Fictional Doubles:: Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway

by Clinton R. LeFort, George Charles Beresford (Photographer)

Mrs. Dalloway, a novel by Virginia Woolf is a stream-of-conscious narrative written at the turn of the 20c in modern London, England. The story is about Clarissa Dalloway on a particular day preparing for her evening social party. Mrs. Dalloway places heavy emphasis on flashbacks of Mrs. Dalloway as we as psychotic hallucinations of Septimus Smith. The flashbacks and hallucinations act as elaborate dividing lines between Mrs. Dalloway and Septimus Smith while drawing a bridge between the subconscious fictional doubles between the two characters. (Zivkovic,2000) Virginia Woolf was a foremost writer in her day and well-known for her other writings. Mrs. Dalloway is often explained as a play of doubles between Clarissa Dalloway, an English woman of the upper class, and Septimus Smith, a shell-shocked war victim. This paper looks at several identities between Mrs. Dalloway and Septimus Smith which indicate Virginia Woolf’s intention to create them as doubles of one another. Virginia Woolf, in one of her autobiographical writings, wrote that she had planned to write a story about a two sane and insane people who lived side-by-side. Woolf was referring to Mrs. Dalloway and Septimus Smith. Two particular topics will be examined in this paper, which Mrs. Dalloway and Septimus Smith have in societal pressure and death. (Hoff, 2009, 2) Virginia Woolf, in the 1928 edition to Mrs. Dalloway, wrote that she intended Clarissa Dalloway and Septimus Smith to be “mystical doubles of one another.” (Hoff) According to Molly Hoff, the double is a “metaphysical fiction, a fantasy that emphasizes its own fictiveness.” Milicia Zivkovis (2009) says that the “fictional double,” if used “as a literary device articulating the experience of self-division.” (Zivkovic, 121) The double cannot be seen as a literary device without taking into consideration the particular and peculiar environment from which it is born. The fictional double is never free from the social implications in which it is rooted. It is “produced within and determined by its social context.” (Zivkovic) Mrs. Dalloway is set in a modern England setting, but it also has reference to the War, which Septimus Smith is a victim. A person becomes a fictional double within a localized social network of persons, places, and things. The literary or fictional double is also understood by psychological analysts as a subversive tool to the self, which resists an equilibrium with his/her environment. (Zivkovic) The fictional double objectifies the interior desire of the ego to resist social norms and laws of society, while the unconscious mind thwarts reconciling its unconscious desire to objectively experienced reality. The fictional double can be understood as a tool to represent the division of the self into two opposing forces. The fictional double also creates a tension within subconscious desire. How do Mrs. Clarissa Dalloway and Septimus Smith represent the fictional double?

8 pages, Kindle Edition

First published May 9, 2014

About the author

My writing career began in grade school, where I became interested in reporting and poetry. I wrote lots of poetry and prose in High School, then developed a philosophy in graduate school. After graduating from LSU and USC I became interested in dramatic writing for theater and film. My latest works have been a combination of spirituality, suspense and philosophy. Back in 2006 I wrote 4 major books, which came out of several small newsletters I registered with the Library of Congress. My present interest are in screenwriting and spirituality; how to express religious truths for the screen.
One discovery as a writer is that you are always searching for the perfect way to say the same basic human experiences with more meaning, helping the reader to remember a word, a phrase a meaningful event so that the author and the reader can relate.