922. See also my Virginia Woolf: The Inward Voyage (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1970), p. 135. ^These are employed in a negative manner in Mrs. Dalloway: false law in Sir William Bradshaw's dictums; justice awry in the death of Clarissa's sister, caused by Justin Parry's carelessness; the inability of the ensuing peace to heal Septimus' war wounds; et cetera.

NOTES AND DISCUSSION 239

This content downloaded from 143.107.3.152 on Mon, 28 Oct 2019 13:19:41 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms the central portion of To the Lighthouse, "Time Passes," and to some extent the chapter preludes in The Waves and The Years. This sense of cosmic forces permeates Mrs. Dalloway, not only in the mythic figures that inhabit the three "choruses,"10 but in the forces which struggle in Septimus, rendered in both Hellenic and Chris tian imagery, as well as in Clarissa. This pagan imagery is consonant with the use of the canonical metaphor, for in all of Virginia Woolf s novels she combines religious and pagan symbolism to achieve a mythic dimension in time." This makes it even clearer that the hours in Mrs. Dalloway, presided over by Big Ben and St. Margaret's (a secular and a religious figure), are not only part of the novel's structure but of its philosophical concern: the importance of time as the medium in which selfhood and its psychological progressions are formed. HARVENA RICHTER

rrtr

"AND SEATED YE SHALL FALL": SOME LEXICAL MARKERS IN CAMUS'S "JONAS"

While the conclusions of all the stories in Albert Camus's cycle L'Exil et le royaume (1957) are somewhat equivocal, that of "Jonas ou L'Artiste au travail" is par ticularly so. After days and nights of concentration in his loft, Jonas turns his canvas to the wall. "Epuisé, il attendait, assis, les mains offertes sur ses genoux. Il se disait que maintenant il ne travaillerait plus jamais, il était heureux" (my italics).1 Did Camus mean this to imply that work represents an evil? Are artists, like Jonas, to remain assis, despite the tumult of the world? The final view of the doctor comforting Louise with the assurance that her husband, who has fallen from his platform hideaway, will get well does little to tell the reader whether Jonas has found a solution to the opposing forces that tore him asunder: "solitaire ou solidaire" (p. 1652). Throughout the story it is apparent that the word travailler has been textually weighted. The first few pages set off the term. There we learn that in Jonas' early life, everything, whether comfort, a wife, or success, came to him with no effort. All that changed with the advent of the third child (p. 1633), when Jonas is said for the first time to work—a word that appears frequendy thereafter. He

,0Peter Walsh's dream in Regent's Park, the disquisition on Proportion and Conversion, and the old beggar-woman's song. "See The Inward Voyage, pp. 125-127. 'Albert Camus, Théâtre, Récits, Nouvelles, cd. Roger Quilliot, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade (Paris: Gallimard, 1962), pp. 1651-1652. All further references to L'Exil et le royaume will be indicated paren thetically in the text.

Modem Fiction Studies, Volume 28, Nurober 2, Summer 1982. Copyright © 1982 by Purdue Research Foundation. All rights to reproduction in any form reserved.

240 MODERN FICTION STUDIES

This content downloaded from 143.107.3.152 on Mon, 28 Oct 2019 13:19:41 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms