We all know that an object and the idea it represents are intrinsically separate. A word is just a bunch of symbols and sounds that come together to form the idea of an apple, or a chair, or whatever. Multiple languages couldn't exist if there wasn't some abstraction between saying a word and thinking about an idea. As it stands, we never see ideas in real life. Besides the obvious point that ideas are something you have in your head, we never look at an apple and say, "Clearly, this is the perfect apple. It represents all apples. All other apples are just derived from this one." The idea of the apple cannot transcend its earthly vessel.
(so what is it then?)
Yet, in Mrs. Dalloway, we see this all the time. Take Clarissa. Her very job is to be the idea of Mrs. Richard Dalloway; whatever she thinks, whoever she is, doesn't matter. What matters is what others think about her, how they see her and what she does. We looked at the ways several different people thought about Clarissa; it's important to realize that that legitimately comprised Clarissa, at least in her role as Mrs. Dalloway.
Further, with the whole episode surrounding the car, nobody knows for sure who is inside. Nobody could tell you with undeniable proof it was the Queen, or the Prime Minister, or anybody; it was unknown. But, really, it didn't matter. More important than the specific figure inside the car was the idea of importance that surrounded it. The people that saw it together formed its importance, by thinking it was important. Pretty circuitous, right? But if they had just ignored the car, regardless of who was inside, it wouldn't have mattered. Similarly, it could have been nobody of importance inside, but if they had still gone gaga it would've still been seen as important. What really was important was how everybody thought about it; the idea that it was important made it important.
Clarissa points out the way her ideas about Miss Kilman manifested into something beyond the person on page 12: "For it was not her one hated but the idea of her, which undoubtedly had gathered in to itself a great deal that was not Miss Kilman." What Miss Kilman stood for, what she symbolized beyond just a person, ended up dominating Clarissa's interpretation of Miss Kilman and what she did. When she finally gets herself to look at Miss Kilman simply, as another person, she laughs at how differently she had built her up to be (and Miss Kilman's idea of Clarissa was laughing at her for being ugly...). When the idea was broken, the absurdity of the situation made Clarissa burst out laughing. Ideas hold sway over everything.
Perhaps Mrs. Dalloway is representative of the way we interact with ideas instead of objects, or ideas instead of people. But, what's important is that ideas are fighting to be able to show themselves, and when we let them possess something, we lose its actual meaning.
This is a really interesting post, and it says a lot about Woolf's view of character more generally: people are who they are not because of some internal, indefinable essence, but what others see them and take them as. Or, to paraphrase 19-year-old Clarissa, to find out who someone is, you must find the people and places that "complete" them.
ReplyDeleteWe chuckle over the fact that no one really knows who's in the passing motor-car, but you're right: it doesn't matter. No one in the novel thinks, "It's probably the prime minister. If only I could confirm that and know for sure!" And they probably all went home that day and told their families how they saw the prime minister's car go by. I've always enjoyed that montage sequence, but I'm now seeing more ways that it introduces us to key aspects of Woolf's fictional aesthetic.