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Degree Project
Bachelor Thesis in Literature
Refraction, Heteroglossia and Chronotope in
Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway
Following Bakhtin’s View of the Novel as Centrifugal Force
Author: Eleni Tzimopoulou Supervisor: Dr Carmen Zamorano Llena Examiner: Dr Billy Gray Subject/main field of study: Literature in English Course code: EN2028 Credits: 15 Date of examination: 8 January 2018 At Dalarna University it is publishing is open access, which means the work will be freely accessible to read and possible to publish the student thesis in full text in DiVA. The download on the internet. This will significantly increase the dissemination and visibility of the student thesis.
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Table of Contents
Introduction
Refraction: The Meaning of One Word via the Surrounding Territory
Heteroglossia: Alien Zones in the Social Discourse of the Story
Chronotope: The Spatiotemporal Whole in Clarissa’s (Un)Consciousness
Conclusion
Works Cited
In his discussions of how communication is reflected in literary works, Bakhtin makes a distinction between poetry and prose, in terms of language and how it is approached by poets and novelists inversely (Holquist 298). In poetry, language is characterized by unity, and the poet “writes in directly intentional language, one that means what he wants it to mean” (432). Using figurative language, Bakhtin argues that “the high poetic genres of any era exercise a centripetal – a homogenizing and hierarchizing – influence” due to their following formulaic rules and conventions (425). In prose, in contrast, several aspects of language, such as its diversity of voices, refract or modify meanings in diverse ways and “at different angles” (299-300). Bakhtin’s view of the novel is that it is a “de-normatizing and therefore centrifugal force” (425). Refraction, heteroglossia, and chronotope are three concepts of central importance in Bakhtin’s philosophical view of the relationship between language and the novel (Holquist xiv). According to Bakhtin, “in novelistic prose one can trace” the “angle of refraction” in its discourse, “as [meaning] passes through various other voices” (432), connotations or undertones which complement the core meaning of the text. The associate meanings of words and utterances which appear in prose can be outlined by exploring multiple semiotic signs and concurrent multiple voices, such as intermediate characters’ acts which Bakhtin terms as “alien” (423), “speaking personalities” or “speech zones” (434). These multiple concurrent speech zones create heteroglossia, which has been defined in literary terms as “the existence of conflicting discourses within any field of linguistic activity”, such as a novel (Baldick 113). For Bakhtin, heteroglossia is the “base condition governing the operation of meaning in any utterance” (Holquist 428). Multiple voices affect what is uttered in a specific time and place, within specific linguistic environments and sociopsychological
circumstances, and which will have a different meaning if uttered in a different time and place, within diverse environments or circumstances (428). Therefore, for Bakhtin, time and place are interdependent, and it is this “connectedness of temporal and spatial relationships” that the term chronotope describes (425). One definition of the term chronotope which derives from Bakhtin’s philosophy is that it refers “to the co-ordinates of time and space invoked by a given narrative” or, in other words, the term refers to “the ‘setting’, considered as a spatio-temporal whole” (Baldick 40). This spatiotemporal whole is challenged in Mrs Dalloway since the narrative presents two ostensibly incongruent stories: that of Clarissa Dalloway, a fifty-two- year-old, elite Londoner preparing one of her usual successful parties, and that of Septimus Warren Smith, a young man who ends up committing suicide after his return from the World-War-I battlefields. Clarissa’s character is flanked by her first love Peter Walsh, whose feelings she discarded to marry the diplomat Richard Dalloway, and Sally Seton, Clarissa’s best friend. Throughout the plot, Septimus interacts exclusively with his wife Lucrezia (Rezia) and the doctors who see to his treatment. Past events of the story-line are revealed solely through representations of the characters’ remembrances, which fragmentedly signal their inner thoughts, emotions, and self-evaluations of their experiences. The action unfolds in one single summer-day of 1923 in London. Although the two protagonists are never introduced to each other throughout the plot, scholars have suggested that when Septimus commits suicide, the two characters eventually meet in a spatiotemporal sphere outside the physical setting (Brown 20), or even outside the text (Kuhlken 341-7). Following Albert Einstein’s theories of relativity, it has been suggested that Woolf “entangles time and topography” in Mrs Dalloway creating “a dynamic, interactive setting aligned with her characters’ thoughts” (Brown 20). The characters are
Through the lens of Bakhtin’s philosophy, Carol Bové observes that the “temporal nature of [a] text is structural as well as thematic”, and by “representing a material world that is not static, the text moves forward from one voice to another” (161). This is what Donna K. Reed terms as “merging voices” in Mrs Dalloway , and she suggests that Woolf’s work illustrates “the sloppy modes of thought and perception... that make boundaries fluid and allow things to flow into each other” (121). According to Cui Yaxiao’s linguistic approach to the novel, this “sense of simultaneity” contributes to the representation of multifaced consciousness, since the narrational style in Mrs Dalloway connects one character to the other, and the narrator’s point of view to the characters’ (175). As Reed notices, “it is not events that are woven together, but consciousnesses” (122). The aim of this study is to show that Bakhtin’s philosophical view of discourse in the novel can help the analysis of Mrs Dalloway to develop further the concepts of androgynous time and synchronic and diachronic axes, as they are reflected in the novel, as well as the multivoicedness that has been identified in the text, in terms of what they all contribute to the interpretation of the female protagonist and the identification of the main meaning of the text. This study argues that by paying close attention to semiotic signs which indicate Clarissa’s conscious acts, the analysis can generate conclusions regarding the female protagonist’s unconscious behaviour. Although Mrs Dalloway seems to challenge the wholeness Bakhtin’s philosophy suggests, by means of Bakhtin’s concepts of refraction, heteroglossia and chronotope, the study concludes that the novel Mrs Dalloway can be analysed as a multifaceted whole, which functions, indeed, as centrifugal force.
Refraction: The Meaning of One Word via the Surrounding Territory
According to Judith Allen, it is not uncommon for Woolf’s work to draw attention to “multiple perspectives, diverse voices, a sense of awareness, involvement, critical thinking and critical reading” (117). In her work, Allen describes Woolf’s propositions that “we must be awake to the language, to how it functions and to placing ourselves outside, having some distance... so that we may truly ‘see’, in a new way” (Allen 115). These ideas can be interpreted as parallel to Bakhtin’s propositions that both direct and indirect meanings in discourse need to be taken into consideration in order for the audience to identify the main meaning of a text (Holquist 259-61). For Bakhtin, “every word is like a ray of light” which follows a specific path (432). This path, however, can be distorted or refracted by the paths that other words follow, creating what Bakhtin describes as “a semantic spectral dispersion” that occurs in “the occupied territory surrounding” a word (432). Bakhtin seems to call for an active reader who can identify dispersed meanings which combined can allow conclusions to be drawn in relation to what it is eventually that a text, as a multifaceted whole, conveys. By focusing on the introductory part of the novel, this section illustrates the way that the word herself , which appears in the very first page of the novel, can be interpreted via the exploration of its surrounding territory, namely other words and utterances present in the introductory scene. By exploring the ways that the meaning of herself is refracted, the analysis will show that following Bakhtin’s philosophical concept of refraction enables the identification of the main meaning of the scene, and it generates discussions in relation to Clarissa’s conscious interaction with the surrounding environment at the specific time and place, through the lens of the concepts of androgynous time and synchronic and diachronic axes already discussed in the previous section.
she could hear now” (3). It is that specific sound in the “now” of the story that reminds Clarissa of her young days “of eighteen” in the countryside, when “she had burst open the French windows and plunged at Bourton into the open air” (3). Interpreted in physical time, the doors allow the character to progress from the domestic environment into the outside-of-the-house space. In psychological time, the doors allow the character to revisit her past through the memories triggered by the sound of the hinges. Hence, iconic ( squeak ) and symbolic ( doors ) semiotic signs in the text create this relative universe where the character meets the androgynous time as critics have suggested (Brown 20; Kuhlken 341). What should not be neglected in this case, however, is that Clarissa’s opportunity to experience this transition from here and now to there and then has already been inconspicuously threatened in the background, as the detailed analysis of additional semiotic signs, words, utterances and punctuation will show. The way that the passive construction is formed in the narrative shows that Rumpelmayer’s men have a special role to play when seen as the agents of two separate acts. A grammatically typical passive construction would require the agents right after the passive form of the verb and its complementation, i.e. “The doors would be taken off their hinges [by Rumpelmayer’s men]” (Woolf 3). In the text, however, the agents are extracted from the passive construction by a semicolon, and they become the subject of a complete, new sentence “Rumpelmayer’s men [are] coming” (3) and, by extension, they become the agents who are attributed the power of another act. When semantically analysed, [ are ] coming means that the agents are about to enter the present physical setting. Pragmatically, it could indicate three main directions of meaning: they are coming, and this is a good thing; they are coming, and this is a bad thing; they are coming, and this is neither good nor bad, it is a neutral act.
When the men’s act is compared to Clarissa’s act, it is shown that the subjects move in opposite directions: the men are coming into and Clarissa is getting out of the domestic environment before the men appear. Although moving in opposite directions could be seen as not adding a special meaning to these characters’ acts – since no other properties regarding the characters’ relationship are offered in the text – when Clarissa’s feelings while she opens the doors are described, the text implies that the imminent arrival of the men would be rather unfortunate for the female protagonist. Since Clarissa’s memories are triggered by the squeak of the hinges, had Rumpelmayer’s men removed the doors before her exit, Clarissa would have been deprived of the opportunity not only to enter the sphere of androgynous time via her remembrances, but to take control of the present moment as well. When Clarissa exits the domestic environment, she thinks: “What a lark! What a plunge!” and as the narrative describes “so it had always seemed to her” (Woolf 3). In other words, at the present moment, as is always the case for the character, Clarissa moves through the doors in vivacious motion, feeling like a bird allowed to exit a limited space so as to meet the open environment. Paradoxically, when Clarissa enters the public sphere of this fictional milieu, she enters a synchronic, physical space which enables the character to revive her diachronic characteristics, meaning her personality as it is defined by all her experiences, thoughts and feelings, avoiding exposure. For example, Clarissa meets intermediate characters, such as her neighbour Scrope Purvis, who know her “as one does know people who live next door” (3). This means that other characters identify Clarissa as the synchronic performer she projects outside her house: the “charming”, “vivacious”, and lively like a “jay” woman transforms into someone who “stiffen[s] a little on the kerb” (3), and moves “very upright” (4, 12), looking but “never seeing” (4). In this case, the verb stiffens signals the character’s
gift [is] knowing people almost by instinct” (8). Clarissa feels that she is wearing a meaningless hollow body which gives her “the oddest sense of being herself invisible”, even when she develops in the synchronic, physical world (10). Finally, as already mentioned, when the synchronic and diachronic selves merge in androgynous time, they merge outside physical time and thus outside the physical setting. Therefore, what could justify Clarissa’s feeling of liberation is not her transition per se, which still sets boundaries around her existence. It is rather her instantaneous, conscious decision to act herself and open the doors before the arrival of Rumpelmayer’s men, being already familiar with the redemptive feeling she would get in so doing (3). It is this act that offers the character the chance to develop as a dynamic, complete part of factuality, taking control of the moment. To recapitulate, what this analysis has identified as the main act of this introductory scene, namely Clarissa’s opening the doors by her own volition, taking the chance to experience the familiar-to-her feeling of liberation, is signalled both indirectly and fragmentedly by the text. In order to identify the meaning of the word herself appearing in the very first sentence of the narrative, the analysis needed to focus on the linguistic environment surrounding the word, several semiotic signs such as punctuation and passive constructions, as well as the way that intermediate characters affect meaning and what the narrative communicates. Following Bakhtin’s concept of refraction, the word herself has been identified to signal the central or core meaning of the introductory scene, and the analysis permitted the identification of Clarissa’s conscious interaction with the setting, as a whole. The following sections of the analysis will show that in order to construe the female protagonist’s unconscious behaviour, the analysis needs to move away from this character as well, in order to investigate the wider social discourse that the character experiences, and the ways that
Clarissa’s conscious acts and positioning in the setting can be interpreted via Bakhtin’s concept of heteroglossia. As Carl Gustav Jung has suggested, “it is impossible” to interpret the unconscious state of a subject “unless we know what the conscious situation is” (21-2).
Heteroglossia: Alien Zones in the Social Discourse of the Story In his review of Bakhtin’s work, John Fizer emphasizes Bakhtin’s suggestions that “the study of stylistics must be a simultaneous philosophical and sociological study of the work’s semantic components” (271). For Bakhtin, the novel is defined by “a diversity of social speech types... and a diversity of individual voices, artistically organized” in meaningful ways (Holquist 262). In the novel, each character’s speech is autonomous, both verbally and semantically (315). What the characters utter and how they act constitute the characters’ autonomous “speech zones”, which Bakhtin defines as spheres of influence and meaning which are interconnected, affecting one another (434). For Bakhtin, “all utterances are heteroglot” (263) in that they are based on what has already been uttered and what is already known (279). For that reason, heteroglossia affects to an important extent the meaning of what occurs under specific spatiotemporal, social, historical, and psychological conditions (236). Although in Mrs Dalloway verbal exchanges among characters are rare, the analysis presented in this section follows the semiotic signals which the public sphere of the novel’s discourse sends, so as to enable the investigation of the way that multiple speech zones may affect Clarissa’s attitude and the way that she moves and develops in public. This section shows that although the characters remain silent, there are ample semiotic signs in the text that compose the heteroglot; sounds, images, and intermediate characters’ appearance and attitude are all considered alien speech zones, which reveal the characteristics of the here and now and how they relate to the past.
and unattractiveness blend in a way that the misery of the setting could be considered irreversible as well. Or, this could be how the narrative suggests that Clarissa’s conscious associates a public symbol with time, place and people. Nevertheless, Clarissa as well as other intermediate characters who exist in this fictional milieu are described as loving this environment because this is what constitutes life in the here and now of the story: “they love life”, “what [Clarissa] loved; life; London; this moment of June” (4), “what she loved was this, here, now, in front of her” (8-9). Insofar as Clarissa’s silent evaluations of the social setting are being presented, the text indicates that although she identifies aspects of its inflexibility and misery, she simultaneously grasps the idea that being part of factuality is her only way to experience life. Throughout the plot, the narrative signals that Clarissa performs inside the public sphere of this fictional milieu in accordance with several alien zones that appear in the social discourse. As the introductory scene has suggested, Clarissa moves inside the public sphere “very upright” (Woolf 4, 12) attempting to stiffen her appearance (3). Similar semiosis appears at various points throughout the narration, describing not only Clarissa, but Peter, and other male and female intermediate characters as well: while at her previous parties Clarissa “stiffened a little; so she would stand at the top of the stairs” (17); Peter strolls in the streets of London “[s]traightening himself and stealthily fingering his pocket knife” (52); “[t]all men, men of robust physique... stood even straighter” (18); Mr Bowley “raised his hat... and stood very upright” (19); “a perfectly upright and stoical bearing” for “all men and women” (9) that not even Mrs Goates’s baby “lying stiff and white in her arms” (20) does not escape from. The references to Mr Bowley, Mrs Goates’s baby, and the anonymous men and women, all being alien speech zones which are not imperative
elements for the development of the story and the fact that no other properties about these characters are given throughout the plot, show that their presence in the text serves the indication of what public appearances look like in the social discourse of the story. It is this social discourse, as it is compiled by all these indirect semiotic signals or alien zones, which confirms that inflexibility defines appearances in this public milieu. In fact, it is suggested that the projected stiffness is performed by the following synchronic, alien speech zones: characters of white skin (i.e., the baby ), high social status (i.e., a Mr and a Mrs ), those who endure reality (i.e., the stoical bearing ) hiding what could disturb this general public mood of stability (i.e., Peter playing with his pocket knife silently), and those who achieve prime via their stiffened posture (i.e., Clarissa on the top of the stairs when interpreted metaphorically, or the tall men with their imposing appearance). What is most intriguing in this case, however, is the fact that the stiffness which defines the social discourse in this fictional, after-war London is the reflection of another important alien zone: a group of soldiers who are presented during their parade inside the synchronic, physical setting. In contrast to previously-analysed parts of the text that emphasize sound, the passage describing the soldiers focuses on visual semiosis and creates a symbolic link between public appearances and established ideas, realized as diachronic voices, levied remains of the past. The young soldiers “in uniform, carrying guns”, who march “with their eyes ahead of them” and “their arms stiff” (Woolf 50), bring into the present setting images of war even though the war is over in the now of the story. As it is suggested by the words appearing in the text, the soldiers’ parade stands symbolically as the continuation of time-honoured conceptualisations, since the soldiers’ facial expressions are described “like the letters of a legend written round the
The fact that the public follow a specific, inflexible and unattractive, social discourse, is verified by the speech zones of the characters who are not familiar with these social conventions, and who fail to familiarise themselves with the environment. For instance, Maisie Johnson, who is part of the action only once and very briefly in the novel, is a young girl who has come to London for the first time, to work for her uncle (Woolf 25). Experiencing the social discourse in this fictional London, Maisie is filled with horror and hopelessness experiencing an unfamiliar microcosm, which she tenaciously describes as strange and hostile, and men, women, London, “the stone basins” and “the prim flowers”, everyone and everything seem “very queer” (25-6). In addition, being an outsider Rezia, Septimus’s wife, attempts to decode factuality by giving meanings to things that happened” (82) albeit unsuccessfully. For instance, although she observes every woman that passes in front of her, Rezia fails to comprehend women’s appearance and attitude in London: “Ill-dressing, over-dressing she stigmatised, not savagely, rather with impatient movements of the hands, like those of a painter who puts from him some obvious well-meant glaring imposture” (87). Rezia’s attempt is to create images which could help her identify the surrounding setting. Still, when the text presents her nostalgic feelings of Italy, her homeland, it is shown that Rezia identifies two different worlds: “Far was Italy... and the streets crowded every evening with people walking, laughing out loud, not half alive like people here... looking at a few ugly flowers stuck in pots!” (23). She feels the need to buy some roses although they were “almost dead already” (93), signalling her inner desire to follow what she observed to be the norm in the setting, or this is her attempt to own something from it so as to feel part of factuality. Regardless of her inner desires and attempts, however, she feels uninvited and fails to communicate with other characters throughout the plot: “‘For you should see the
Milan gardens,’ she said aloud. But to whom? There was nobody... I am alone; I am alone! She cried” (23). Rezia’s feeling of despair substantiates the idea that even those who succeed in identifying the characteristics of this social discourse find its dominant conventions unattractive and incomprehensible. To put it in a nutshell, following what the alien zones which appear in the social discourse of the story communicate, the analysis identified some of the main characteristics of the public sphere of this fictional milieu. In particular, the social setting has been identified as an inflexible and unattractive continuation of the voices coming from the past, and characters who are not familiar with social conventions experience fear and isolation developing among stiffened, hollow, and incomprehensible subjects. Having set some standards around the conscious frame of this fictional world and what is Clarissa’s perception of it, the analysis will now return to Clarissa’s character in an attempt to identify what her positioning inside this setting is, in more detail, what can be some possible explanations of her attitude as part of this social whole, and eventually, how this character can be interpreted when she is construed as a separate, private whole inside the bigger, social frame.
Chronotope: The Spatiotemporal Whole in Clarissa’s (Un)Consciousness In Bakhtin’s philosophy, space “becomes charged and responsive to the movements of time, plot and history” (Holquist 84) and, therefore, the relationship between place and time is characterized as interdependent. According to Julia Briggs, as a novelist Woolf was “intensely aware of time, both as an impersonal force and as a personal experience... as the regulated and measurable time of clocks, public and private” (125). Annalee Edmondson has proposed that Mrs Dalloway challenges the binary opposition between public and private spaces, although it has been suggested that “Woolf’s text evinces... an individual’s ‘private’ world as defined apart from other
