A Room of Ones Own?

A Psychic Space of Clarissa Dalloways

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Edina Gerzsenyi Dr. Sllei Nra Modern British Literature and Culture Seminar BTAN22008BA 19th November, 2012

Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf has numerous interpretative approaches and one of the most interesting perspectives is the psychological analysis of the protagonist. The modern structure of the novel enables the author to describe Clarissa through her own memories as well as through other characters flashbacks. However, the reader can only get the real image of her when she is alone in her own room. Furniture of her place, memories and the way she looks herself give a complete picture of Mrs. Dalloway. Thus, her own room becomes her psychic space in which her emotional processes revealed through the aforementioned elements. First of all, it is very important to note that the writer has an essay called A Room of Ones Own. In this work, Virginia Woolf claims that a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction (A Room 1). However, Mrs. Dalloway is not a writer she can be considered to be an artist. An artist is the sense of the perfect hostess who always aims at making her party perfect that pleases her guests. Hence, her own room gains an empathic meaning in the novel. It can give her the place where she can prepare for her work of art, for the party, as the female writer can prepare her fiction. She can reconsider her actions and even her life in this intimate space and Woolf can analyze her protagonist psychologically she gives the backgrounds of her protagonists deeds. As the wife of member of the Parliament, Clarissa Dalloway always struggles to balance her internal life with the external world. When she comes home from shopping she goes to her room instead Lady Brutons lunch since only Mr. Dalloway was invited. She tries to be one of the significant ladies of Westminster who is so important that must be invited to every parties and meals but Lady Bruton did not asks her to have lunch with her. She recognizes it as a kind of social failure since, in the life of the English upper class, party symbolizes life, being a member of society. With this feeling Clarissa goes to the attic, to her shelter where

she can be all by herself and Woolf unfolds her protagonists own thoughts, feelings and personality that are influenced by no one. First of all, the location of Clarissas room tells a lot about her character. It is on the attic, separated from everything else. When she is going up to her bedroom it is described as she would completely leave the real world: like a nun withdrawing or a child exploring a tower (Woolf 33) and go somewhere where she could be alone with her own feelings and memories. It suggests that she does not want to share her real self with anybody and keeps her private life between the walls of her bedroom and does not even allow her husband, with whom she decided to live the rest of her life, to get to know his partner in life. In fact, it was her husband, Richard Dalloway, who insisted on having her own room in order to sleep undisturbed because of her previous mental illness. It is not clear what kind of illness she had but it is revealed that it was a mental illness and she was cured by Mr. William Bradshaw. It is very important that according to the doctor, his patients need to regain their sense of proportion (Woolf 111) and he tries to achieve this by separating his patients away from their families and this attic room meant the isolation for Clarissa. However, unlike Septimus, who does not want to leave his Rezia alone, she enjoys this loneliness. Her room gives her privacy and the necessary distance from everything and everybody which again confirms that her decision to marry Richard instead of Peter Walsh was right because the latter would not give Clarissa her well-desired privacy. As Jesse Wolfe states in his critical essay, [u]nlike Peter's love, Richard's is not oppressive. It provides Clarissa with space, both physically (a room and ominously narrow bed of her own) and psychically (in which to work through her problems, to live a private life) (35). Moreover, furniture of her room is quite telling: there is a narrow bed in it. As she was previously compared to nun, her sleeping place can be similar to a nuns. It is designed for a single person in order to sleep or read in it. In her bed there is no place for somebody else, not

even for her husband to share her intimacy with him. It is the symbol of isolation and sterility that comes from Clarissa's sexual refusal (Wyatt 446). Consequently, Mrs. Dalloway segregates herself, as she would be a girl or a young woman who had to protect her virginity from men. Moreover, Woolf goes further: she could not dispel a virginity preserved through childbirth which clung to her like a sheet (Woolf 34). Clarissa does not care about sexuality in her fifties not as she did in her youth. Lying in her bed, Mrs. Dalloway thinks about love that is not part of her life anymore. Her private room is the only place where it is acceptable to think about it. Outside her attic she always has to be conventional and she has to please everybody. She remembers the occasions when she failed to satisfy Richards needs. Clarissa considers herself to be cold, not to be able to ripple the cold contact of man and woman, or of women together (Woolf 34). She thinks that she is not capable for love, at least, not with men. The protagonist confesses herself that she felt real love only with Sally Seaton. Her psyche starts to starts to analyze her relationship with men and women. It is her room where she can rethink her sexuality the most private area of a woman. It cannot be talked with a friend or with a spouse even in the twentieth century. What is more, if this relationship is lesbian, it totally goes against the convention of the Westminsters society. That is why she has retreated in the wake of this socially proscribed sexual-emotional possibility into a legal, heterosexual union that cannot be fulfilling (Wolfe 36). In her own bed and own room, Mrs. Dalloway tries to call up the moment when she experienced real attraction towards somebody, when she had the feeling of true love. She finds it in her youth, in her relationship with Sally. It is a teenager enthusiasm culminating in kissing that Clarissa considers being love. On the other hand, she liked Sally more because of her rebels and less because of her sex. The protagonists adores Sally since it was Sally who showed her that real life is not the same as Aunt Helena taught her and revealed for Clarissa

how sheltered the life at Bourton was (Woolf 36). The young rebellion enlightened Clarissa on the subject of sex and the problems of world. This suggests that psychologically Clarissa is still attached to the world outside of Westminster and she is not an empty-headed woman for whom social events are the only mean of self-expression, however, she does not live her life according to this. Last but not least, Woolf finishes her psychological analysis when she describes her protagonists sitting is in her room in front of her dressing table. In her private space and in solitude, Mrs. Dalloway starts observing her appearance. Although she is not so young now, she thinks that she is not old yet since she considers her face to be pink as a young girls. It gives us the sight of a Clarissa who is not the conventional Mrs. Dalloway: someone who is independent, fresh, peachy and can do anything that pleases her. Or with other words: the young Clarissa who can become anybody in her life and her aim is not to be a perfect hostess of her husband. What is more, she sees her real self in the mirror. The image in the mirror is an image of a woman who was that very night to give a party; of Clarissa Dalloway, of herself (Woolf 40). She admits that this is the real Clarissa, who purses her lips and stiff as a poker. She is the women of the English upper class who does not show to the public her real self and who hides her real feelings from other people. She shows a Clarissa who is always perfect in her appearance, always kind with everybody, always the same and never shows any sign of being indefinite. It is her very room, her psychic space where she reveals her real personality that is only theatrical. After taking into consideration the aforementioned factors, it can be clearly stated that Clarissa Dalloways room is her psychic space. Being in her room, Virginia Woolf gives a psychological analysis of her protagonist. Furniture of Clarissas room gives the image of a woman who likes to keep the distance even in her marriage. The way she looks herself

unfolds that she does not show the reality to the public she acts as it is required for a wife of a member of the House of Commons. Furthermore, readers are allowed to get an insight of her privacy, of her deepest desires her sexuality. Consequently, the bedroom of Mrs. Dalloway has a huge importance in the novel. It is the very place that provides her space psychically where she can live her private life and live through her problems.

Works Cited Wolfe, Jesse. The Sane Woman in the Attic: Sexuality and Self-Authorship in Mrs. Dalloway. Modern Fiction Studies 51.1 (Spring 2005): 34-59 Woolf, Virginia. A Room of Ones Own. London: Hograth Press, 1929. ---. Mrs. Dalloway. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1992. Wyatt, Jean M. Mrs. Dalloway: Literary Allusion as Structural Metaphor. PMLA 88.3 (May, 1978): 440-451