The crush was terrific for the time of day. Lords, Ascot, Hurlingham, what was it? she wondered, for the street was blocked. The British middle classes sitting sideways on the tops of omnibuses with parcels and umbrellas, yes, even furs on a day like this, were, she thought, more ridiculous, more unlike anything there has ever been than one could conceive; and the Queen herself held up; the Queen herself unable to pass. Clarissa was suspended on one side of Brook Street; Sir John Buckhurst, the old Judge on the other, with the car between them (Sir John had laid down the law for years and liked a well-dressed woman) when the chauffeur, leaning ever so slightly, said or showed something to the policeman, who saluted and raised his arm and jerked his head and moved the omnibus to the side and the car passed through. Slowly and very silently it took its way.
Clarissa guessed; Clarissa knew of course; she had seen something white, magical, circular, in the footman’s hand, a disc inscribed with a name — the Queen’s, the Prince of Wales’s, the Prime Minister’s? — which, by force of its own lustre, burnt its way through (Clarissa saw the car diminishing, disappearing), to blaze among candelabras, glittering stars, breasts stiff with oak leaves, Hugh Whitbread and all his colleagues, the gentlemen of England, that night in Buckingham Palace. And Clarissa, too, gave a party. She stiffened a little; so she would stand at the top of her stairs.
Virginia Woolf, Mrs Dalloway (p. 17)
After perusing some of London’s highest-end boutiques in preparation for the evening’s big party, Clarissa Dalloway ends up on Bond Street when a celebrity convoy rolls past. The passage – much like the rest of Mrs Dalloway – is packed with information; indeed, in the passage presented above, there are only eight sentences. That is not to say that their construction is uniform, however; the three longer sentences meander in their unfurling of information, much like one might imagine the car doing on the unimpeded stretches of its journey. The shorter ones that end each paragraph, however, feel like they interrupt the text, just as the “crush” of people glaring at the convoy and the omnibus impede the car on its journey through the streets.
The first sentence of the second paragraph demands particular attention for its sprawling nature. The narrative perspective of the sentence seems to jump multiple times, while keeping its focus squarely on Clarissa and how she perceives the street scene before her; indeed, at one point when it feels like the focus is just about to shift away from Clarissa onto following the car down the street, Woolf adds a bracketed aside, noting that “(Clarissa saw the car diminishing, disappearing)”. Having said that, occasionally it can be tricky to pin down whether the narrator is voicing their own perspective, or that of Mrs Dalloway; for example, the footman’s disk is “inscribed with a name – the Queen’s, the Prince of Wales’s, the Prime Minister’s?”. Although likely that we are hearing Mrs Dalloway’s thoughts here, it is uncertain, considering the penchant of the novel to rapidly cycle through characters’ thoughts and points of view.
It also adds to the uncertain mood of the sentence as a whole – first Clarissa “guessed” who was in the car; then she “knew of course” who the occupant was; then, the narrator seems to question whose name is really on the disc that allows the car passage through the streets. In the passage, Clarissa is presented as both questioning and self-assured, headstrong and yet unsure of herself, as she is for much of the book. By the end of the paragraph, though, Clarissa becomes much surer of herself once again; we are told that she “gave a party,” (implied to be the on the same level of those at Buckingham Palace!), then that she “stiffened a little,” as if to assert her own dominance, like she would “at the top of her stairs” later that evening while surveying the scene of the party.
Asides such as these that appear out of nowhere also crop up in the first paragraph, and in particular the nature of Woolf’s invocation of “Sir John Buckhurst, the old Judge” who stands on the other side of the road from Clarissa. Buckhurst appears completely out of nowhere in the passage, as seems the tendency of Mrs Dalloway in general to jump from character to character, and occasionally to make a single, seemingly throwaway, reference to a random person. In mentioning Buckhurst across the road – and especially in yet another bracketed explanatory aside, that “(Sir John had laid down the law for years and liked a well-dressed woman)” – Dalloway’s status as a socialite who can go anywhere in London and pick an acquaintance of prominent societal standing out of the crowd.
It is not simply Dalloway’s evocation of material wealth and social capital that makes this passage rich; the descriptions Woolf offers throughout the passage are particularly fascinating for their delicate, precise nature. For example, the interaction between the chauffeur and the policemen is laid out in particular detail, with the exact, dance-like movements of both noted by the narrator in a way that underlines the hyper-observant nature of the text. I also find the description of the disc that the footman holds as “white, magical, circular,” interesting; the first and third descriptors seem sensical and objective, whereas the description of the disc as “magical” feels somewhat more out of place, as if to heighten the prestige of the (presumably) royal party that Dalloway tracks in the streetscape. The narrator then comments how the convoy “burnt its way through […] to blaze among candelabras, glittering stars, breasts stiff with oak leaves, Hugh Whitbread and all his colleagues, the gentlemen of England, that night in Buckingham Palace.” This list has an almost dream-like wistfulness to it, particularly in its beginning with the more abstract descriptions; later in the list, we see Dalloway (through the narrator) emphasise her role in the upper portions of English society, by reminiscing over “that night in Buckingham Palace.”
With more space and time, I would very much like to dive even deeper into the class-based context of the passage. In the second sentence of the excerpt, Clarissa reels off names of the upper-class social sporting calendar, wondering whether the crush was “Lords, Ascot, Hurlingham,” referencing the upper crust of cricket meets, horse races and polo matches respectively. We then see Clarissa’s somewhat disdainful attitude towards the middle classes after that, noting how “ridiculous” it was that they were wearing “furs on a day like this.” I would love to explore how areas such as Bond Street create aspirational spaces for the middle classes – and, inevitably, spaces in which they face the ridicule of the upper classes for trying to be things that they are not.
