The Queerness of Mrs. Dalloway

Rachel Poulton

Following an upper-class woman through a single day, Virginia Woolf’s 1925 novel Mrs. Dalloway begins with Clarissa Dalloway buying flowers for a party in the morning and ends with Clarissa being the hostess of the party in the evening. Mrs. Dalloway was Woolf’s fourth novel and made her famous. Woolf’s experimentation with the form of the novel led critics to consider it a classic of modernism. Mrs. Dalloway aims to tell a story that is truer to the disheartening 1920s, coping with the effects of World War I, no longer able to believe in patriotism as a defense for the loss of so many young men’s lives. Mrs. Dalloway does not provide readers with much plot, focusing instead on the shifting, elusive experience of being. Its use of stream of consciousness, inhabiting the points of view of numerous characters and denying the reader the clarity of a ‘God’s eye’ point of view and an ending that resolves and completes the novel, exemplifies this elusive experience of being.

The characters and plot of Mrs. Dalloway reflect the ways that Woolf’s goals of form and theme were changed by having written, first, the short story “Mrs Dalloway in Bond Street.”  The story begins in a crowded street scene as Mrs. Dalloway bustles down the busy Bond Street and pauses to admire Lady Bexborough, a woman of high social standard, as she passes in a car. The time frame of the story is just this encounter, one privileged woman admiring another. The development of this short story into a novel led to the installation of characters such as Peter Walsh, a former lover of Mrs. Dalloway’s who has spent his life in government service in India, and Septimus Smith, a shell-shocked veteran who ultimately commits suicide due to the effects of the war and the inability of his society to understand his mental distress. The novel does not only focus on Clarissa; it tells the story of Septimus Smith, of Peter Walsh, of Sally Seton, of Elizabeth and Richard Dalloway, all alongside the story of Clarissa, who embodies the elusiveness of being–the temporality of life and moments. Woolf experiments with combining the lens of fiction and the lens of psychoanalysis, which had not been done before, delving into the psychological pressures of belonging to the upper class. The way that the novel places Mrs. Dalloway’s stream of consciousness in a world in which readers have access to the consciousnesses of other characters gives readers something like the experience of being human, perceiving and responding, moving through space in a single day.

Mrs. Dalloway is closely associated with the stream of consciousness style which Woolf uses to tell the story. In stream of consciousness writing, the reader is withheld from the ‘God’s eye view.’ Rather, characters' thoughts ricochet from one to the next, from scene to scene as they pass by each other in Regent Park or see the same aeroplane. Readers see characters’ memories of the past, their thoughts about others, and the way they perceive themselves. Woolf represents the ordinary human mind in an unprecedented way. She explained in her essay “Modern Fiction” that “life is not a series of gig lamps symmetrically arranged; life is a luminous halo, a semi-transparent envelope surrounding us from the beginning of consciousness to the end” (Woolf 160). This passage demonstrates her narrative technique as she defies the modern form of the novel, in modernist fashion, by telling the story using the stream of consciousness technique. Using the stream-of-consciousness style allowed Woolf, in a different way from Conrad, to portray the honesty and naturalness of the progression of thoughts. Stream-of-consciousness combined with free indirect discourse allowed readers to get to know characters on an intimate level while still seeing the difference in the way they presented themselves to society.

One of the most striking parts of Virginia Woolf’s psychological, stream of consciousness, social critique Mrs. Dalloway is its elusiveness. The novel demonstrates an embrace of fluidity and tolerance of seeming contradictions, and it ends with a blunt, unproductive conclusion referring to Clarissa Dalloway: “For there she was” (Woolf 166). Readers may ask, where is there? Is it a state of being? What role does the word “for” have here? Does it mean because or behold? Woolf does not only present Mrs. Dalloway as a multifaceted character, but she uses third person omniscient narration in an innovative manner which allows the narrator to inhabit the voices of all characters’ subjective points of view, show how characters judge each other, and how the lives of all characters intersect and affect the story as a whole. Clarissa is many things, and Woolf does not intend that the mystery of who she is, or who any of the other characters are, be solved by the end of the novel. To read Mrs. Dalloway is to tolerate Woolf’s embrace of fluidity and elusiveness and realize that consciousness is really key.

Particularly looking at Clarissa Dalloway, Doris Kilman, Elizabeth Dalloway, and less centrally, Sally Seton, these women can be usefully contextualized in a queer understanding of Mrs. Dalloway. Clarissa shared only one kiss with Sally Seton when she was a young girl, but the way this moment is written about and comes back to her suggests it was a moment of supreme happiness and fulfillment of purpose. Doris Kilman, on the other hand, is a lesbian–she is queer by the very definition of the word. Though the novel, arguably, paints her in a negative, or dislikeable light, Miss Kilman may act as a foil for Clarissa Dalloway in her comfortability with her queerness and her ability to think structurally–beyond the individual because individuals cannot transcend their social contexts. Elizabeth Dalloway, still differently, has an interesting relationship with Miss Kilman. Though it cannot necessarily be called a queer relationship, Elizabeth despises her mother and seems drawn to the radical, lesbian, and spiritual Doris Kilman. One implication of their friendship asks if Elizabeth, who despises her mother, adores Miss Kilman because of her mother’s hatred for her. Another implication asks whether Elizabeth admires Miss Kilman’s dedication to being her true self, and what this means for Elizabeth’s queerness. All three women, and Sally Seton, present unresolved complexities in their character or their desires. One of the most striking parts of Virginia Woolf’s post-modern famous novel Mrs. Dalloway is its refusal to resolve ambiguities and complexities; instead, the novel can usefully be understood as queer, particularly according to Sara Ahmed’s idea: refusing to walk a straight line (Ahmed 576). This thesis will be considering queerness in two senses: a novel form that refuses linearity as well as a productive, conclusive ending, and queerness of women who find relationships with other women—not necessarily sexual—of central importance in their lives. 

Sara Ahmed’s discussion of orientation is central to my argument in its persistence that queerness is an orientation which refuses to walk a straight line by not turning towards heteronormative constructs. In Ahmed’s discussion of orientations and straight lines, she explores how sexuality is related to the concept of orientation. She suggests that, “[i]f orientation is a matter of how we reside in space, then sexual orientation might also be a matter of residence, of how we inhabit spaces, and who or what we inhabit spaces with” (Ahmed 543). She expands this definition to include that “the effects of what we tend toward” include a temporal space which is almost but not exactly available in the present (554). In terms of sexual orientation, Ahmed asserts that we do not, then, just have our sexuality; it is not a fundamental part of identity. Rather, sexual orientation is a result of how one inhabits a space and what that person is oriented towards. Individuals turn toward objects in heterosexual culture which either keep us on a straight line or deter us from that straight line. This idea of refusing to walk a straight line will be useful in analyzing the ways in which the novel and a few of its characters may be considered queer. Queerness is not an intended part of that straight line our life events follow which consists of “birth, childhood, adolescence, marriage, reproduction, death” (554). If we go astray by not staying on this straight line, there must be some “straightening” device to keep us on track; Ahmed defines this as “heteronormativity” (562). This is an interesting lens through which to consider in what way Doris Kilman, Clarissa Dalloway, and Elizabeth may contribute to the queer aspects of the novel and be considered queer in their own respect.

In the following sections, I will outline and delve into the ways in which understanding Doris Kilman, Clarissa Dalloway, and Elizabeth Dalloway as refusing to walk a straight line, such as in Ahmed’s definition of queer, is useful in grounding a deeper understanding of the ways in which the novel itself can be considered queer, in its refusal to walk a straight line. Doris Kilman refuses to walk a straight line in her orientation towards life; she is oriented against the upper class’s easy way of life and her social world’s inability to accept and understand who she is. Clarissa Dalloway refuses to walk a straight line in her queer moment with Sally Seton, which refuses to stay in the past. This moment recurs and puts tension on Clarissa’s decisions in life to marry Richard and be ‘straightened’ by the heteronormativity in twentieth century London life. Elizabeth Dalloway refuses to walk a straight line in her exploration of herself. She is not confined by the social place of her mother, thanks to Doris Kilman’s encouragement. She desires to become a person of stature and one who helps others. For a woman, seeing herself in these progressive, mostly masculine roles is displacing and an example of refusing to walk a straight line. Understanding these women as queer, by Ahmed’s definition, is foundational to understanding the way the novel is queer in the same sense. Its form, narration, treatment of time, and even its characters can be usefully understood as queer as well.

​​“Were This or Were That” – Doris Kilman

Doris Kilman can be considered to act as a foil for Mrs. Dalloway in her detestment for celebrations of wealth and societal mobility, her piety, and her sexual orientation. Doris Kilman is the only character in the scope of the novel who is outwardly a lesbian. She wants her life to contribute to the wellbeing of humanity and she dresses plainly as a form of solidarity and a declaration of her principles. Miss. Kilman may be read by some as a foil to Mrs. Dalloway in her outward ability to proclaim herself as this or as that. Mrs. Dalloway, in contrast, “would not say of anyone in the world now that they were this or were that” (Woolf 5). Miss. Kilman is adamantly different from Clarissa in many more spheres than her lack of wealth, including her piety, her value for the immaterial, and her structural thinking. Doris Kilman knows that individuals cannot ever really escape their social contexts, and for this reason, she rejects societal celebrations of wealth and does not mind how society views her sexuality and the way she lives her life dressed in frumpy clothes, rejecting the ostentatious nature of the upper class.

Miss. Kilman’s feelings of discontentment towards Mrs. Dalloway demonstrate her deep feelings of insecurity because she cannot afford nice things and live with a love for the material. After Elizabeth and Miss. Kilman leave to go to the shops, Mrs. Dalloway yells as the two exit the house, “Remember the party!” (107). She attempts to throw herself, and her party, right into the center of Miss. Kilman and Elizabeth’s friendship. A few pages before this quote, Miss. Kilman says that she does not hate Mrs. Dalloway, she just wanted to overcome her, unmask her. She believes she is a fool. This passage is full of more passion through statements like: “...it was not the body; it was the soul and its mockery that she wished to subdue; make her feel her mastery” (Woolf 106). Miss. Kilman shows how Clarissa’s judgment of her and laughing at her truly affects her and how she feels about herself. She feels sad that she cannot afford the pretty things Mrs. Dalloway can, but she reminds herself that this is only the flesh, and that something eternal awaits her good, patient, forgiveness. Nevertheless, Miss. Kilman expresses strong hatred of Clarissa and her life of vanity which is neither serious nor good. Considering Clarissa’s feelings about Miss. Kilman in the first few pages, that her religious ecstasy “made her callous and dulled her feelings”, Miss. Kilman’s passionate expression of her feelings, does not display dulled feelings or callousness—it very much demonstrates how her life is run by her emotions and passions (8). Clarissa’s life, on the other hand, is run by logic and cool, calm, collectedness—what Miss. Kilman views as “a tissue of vanity” and her maskedness (109) . I find it interesting that Miss. Kilman ultimately comforts herself by remembering that she has got Elizabeth. She has a piece of the Dalloways, of the upper-class, extraordinariness. She has got Elizabeth and all of her potential—everything she will become, and Miss. Kilman certainly would not like to see her care about the same things that her mother does as she becomes a woman.

Miss. Kilman is more complex than her being oriented away from social acceptance and towards her own desires. Elizabeth, presented in her adolescence coming into herself as a young adult woman, exists harmoniously with Miss. Kilman who is in her forties and is legible in her society as a lesbian who values religion and dislikes societal class superiority and inferiority. Looking at Miss. Kilman through Ahmed’s lens presents a foil of sorts for Clarissa. Unlike Clarissa, Miss. Kilman has not lived her life on the straight line. She has veered off orienting herself towards women and towards her own unique way of living. She is a lesbian who has no care for how society views her. She is Elizabeth’s educator; she helps shape her mind and show her that she is not defined by society's view of her–something her mother may have taught her by her behavior. If Miss. Kilman was defined by society’s eyes, she would not be of much worth because of her lack of material goods, as Clarissa views her. Instead, she chooses to define herself, and she tries to inspire Elizabeth to do the same and not to follow her mother’s influence. Miss. Kilman rejects heteronormativity, or any normativity really, choosing to identify with people who are struggling or people who are not at the top of the social pyramid, like herself. After an awkward and disheartening encounter with Clarissa, Miss. Kilman thinks that “[Clarissa’s] life was a tissue of vanity and deceit. Yet Doris Kilman had been overcome. She had, as a matter of fact, very nearly burst into tears when Clarissa Dalloway laughed at her. ‘It is the flesh, it is the flesh,’” (Woolf 109). Here, readers see Miss. Kilman is more complex than her being oriented away from social acceptance and towards radicalism. She still holds her faith near, promising herself that she can control the flesh she has overcome Clarissa. Though, evidently, the flesh is harder to control than she would like. 

Clarissa Dalloway: The Triangle of Selfhood, Identity, and Expectations

Clarissa Dalloway finds herself in a complex triangle involving her selfhood, her identity and societal expectations of who she must be as Mrs. Richard Dalloway. Clarissa’s selfhood, or the way in which she describes herself, is put under pressure by her identity, by her roles in her family, society, and relationships, and by societal expectations of women as being purifying angels of the house. Clarissa fits well into her role as a hostess and wife of Richard Dalloway, though she faces these complexities surrounding her selfhood and identity when her past anachronistically recurs in her present. Memories of her kiss with Sally, Sally’s rebelliousness, and intimate conversations with Sally about reforming the world fill her mind when she is in her bedroom alone; these memories contrast with her identity and her sense of self as defined by society. To society, she is Mrs. Richard Dalloway, and she throws wonderful parties and purifies her husband and daughter as their moral guide and cleanser. These expectations create complexities between who society expects her to be because of the life she has chosen for herself, and what her desires truly point her identity and selfhood towards.

Woolf upholds the fluid and inessential self which is typical of modernism through Clarissa’s discomfort with the idea of a permanent self. On one of the first pages of the novel, Clarissa is said to “not say of any one in the world now that they were this or were that.…she would not say of herself, I am this, I am that” (Woolf 6). This is one of many unresolved complexities about Clarissa; she will not identify herself, or anyone, in a permanent, labeling manner. She is uncomfortable with a permanent identity – one that is neither fluid nor able to fluctuate and change.

Clarissa has stayed on Ahmed’s declared ‘straight line’ of life events through her marriage to Richard and their bringing Elizabeth into the world, but the temporality of her kiss with Sally raises questions of whether Clarissa was influenced by heteronormativity. Clarissa seems content and satisfied with her life, except that the “most exquisite moment of her whole life” happened to be when Sally Seton kissed her on the lips (Woolf 29). Initially, this moment floats into Clarissa’s mind the morning of her party as she solitarily ascends the stairs to her bedroom. This may be suggestive of some sexual feelings towards Sally that Clarissa wishes to suppress or it may be suggestive of those sexual feelings which are lacking in her relationship with Richard. This moment, regardless, shows Clarissa oriented in a non-heteronormative manner–in a queer manner. Though Clarissa’s life ultimately stayed on the straight line, readers may wonder whether Ahmed’s suggested straightening device of heteronormativity affected Clarissa. Clarissa cares deeply about her perceived social image, and veering off of the straight line orientation may be seen as dangerous. Perhaps, the thrill of veering from the straight line and being oriented towards something different scared her and the straightening device pulled her back into assumed social safety.

Elizabeth Dalloway: In Her Own Time

Looking at Elizabeth through Ahmed’s lens, she has not yet lived enough of her life to determine what her line looks like, though she is oriented toward being radically herself. Elizabeth does not desire to be like her mother, nor does she enjoy parties and social upkeep. She is uninterested in her changing body and the looks she receives walking down the street. In the passage in which she rides the omnibus through the Strand by herself, Elizabeth expresses that “she would like to have a profession. She would become a doctor, a farmer, possibly go into Parliament if she found it necessary, all because of the Strand” (Woolf 116). Elizabeth sees all of her future ahead of her in this passage. She is young and has her whole life ahead of her, and all she knows is that she does not hope for her life to mirror back her mother’s life. Through Ahmed’s lens, Elizabeth is oriented away from the heteronormative path which her mother has taken. She is oriented towards freedom, exploration, curiosity, and passion. These orientations may very well not lead her to the straight line orientation which her mother has pursued, though many may assume that Elizabeth’s curiosity is a product of her stage of life as an adolescent becoming an adult. Perhaps, all eighteen year old young women desire to have a career and prove themselves capable and different from their parents. Elizabeth is not a character who has enough data to support either claim; Woolf deliberately leaves her orientation ambiguous.

Elizabeth’s trip through the Strand represents the way she may be considered queer in the unending possibilities and freedoms she sees in her future; she is unconcerned with walking a straight line. Many critics have interested themselves in the passage where Elizabeth rides the omnibus through the Strand. Interestingly, this passage about Elizabeth valuing her freedom seems to act as a counterpart to the beginning of the novel as Mrs. Dalloway goes to buy the flowers herself. Though Elizabeth is coming of age, this passage is full of sensuality, sexuality, possibility, and freedom. Mrs. Dalloway’s trip to Bond Street is to fulfill her duty as hostess, wife, society woman—though, notably, she finds immense joy in flowers and in London life. The ordinariness is striking and beautiful to her. For Elizabeth, the freedom, and endless possibilities of life are striking and beautiful to her. She dreams of becoming a doctor or a farmer, and reflects on what makes people good. Her reflections about Miss Kilman are valuable insight into Elizabeth’s judgment of her, or her authentic thoughts about religion, which she seems to discard, and replace with the idea of becoming something meaningful. Miss Kilman’s unconventional nature is expressed through Elizabeth’s eyes as she remembers her saying that women of her generation could do anything (116). Clarissa Dalloway seems to embody the opposite of this statement—the conventional belief that women belong in the home, supporting their husband and throwing nice parties. Elizabeth seems drawn toward Miss Kilman’s belief that women can take whatever path in life they desire, without concerning themselves with the opinion of high society.

Scholar Candace Bond closely reads this same passage and identifies the “queer alley” and “bye-street” which Elizabeth notices driving by as “transgressive spaces, connecting seemingly distinct and incompatible modes of life in order to imagine new spatio-social configurations. Within these ‘tempting’ spaces, patriarchal categories of class, gender, and sexuality might be escaped or reimagined” (Bond 63). Looking through the lens Bond has provided, Elizabeth can be understood as queer because she is interested in orienting herself towards these transgressive, free spaces where she can explore who she is and how she wants to express herself. Readers do not have as much access to Elizabeth as they do to Clarissa and Miss. Kilman. She is a character who acts both out of defiance to her mother and in alignment with the radically different Doris Kilman. In this way, Elizabeth may be said to be oriented towards free self expression and a non-straight line, in Sara Ahmed’s definition. She is interested in the professions London has to offer her, is intrigued by the queer alleys and bye-streets, and does not look forward to her mother’s parties or the romantic looks she has begun receiving from men. 

Why is This Important: 

There are many ways queer literary theorists could dissect Mrs. Dalloway. The only starting point is certainly not only the kiss between Sally and Clarissa. It involves other characters, the scope of time and space, gender norms, how marriage is represented. Though, the goal of this paper was to offer a strand of thought, following the novel’s refusal of linearity and its characters’ contribution to this proposed queerness by refusing to walk a straight line, and how this strand of thought may usefully be understood as queer. Part of how Woolf works to critique the social system and the concept of the essential self is through her undermining of heteronormativity; she presents queer relationships, moments, and characters, as though heteronormativity has no place or power. It is not uncommon for feminist critics of Woolf to comment on her “interest in the contact between two women” (Caughie 306). As an author and as a person, Woolf undermines heteronormativity through her work and how she lived. Ahmed’s construct of orientations and straight lines is helpful when closely considering the ways this novel may be considered queer. Mrs. Dalloway, as a whole text, is oriented towards the inessential self, the absence of, or overwhelming presence of, heteronormativity, and the contentment with unresolvable complexities surrounding being. 

It is rather difficult to define the term queer, though Woolf puts less emphasis on the product and more emphasis on the process. Human identity is too complex to boil down into one product, but every experience, relationship, and encounter which shapes an individual into their identity is more valuable; this is a queer concept because the product is what tends to be valued more heavily. From the perspective of Peter Walsh, he profoundly notes that “[t]he compensation of growing old…was simply this…one has gained - at last! - the power which adds the supreme flavour to existence–the power of taking hold of experience, of turning it round, slowly, in the light” (Woolf 66). This quote personifies the queer concept that the process is more valuable than the product. Woolf suggests that this wisdom comes with aging, and she shows characters later in life doing this very thing which Peter Walsh discusses. There are several older women in Mrs. Dalloway alone who are going through menopause or older, and Woolf depicts them as grown out of their prime–they are unable to give what they used to give. This is not to say that they are less feminine or capable women, rather, that losing the ability to create children feels like one cannot promise to fulfill their feminine, wifely duties. As Clarissa ages she holds onto memories from her past and keeps them close to her to remember when she needs them. Clarissa takes hold of her experiences with Sally and looks closely at them and keeps them with her. This is not to say that reminiscing is queer, rather that to be satisfied with the unresolved ambiguities of life is necessary and that enjoying the process of life rather than putting emphasis on the product of one’s life as a whole is an aberrational concept which may be aligned with queerness. 

The form of the novel and its refusal to move predictably and productively is also usefully understood as queer; it exemplifies the emphasis of the product rather than the process.

In the same fashion which Mrs. Dalloway ends, unproductive and blunt, so will I.