Estimated reading time: 3 minutes.
This post might contain minor spoilers.
Mrs. Dalloway is a novel published in 1925 by Virginia Woolf. It is the story of a woman who will host a party, and the preparations she makes for such party. Although the topic might seem a bit frivolous at first, especially for a post-war novel, it is absolutely the opposite. Woolf' provides a rich insight into the characters thoughts, which gives us the readers an opportunity to explore the mind of Clarissa and Septimus, the main characters. Thanks to this insight, we can establish what has been called by other people the 'mind time' of the characters, meaning, how the characters perceive time. It is really interesting seeing throughout the novel how this mind times does not always coincide with the time that the clock marks. Here is important to remark that the novel elapses in only one day. It is obviously not a normal day in the life of Clarissa Dalloway, given the ending of such day, but it does start as a normal one. We have a few representations of how time works in the characters' minds, but the clearest example can be found in the character of Septimus Warren Smith.
Septimus is a character that suffers from shell shock, a concept we nowadays call PTSD. He was in the WWI, where he developed his mental illness. Due to this illness, he suffers hallucinations. For example, he sees his friend Evans, who is dead, appear multiple times. This is clearly related to the concept of time in the novel. Septimus is trapped in the past because he can not follow the time of the clock and live according to it, he keeps reviving old memories as if they were taking place in the present. Thus, the 'mind time' of Septimus is no the same as the time marked by the Big Ben.
Another example of how the 'mind time' is not always related to the clock time in the novel is the character of Clarissa Dalloway herself. Clarissa is often remembering and being nostalgic about the past and her younger years. She often finds herself being melancholic about the past and wondering what might have happened if she had done things differently. Melancholia is a key word here because if we analyze Clarissa under the light of Freud's concept of melancholia, we find that Clarissa probably is suffering it. Melancholia is pathological and unlike mourning, it might not always answer to an event that just happened in the life of the person, for example, the death of a close member of their family. Here we see that Clarissa's uncertainty about her marriage does not respond to something specific that makes her unhappy, but it is just this feeling of being unsure about her decision of marrying Mr. Dalloway. If the book took place just after their marriage, this might make sense, but after so much time has passed it just seems like she is suffering from melancholia. Melancholia is clearly related to the concept of time since he or she who suffers it is trapped in the past and can not let it go.
Therefore, we can see that Septimus and Clarissa have their own 'mind times' that are not the same as the time that the Big Ben marks. There are more examples in the novel of this, but I think these are the two most clear and relevant.
Have you read Mrs. Dalloway? What did you think of the concept of time?
