For having lived in Westminster—how many years now? over twenty—one feels even in the midst of the traffic, or waking at night, Clarissa was positive, a particular hush, or solemnity; an indescribable pause; a suspense (but that might be her heart, affected, they said, by influenza) before Big Ben strikes. There! Out it boomed. First a warning, musical; then the hour, irrevocable. The leaden circles dissolved in the air. [...]making it up, building it round one, tumbling it, creating it every moment afresh; but the veriest frumps, the most dejected of miseries sitting on doorsteps (drink their downfall) do the same; can't be dealt with, she felt positive, by Acts of Parliament for that very reason: they love life. In people's eyes, in the swing, tramp, and trudge; in the bellow and the uproar; the carriages, motor cars, omnibuses, vans, sandwich men shuffling and swinging; brass bands; barrel organs; in the triumph and the jingle and the strange high singing of some aeroplane overhead was what she loved; life; London; this moment of June. (p. 2)
Discarding the conventions of traditional Edwardian novels to investigate human nature, Woolf in her essay ‘Modern Fiction’ contends that the major task of modern novelists is to trace the ‘moment[s] of importance’ ,the ‘myriad impressions’ received by an ‘ordinary mind on an ordinary day’ at the present moment in the same ‘uncircumscribed’ way that we let the atoms fall in their naturally incoherent order. What she advocates is a shift of focus on the individual characters’ subjectivity and inward consciousness of ‘now’, their continuous flow of fleeting or fragmented thoughts, and the unnoticed pattern of everyday life that is previously dismissed as mundane and unworthy of attention by her predecessors. Her concern with the ‘moment of importance’ is prominent in her own novels, one of which being Mrs. Dalloway. With reference to the above excerpt, how does Woolf incorporate her concept of ‘moment of importance’ to portray the complex psychology and characterisation of Clarissa Dalloway and reinstate human conditions at the center of modern fiction?
Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway manifests this concept by delineating the inward adventure of Clarissa running an errand on an ordinary day in June. The author's use of the free indirect discourse and focalized narrative adheres closely to Clarissa’s consciousness. Clarissa’s thoughts and perceptions are not quoted but presented like facts, which implies Woolf’s affirmation of the heroine’s interiority and subjective reality. Offering simultaneously the viewpoints of an insider and a spectator, the focalized narrative of Clarissa not only reports her present sensations and sentiments, but reproduces the structure of time and space, the sounds, sights and surroundings as she perceives them. This vivid recreation of her solipsistic perspective reveals her unique responses to her own environments, and thus her impression of her important moments as well as her intricate mind.
Mimicking Clarissa’s focal point, the narrator demonstrates that the character often stays inordinately alert to the signifiers of time in her daily life and feels compelled to merge the psychological time with the objective or the internal events with the external for the outwardly harmony and order of things. A significant portion of depiction in this passage is dedicated to capturing Clarissa’s spontaneous sensory perception of Big Ben and her intense bodily reaction to it, which mirrors her latent anxiety with objective time, her paradoxical willingness to unite with it and fulfill the pre-arranged plans or expectations in a timely manner. On her seemingly monotonous stroll to Bond Street to purchase flowers, Clarissa is described to be ultra-sensitive to the impersonal striking of Big Ben, as if the clock could exert agency and warn her to complete her tasks and errands punctically at the scheduled time: ‘First a warning, musical; then the hour, irrevocable.’ Particularly, the narrator synchronises the pause of her heartbeat with the solemn striking of Big Ben to highlight her immersion into the cyclic progression of daily occurrences and dread of interruptions. The regular chiming of Big Ben is depicted as a dramatic ‘moment’ in London that would trigger a series of erratic emotional and physical reactions in Clarissa, who would feel ‘a particular hush, or solemnity; an indescribable pause; a suspense’(of heartbeats) before it occurs. These incessant descriptions of feelings provide authentic snapshots of her complicated mental state towards her moment of importance. ‘Hush’, ‘solemnity’, ‘suspense’ all carry ambiguous connotations (both delightful and sinister), hinting that her anticipation for a natural rhythm of a clock is commingled with the terror of an unavoidable momentary halt. The narrator again imitates her fleeting psychological disruption - a mixture of awe and fright provoked by the striking clock- by vocalizing her inward exclamation and synchronizing it with the actual booming sound of Big Ben: ‘There! Out it[Big Ben] boomed’. To revisualize Clarissa’s perception of and relation to her world more realistically, Woolf also relies on her peculiar syntax and unending semicolons as metaphors to resemble the ceaseless ebb and flow of Clarissa’s moments. The excerpt starts with a question concerned with the unstoppable passage of time experienced by Clarissa(‘For having lived in Westminster—how many years now?’), then comes with a series of short sentences or clauses in which the chronological pointers of time are highlighted and positioned at the beginning or the end(There...First...; then the hour...moment of June.), which enables readers to feel vicariously how the heroine is moved forward by the outer time. Similarly, like a motion-movie camera, Woolf’s semicolon galore shows Clarissa’s shifting retinal images of modern vehicles(motor cars, omnibuses, vans, aeroplanes)during her morning walk, implying that she is prompted to follow the inevitable and inexorable flow of external time and events as life continues.
Other than conveying her delight and love of the hectic urban scene, Clarissa’s camera-like observation of the city unmasks her tendency to conform to the grand scheme and order, to relish and accept the present(or everything) as it is without probing beneath the serene surface to seek causes and disturbing the existing movements of things. Woolf reproduces Clarissa's kaleidoscopic mental images of varied life in the city by encapsulating this character's transient passing thoughts towards who and what she sees within a long string of brief successive clauses that are joined together by semicolons: " In ...the swing, tramp, and trudge; in the bellow and the uproar; the carriages...swinging; brass bands; barrel organs; in...jingle and the strange high singing of some aeroplane...June." Her active and non-judgmental perception of moving people and objects in the city and refusal to disrupt the process of everything shows her rather aesthetic attitude to life. She lets life be, allowing the city dwellers and things to own their vital and authentic moment and remain independent entities on her mind. For example, she does not hierarchize her relation to the frumps but perceives them the way they are and thinks that the incidence of them getting drunk on doorsteps 'can't be dealt with' or stopped because in doing what they love and creating ther moment, 'they love life'. Through portraying her empathetic and almost egalitarian perception of the frumps, Woolf indicates Clarissa's affinity with them and her ideal of 'life' as one that stays enmeshed in the cycle of life by building 'every moment afresh' and constantly 'doing' (even the commonly despised follies, as exemplified by the frumps' drinking, or the trivial and passive actions, such as simply observing life, seeking gratification from the present moment, fulfilling an ancillary role as a housewife in the way Clarissa does). While the focalized perspective positions Clarissa's consciousness as the center, her narrative's excessive attention to the environments indicates that her mind always expands outwards and fuses with the objects she views. Unlike her daughter Elizabeth who daringly asserts her presence against the crowds by eagerly boarding the omnibus 'in front of everybody' in the later part of the story, Clarissa's identity is almost seamlessly absorbed and diffused into the vibrant social background on which she is fixated, which is similar to how smoothly the rhythm of 'leaden circles dissolve[s] in the air'. As demonstrated by Woolf, Clarissa's 'moments of importance' are continuously shaped by her surroundings.
Through striving to render the unfiltered access to Clarissa's 'moments of importance' in Mrs. Dalloway, Woolf reinstates the primacy of human subjectivity and the concern with the interrelationship between self and society at the center of modern fiction. It encourages us to scrutinize the inconspicuous and disarrayed moments within human minds, the possibility that personality and individuality are intertwined with external forces.