Authorial Point of View in Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dallo Way Author(s): David Neal Miller Source: The Journal of Narrative Technique, Vol. 2, No. 2 (May, 1972), pp. 125-132 Published by: Journal of Narrative Theory Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/30225278 Accessed: 28-10-2019 13:28 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 Journal of Narrative Theory is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Journal of Narrative Technique This content downloaded from 143.107.3.152 on Mon, 28 Oct 2019 13:28:08 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms AUTHORIAL POINT OF VIEW IN VIRGINIA WOOLF'S MRS. DALLO WAY David Neal Miller The subtle narrative mode of Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway has created confusion in critical literature: the voice of the third-person narrator, rarely present except to identify the speaker or consciousness through which the novel is being presented at a particular moment, is hardly adequate to establish an authorial point of view (we refer of course to the author's persona and not to the historical Virginia Woolf) distinct from and more reliable than the points of view of the individual characters. Yet Daiches, Hafley, and Roberts' represent the consensus in "sensing" an authorial point of view, though they must turn to the author's critical writings for substantiation of their intuition. How, within a work, may an author establish a reliable point of view in the absence or near-absence of an omniscient narrator, addressing the reader "behind the backs" of his narrative counsciousnesses? Several devices by which this is accomplished in Mrs. Dalloway will be discussed in this article. Philip Toynbee notes a "failure of differentiation" in Mrs. Dalloway since the "same language encloses nearly all the people in the book."'2 It is certainly true that the style and tone of reported thought (though not of direct discourse) is remarkably constant for all characters; I would suggest, however, that this is rather a signal than a lapse: the reader is alerted that the linguistic surface does not belong fully to the character whose thoughts are being recorded, but at least in part to the recording consciousness. Thus the reappearance of groups of words and images in the thoughts of more than one character does not seem improbable. This device--of which the reader but not the characters are aware-is Virginia Woolf's primary means of establishing an authorial point of view. The authorial point of view identifies Clarissa Dalloway with Septimus Warren Smith by page 211 (of the Harvest edition).3 Clarissa has a moment of insight while repairing her favorite green dress: 125 This content downloaded from 143.107.3.152 on Mon, 28 Oct 2019 13:28:08 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 126 The Journal of Narrative Technique Quiet descended on her, calm, content, as her needle, drawing the silk smoothly to its gentle pause, collected the green folds together and attached them, very lightly, to the belt. So on a summer's day waves collect, overbal- ance, and fall; collect and fall; and the whole world seems to be saying "that is all" more and more ponderously, until even the heart in the body which lies in the sun on the beach says too, That is all. Fear no more, says the heart, committing its burden to some sea, which sighs collectively for all sorrows, and renews, begins, collects, lets fall. And the body alone listens to the passing bee; the wave breaking; the dog barking, far away barking and barking. (pp. 58-59) The reader's attention is drawn to this extraordinary passage by more than its beauty. It is one of only three extended attempts to render consciousness in language and syntax other than that used uniformly for action and reflection, setting it aside as reflection of a different order. (This passage approaches interior monologue:4 the sentence cadence is slowed down and made rhythmic by repeti- tion of verbs depicting the sea's movement--"collect, overbalance, and fall," "Renews, begins, collects, lets fall"; by frequent replacement of commas by semicolons; by a lack of characteristic parenthetical observations, and by the alliteration-assonance of the final sentence.) Clarissa's insight, that individual fear may be stilled by identification with the superindividual flux which surrounds all things, is identical to Septimus' 152 pages later, although only the narrator and the reader are aware of this. The establishment of an authorial point of view by means of linguistic surface places a burden of recognition upon the reader; he must note the reappearance of words and patterns previously encountered or deprive himself of authorial commentary. Septimus, lying on the sofa of his sitting room, echoes Clarissa's insight: Outside the trees dragged their leaves like nets through the depths of the air; the sound of water was in the room and through the waves came the voices of birds singing. Every power poured its treasures on his head, and his hand lay there on the back of his sofa, as he had seen his hand lie when he was bathing, floating, on the top of the waves, while far away on shore he heard dogs barking and barking far away. Fear no more, says the heart in the body; fear no more. (p. 211) The author's hand is subtle: the sea simile and the common insight which it conveys do not reappear later in the novel, but are rather made conspicuous by the fourth of five mutations of Shakespeare's "Fear no more the heat o' the sun,/ Nor the furious winter's rages.""5 This readily-noted repetition acts as authorial signal of the importance of the passage which it accompanies, as well as (a) providing a measure of Clarissa's assimilation of the Shakespearean fragment6 and (b) further linking her with Septimus: the fifth repetition of "Fear no more," in Clarissa's final reverie on death, which we shall later examine in detail, recalls the identification here made. The narrative voice has, then, established an identification of Clarissa Dallo- way with Septimus Warren Smith and has provided the reader, by means of This content downloaded from 143.107.3.152 on Mon, 28 Oct 2019 13:28:08 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Mrs. Dalloway 127 recurring word patterns on the linguistic surface, with authorial confirmation of this identification by page 211, 73 pages before Clarissa senses it (Septimus never does sense it). Does the narrative voice share this insight? That is, need the reader accept its substance as well as its existence as part of his emotional contact? Hafley takes simple identification as the "central movement" of the novel; Daiches assumes the authorial validity of its substance, but only on the basis of the author's preface to the Modem Library edition of 1928.7 There is, I believe, hitherto unexamined textual confirmation of the validity of the mutual insight; we shall examine several techniques of confirmation in the follow- ing paragraphs. Characteristic of Virginia Woolf's prose style is the frequent use of simile, the controlling consciousness of which is often difficult to identify. From whose consciousness do the following emanate? It was a splendid morning too. Like the pulse of a perfect heart, life struck straight through the streets. (p. 82) There was nobody. Her words faded. So a rocket fades. Its sparks, having grazed their way into the night, surrender to it, dark descends, pours over the outlines of houses and lovers . (p. 69) The former might indeed be the thoughts of Peter Walsh in narrated monologue;8 the latter could not possibly be those of Rezia, certainly not as she would have expressed them. They are, rather, literary devices belonging to the linguistic, surface and express the authorial point of view. In the above contexts they establish the convention of privileged simile and lend authorial validity to the insights of Clarissa and Septimus, presented in both cases as simile. The reader who perceives this convention will give special credence to statements presented as simile. The marking of clocktime within the novel is a narrative device which would appear to serve three functions: (a) to orient the reader to the progression of external action and thus satisfy a residual demand for story line; (b) to provide a device-the chimes of Big Ben-to mediate between two characters' conscious- nesses (the motor car and aeroplane serve similar functions); and (c) to reassert the temporal determination of at least the outer man. (Time passes regardless of one's attitude toward its passage: Clarissa is, after her insight, still pale from her illness and fifty years old.) The inescapability of time's passage is asserted twice in the same words, first as Clarissa's and then as Peter's thoughts; repetition of word patterns on the linguistic surface, we have established, presents the authorial point of view. Big Ben strikes, "first a warning, musical; then the hour, irrevocable" (pp. 5, 177). This assertion, however, is decisively undermined-also in the authorial voice; indeed it must be, since preoccupation with time will be identified as the common denominator of those characters whose world-views are rejected by the narrative consciousness.