Mrs. Dalloway: A Glimpse of The Great Mother

In Mrs. Dalloway, Virginia Woolf may be criticizing a male society that has been placed over top of what could have been an originally female-centered egalitarian society. In this story of matriarchy hidden behind patriarchy we see paganism versus civilization, cyclical time versus linear time, and true reality versus the appearances of reality. In each of these opposites, we see the female aspects hidden behind or even beneath the male aspects of life.

Woolf gives us a surface world based on the appearances of reality. It is a story of how one group of people lives their lives within a social world. The story underneath the surface is one of human beings constantly questioning a reality that doesn't always feel comfortable to them.

Her critique of that society is based on the mixing of an ancient perhaps mythological idea of mother rule, and the masculine worldview they currently live in. The constant shifts between these worlds show the possibility that what modern society has created is killing all of us.

The older matriarchal but egalitarian world was based on a life lived in respect rather than fear. In this world we won't see life destroyed by life in the way that Clarissa sees her "own sister killed by a falling tree...a girl on the verge of life," (78) felled before her time. Human beings lived with an understanding of nature rather than against it, and didn't impose a created social world over top of the life that was simply lived.

Her exploration of paganism runs through the entire story. She is always referring back to an earlier time, a more "prehistoric...primeval"(126) time.

She gives us an "earthy garden sweet smell" (13). Is her "celestial pleasure garden" (139) really the Garden of Eden? Or is this merely her starting point, her way of beginning? She moves from the garden to more agricultural societies. She refers to vegetation in her "leaves" (51) hoping we will "mus(e) among the vegetables" (51).

There are constant reminders about this side of nature with her liberal use of the word green spread throughout the book. Green is "for fertile lush ripe nature" (37), "vivid green moss" (64), "greenness, richness" (71), and still "the earth seemed green" (81) to Clarissa and perhaps to Virginia as well.

She reminds us through these phrases that green dampness is fertile and very female. Even her women in this story are wearing green. She refers to the "green folds" (39), of a “green dress" (41, 85, 86, 94) mentioned several times.

She very creatively shows us an opposite masculine side also using color. Her choice: gray. This gray is for the deadened world we created. We have a "dead man in the gray suit" (70) "Grey furs, silver Grey rugs" (94), Grey hairs (95), and a "Grey room" (101). The "Grey tide of service" (108) keeps this world running in the gray. In this modern masculine society even the colors have gone out of life.

This agricultural society recognized four elements that were essential to life: earth, fire, water, and air. Woolf refers to all of them through out the novel. Earth was The Great Mother. She who nurtured and protected. This great mother time was sacred cyclical time with a sacred seasonal calendar: winter spring, summer, and fall.

There were also four corresponding celebrations to honor the coming seasons. In Celtic mythology they are known as Imbolc on February 1, Beltane on May 1, Lughnasadh on August 1, and Samhain on November 1. On the day prior to each festival it was said that the world between the living and the dead could easily be breached. Here was a way to communicate with that spiritual world, and honor the memory of the dead.

Woolf refers To May and the May Day Festival as "That ancient May day" (82). The May Day Festival was perhaps originally intended to insure fertility of the crops by celebrating the cycles of birth, growth, maturity, death, and rebirth.

Later the celebration consisted of a procession of trees, green branches, and garlands. One witnessed the crowning of a May king and queen, and the setting up of the Maypole. There was still a celebration but the meaning of it was not fully understood.

In Mrs. Dalloway, Woolf uses May itself, focusing on nature’s changes with references to trees, greenery, and garlands. With her garlands she turns from celebrating life to thoughts about death. Her use of "wreath", "laurel," "garland,"..."lay your garland down on the grass in the dark" (45), and the solemnity of the wreath" (51) is a far cry from the celebration of fertility and life; but it highlights that connection of the cycles of life and death that Woolf seems to be looking at.

This was a way of life that included a reverence for the land, and celebrated the Great Mother earth as the source of life. That earth and everything stemming from it was alive. It existed to be used, but only with the utmost respect. This respect created cases of worship within the world of nature.

One of those things worshiped were trees. Woolf uses them extensively in Mrs. Dalloway. In mythology trees are tied to the vegetation aspect of agricultural societies, but they also have another connection in the May tree.

Sir James Frazer in The Golden Bough says that the May Tree was a permanent centre for celebration in Europe (Frazer, 143). There is also a myth involving the world tree, or the cosmic tree located at the horizontal or vertical center of the earth. The beginning of all things. The center of all things.

It is Septimus who sees a tree on the motor car passing by. Woolf uses that tree image to draw everyone's attention to the center of things. "A curious pattern like a tree, Septimus thought, and this gradual drawing together of everything to one centre before his eyes, as if some horror had come to the surface and was about to burst into flames" (15). She also refers to the world tree by its other name when she says "Moments are buds on the tree of life" (29).

Fire is the element that connects myth and matriarchy to Woolf's story. Her references to May and Beltane take us back to the primitive idea of a fire God. Here his name is Bel. Take fire a step further and apply it to the sun and there is another line of mythology.

Up until the 16th century sun was spelled sunne and was feminine not masculine. Even the sun was stripped of its true gender and incorporated into a masculine worldview. The sun or son became male and this god uses fire as a cleansing agent. He uses the brightness of the sun to seek out truth.

Interestingly, he is also a messenger of truth between the gods and man. Could it be that the voice that Septimus taps into is the sun god as messenger to man?

Septimus may be considered insane. But is he really? What if he's simply figured out the truth? Has Septimus found the "key" (20) to understanding? Is he really sane rather than insane? Has he found "an isolation full of sublimity; a freedom which the attached can never know" (92)?

"Look” the unseen bade him with the voice which now communicated with him. Septimus, lately taken from life to death, which lay like a coverlet, a snow blanket smitten only by the sun, forever unwanted, suffering forever. Septimus became the scapegoat, the eternal sufferer. But he did not want it, that eternal suffering, that eternal loneliness (25).

Septimus fights the idea that he might be man's messenger but he knows enough to know that these messages are important. He writes them down. "There is a God....Change the world. No one kills from hatred. There is no crime" (24). "There is no death"(140). "Communication is health. Communication is happiness (93)”. "Do not cut down trees” (148).

"Every power poured its treasures on his head” (139). "He knew the truth" (140). That was the doom...to be alone forever" (145). He was "falling through the sea, down, down, into the flames" (142-143).

Perhaps the cleansing flames help to connect with the image of the sun as brightness; a truth that exists even if we don't recognize it. There is no need to have a fear of the sun. The sun sees the truth, the reality of human life. It has watched everything since the beginning of time. Even though it knows we aren't living the way we should be living. We fail to live life with respect. The sun understands and attempts to tell us we are doing it wrong.

Death is as much a part of life as living, as joy, as pain. It is not to be feared, but to be respected. "Fear no more the heat o' the sun nor the furious winter's rages" (9). "Fear no more” says the heart in the body, “fear no more" (139). These are all lines in the story that connect to death as a cycle of life.

Water has been seen as the foundation of all things if you pay attention to the idea that all things come from the sea, and it is that basic primeval source of life. Woolf draws our attentions to water in little ways that run from a tiny drop to "a well of tears and sorrows" (9). She jostles us with sea images connecting to the ebb and flow of life. She tells us that the "sea darkens and brightens" (30). It "Roll(s) and conceal(s)" (30).

It can also caress the land and nurture it as well. These images are not all negative. But Lady Bruton says she has "no patience with women who were afraid of water" (27). After all, it is women who have or should have the closest connection to water.

All human beings are made up of water, but women carry within them the womb of birth. Women are capable of giving birth in the same way that water gave birth to humanity.

Woolf's references to air as that fourth element essential to life connects Septimus to Mrs. Dalloway. She starts out referring to opening things early on in the story. The "hall door" (48), a" watch to blow open" (65), even a reference to natural acts: someone having "written quite openly about water closets" (71).

The final scene in Septimus's life is an act of opening to the outside, to the air that always surrounds us. The air that nurtures and gives us our lives. He is the one who first opens this possibility. His is the first opening, and all others follow this, including all the windows and doors at the party.

"Why should he kill himself for their sake? Food was pleasant. The sun was hot" (92). "There remained only the window--opening the window and throwing himself out...He did not want to die. Life was good. The sun was hot. Only human beings--what did they want" (149)?

Clarissa's thoughts roam from Elizabeth and her child-like behavior to death. She questions what others think of this same world that she lives in. "Had some woman breathed her last and whoever was watching, opening the window of the room where she had just brought off that act of supreme dignity" (138).

Then the story returns to Rezia and we see that she is the first to benefit from Septimus's sacrifice. She is his only connection to the world, so he leaves her the one thing he can, his connection to her. "She was a flowering tree" (148) his angel. "She feared no one"(148).

At that moment we have that masculine interruption of linear time. "The clock was striking" (150) just after Septimus's death. As the clock strikes, Rezia "puts on her hat" (150). It is the hat Septimus created for her. It was his final gift: a covering, a protection that linked her to him. "Rezia ran to the window, she saw: she understood" (149).

Masculine life interrupts again. This time it's the doctor. "She must not see him, must be spared as much as possible" (150). While the doctor was doing his best to take care of her, but was only interrupting her way of coping.

"She was opening the long windows" (150). Septimus had given her freedom. She now had freedom from the modern world of masculine linear time. She had a freedom that allowed her to embrace the air and its connection to nature, to life. At least one woman can finally breathe.

This takes us back to Clarissa and the party. The focus on seven women here could be a jibe at Shakespeare's seven stages or ages of man. The women involved range in age from Mrs. Parry, Lady Bruton, Sally, Clarissa, Miss Kilman, Ellie Henderson, and Elizabeth. They can be said to embody the stages of women in matriarchy: the wisewomen-crones, married mothers, maidens, and virgins. Later there will even be a birth.

At the party we see that "moment in which things came together... both life and death" (152). That moment following Septimus's death happens at Clarissa's party. Clarissa is looking out her window.

She sees the "setting sun" (174). It "rose as the day sank" (186). "The old lady stared straight at her" (186). She saw the "solemn dusky sky" (186). Clarissa has learned what she will become by connecting with the old lady who lives across from her window.

The night of the party was "hot" (161). A "heat-wave" rolled through London. We are reminded of heat, of fire, of the sun. There is truth floating in the air. There is brightness. There is death, and there is life.

"Fear no more the heat of the sun... (But) what an extraordinary night" (186) it was.

"She felt somehow very like him--the young man who had killed himself” (186). The clock was striking. The leaden circles dissolved in the air. He made her feel the beauty, made her feel the sun" (186), but she must go back. Septimus is responsible for Clarissa's revelation, but it is his sacrifice that gives her even more.

At the party Doors are being opened... coats (are) blowing open" (164). The "doors" (164) even "stood open" (164). People move toward the open windows (168). There were those who noticed the "yellow curtain (s) with all the birds of paradise" (168, 170). Whenever she gets the chance, Woolf leads us back to the concept of matriarchy with a linking image. This time it was "birds of paradise" (170).

Is Septimus responsible? Is his act of sacrifice giving the people that Clarissa brought together the chance to start again with a new vision of the world? Or will tomorrow be more of the same?"

Perhaps tomorrow might be different. With the sacrifice of Septimus there is now the opportunity for rebirth.

Clarissa and Elizabeth are connected once again as mother and daughter. The rebirth of Clarissa will be through Elizabeth. We see Elizabeth at the top of the stairs glowing bright, new, pure, and innocent. She descends down the staircase. This can be compared to the journey down the birth canal. She reaches a landing and stops. Peter looks up and witnesses this rebirth as Clarissa's.

His final comment: "For there she was" (194). Perhaps tomorrow will be more of the same for Clarissa, but Elizabeth has a chance to do what none of the others at the party can. She can change, maybe even choose the way she lives going forward.

Woolf, Virginia. Mrs. Dalloway. 1925.

Note: The numbers listed refer to pages in the novel.