Everyone, and No One, Is the Main Character

At first, I viewed the narrative as another sort of stream-of-consciousness, like The Mezzanine. However, I quickly realized this was not the case and got really confused, really fast. Virginia Woolf’s innovative writing style in Mrs. Dalloway provides the reader with an incredibly enriched experience and brings the characters to life in greater fullness. We are given a bigger, more cohesive picture that can be more confusing but is simultaneously truer to the complex human experience and intricate relationships between real souls. 

When I was younger, I loved watching a show called “Just Add Magic” that centers around people cooking magic food. One episode I remember, they made “Mind Peering Peppermints,” which allowed them to read people’s minds at any given moment. The episode memorably featured one scene in a cafe where the protagonists people-watched with enhanced abilities, the camera panning from stranger to stranger, eavesdropping on their inner thoughts and playing new voices saying things like: “I can’t wait to get home and snuggle with my puppy,” and “I hope no one can notice that I haven’t showered in three days.” Woolf’s writing style reminded me of this episode a lot, especially the climax party scene. She essentially gives readers the power of the magic peppermints, fluidly shifting from mind to mind, both complicating and making sense of socially chaotic situations in an attempt at intense literary realism.

At the same time, I think this puzzlingly cohesive style of storytelling also reminds us of our smallness in the vast span of the space we inhabit around us. I think Woolf most effectively brings her characters to life not through physical descriptions or lively conversation, but by naturally placing them within a realistic world of sophistication that does justice to the intricacies of human experience. Not only does she flow between internal dialogues, but also between the external world of backfiring cars and Big Ben’s chimes. These details, which act as structural tools giving environmental context, remind us of the physical world that remains unimpeded by the mental realm we are so enveloped within. What I personally found so fascinating about Mrs. Dalloway was the unexpected duality of both magnifying the characters with profound intimacy and minimizing their significance within space. 

When in the mind of a given character, they draw our central focus and determine our perspective. The world revolves around them, their thoughts, their beliefs, and opinions. But once shifted to another character, someone who perhaps is thinking of the person we were just with, we see the first character’s life from an outsider's lens, where they are no longer the main character. Now, they have become someone who will be judged and never truly seen for exactly who they think themselves to be. A significant example of this paradox is the moment Peter Walsh strolls past Septimus and Lucrezia in Regent’s Park, simply interpreting what he sees as a young lovers’ quarrel, oblivious to the true circumstances of their severe struggles. As readers, we have just been with the Warren-Smiths firsthand, and understand that Septimus’ mental illness or Lucrezia's hardships are not merely surface-level conflicts, but extreme, tragic crises. Peter’s sudden takeover brings a shock back to reality where the couple is merely a pair of unknown people, sitting on a bench, in a vast park, full of many more unknown people. In this scene, the Warren-Smiths serve both as an intimate window into serious human experiences and a forgettable external detail of another’s life.

By throwing us right into the deep end and constantly shifting between perspectives, Woolf refuses to center on any one character, reminding readers that each person we encounter is living their own complicated life that we only partially see. We get to experience the curious contradiction of being the focus of our minds, but only a passing segment of another’s. I will say that after reading further into the book, I was able to gradually adapt to Woolf’s narration, and it eventually became easier to follow. But still, the result of this writing style can admittedly be difficult to follow. Even so, I find this novel to be an incredibly fruitful adventure that pushes fiction towards feeling more true to the complexities of human life.