'Mrs' Dalloway': portrait of the artist as a middle-aged woman - novel by Virginia Woolf

Twentieth Century Literature, Spring, 1995 by Jacob Littleton

Nevertheless, it is also possible to overstate the extent to which the party is unreasoned, a product of unknown urges. Without some intentionality and control, Clarissa ceases to be an artist and is a hostess simply. But Clarissa does have control. First, she controls the party's physical aspect: when it is to occur (has she seen people as feeling isolated lately?), who will come (what combination will be successful?), what the scene will look like. Richard's intercession for Ellie Henderson piques Clarissa to make her central defense of her parties as meaningful events; she feels a need for control of the party which indicates how much of her personality is involved in it. Clarissa's control is in the physical scene of the party, from which arise the actions of the guests which constitute the beginnings of the hum of Life which is Clarissa's real goal. If she has judged the moment correctly, laid the scene correctly, she will be rewarded with what she wants from her guests without coercion or persuasion. In the end, this is not very different from the writer or painter, who must also succeed technically for the reader to comprehend his or her message.

Clarissa is minutely aware of how her party fares by her aesthetic standards. In the beginning, before the fire of companionship has been lit, she is terrified that her endeavor has failed: "Anything, any explosion, any horror was better than people wandering aimlessly, standing in a bunch at a corner" (168). As the evening progresses, she feels more optimistic; the hum of life, of communication and connection, has begun. At last she judges her party a success when a guest beats back a curtain while continuing to talk (170). Significantly Clarissa interprets physical signs. Not only does she know just what she wants, she also knows just what it looks and sounds like. Her material focus reinforces the sensual, physical locus of her pleasure. All her philosophy and ideas about life return to the primary fact of enjoyment of life. Her interest in the way her party appears also reveals what isn't important to her as a hostess: great names, prominent people, or the social ladder. The butler rattles off names of guests; for this Clarissa has no response. Everyone, Sally and Peter included, see in her only a status-minded hostess for whom the party is, first and last, an attempt at increasing social stature. While Clarissa does love the conventional symbols of her class, the significance they have for her is far from conventional. The complex of values embodied in Clarissa's beloved Lady Bexborough relate to her parties not practically, but obliquely; she creates parties not to advance herself or her husband's career in society, but to express society's values (filtered through Clarissa's consciousness) as part of the whole array of ideas brought to life by the party.

Finally, Clarissa senses herself to have a stake in her production that goes beyond that of the ordinary hostess: "She ... couldn't help feeling that she had, anyhow, made this happen, that it marked a stage" (170). This feeling is insubstantial and fleeting, not surprisingly in that she has neither cultural not personal support for it. Yet the feeling cannot be wholly eradicated either. This suspicion of her power is symptomatic of Clarissa's philosophy and art generally; uncertainty enveloping an undeniable but mysterious presence.