Building Better Worlds: A Sociological Analysis of Meaning in Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway

Timothy Letteney

Building Better Worlds:A Sociological Analysis of Meaning in Virginia Woolf’s Mrs.

Dalloway

Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway presents the reader with a

society that is desperately searching for meaning. During a

time where social stability is called into question by

horrors of World War I, it is more important than ever for

humanity to maintain their social and consumerist rituals.

By applying Peter Berger’s sociological theory of religion

to this novel I hope to prove Clarissa Dalloway and Septimus

Warren Smith are figureheads for the successes and pitfalls

for humankind’s search for meaning. I then hope to prove

that Woolf uses the creation of novels as her personal

belief structure and as an attempt to create transcendental

communion with her readers.

In absence of a rigid belief structure, such as

Christianity, Virginia Woolf looks to human relationships

and art to fill her life with meaning. Woolf’s fiction

serves as meditative session for the reader, the goal of

which is to break down societal and physical boundaries,

which keep humanity from actually getting to know each

other. She believed that human appearances were deceiving

and each person has within themselves a vast network of

hidden channels which hold their true essence. The summation

of this vast network of thoughts, ideas, emotions, and

desires create the human experience. She believed this

experience was a shared one and that all humanity had a

commonality. Woolf ritualistically writes about hidden

patterns, mists, common sounds, and shared experiences to

suggest this commonality.

Woolf believed that important moments in time, she

called “moments of being” help pull the curtain back and

show a collective experience of life. These “moments” can be

mundane, or bombastic, but all help humanity see through the

veil of daily life into a shared existence. Woolf’s moments

of being serve as an ideological competitor to organized

religion. Woolf hopes to create communion without the

dogmatic and restrictive rituals found in religion. Woolf

uses her immense literary gifts to create communion with

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those that follow her fiction. This communion is not

centered on hero worship, or great acts of valor. It is

based on the intense examination of ordinary people on

ordinary days. Woolf goes beneath the surface of daily life

by holding a microscope up to her characters as they

navigate a world scattered with moments of being.

Woolf builds fictional worlds filled with these

moments. In the introduction to Woolf’s Moments of Being,

Jeanne Schulkind states, “the questions repeatedly posed by

the characters of her novels - What is life? What is love?

What is reality? Who are you? Who am I? - lead to one end,

the spiritual continuum which embraces all of life, the

vision of reality as a timeless unity which lies beneath the

appearance of change, separation and disorder that marks

daily life” (18). Schulkind’s use of the phrase “spiritual

continuum” seems out of place at first glance. Woolf

considered herself an agnostic and had no problem dismissing

God as even a remote possibility. In fact, whenever Woolf

does address religion, her writing becomes laden with irony.

It is as if Woolf is reigning in her own thoughts as a form

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of active surveillance (Lecture 4/2/13 Paulsell). Woolf’s

desire to find ultimate meaning leads her down the path of a

mystic. It is impossible to answer the unanswerable

questions in life without looking outside the self. While

Woolf, is indeed an agnostic, it cannot be argued that she

was an atheist.

Close examinations of the themes in her novels reveal a

woman who was deeply spiritual. Her novels are filled with

ghostly visions, transcendental experiences, collective

thought, and the afterlife. Woolf’s critique is not aimed at

spirituality; it is aimed at organized religion and many of

its followers. Woolf did not create her fiction as escapist

entertainment; she created it with the drive to address

life’s big unanswerable questions. Virginia Woolf’s fiction

was created with the intention of being a new form of

religion. Simply stated, Woolf’s communal ideology is her

faith and her fiction is scripture. While her fiction does

not contain concrete answers, she hopes to show her readers

to the path to these answers by building a world for them to

explore and meditate in.

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Before we delve into Mrs. Dalloway we must first lay some

groundwork by exploring Peter Berger’s Sacred Canopy: Elements of

a Sociological Theory of Religion. Berger’s book contains a

systematic argument on a sociological theory of human belief

structures, including but not limited to religion. Berger’s

key argument is that “every human society is an enterprise

of world building” (2). Humans must partake in the world

building process because we are biologically lacking a built

in relationship to the world at large. Whereas a bird is

born into a world of birds, and a cat is born into a world

of cats, humans must build a world for themselves. Our world

“is an open world...that must be fashioned by man’s own

activity...this is a “direct consequence of man’s biological

constitution” (5). Humans are constantly engaged in creating

a human world; we call this world, culture.

The process of creation provides humanity with

stability by creating firm structures (material and non-

material) in this incomplete world. The caveat to the

creation process, is that these firm structures need

constant maintenance because “its structures

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are...precarious and predestined to change” (6).  In order

to maintain the illusion of a human world and the

psychological protection it offers, “culture must be

continuously produced and reproduced by man” (6). Culture is

maintained not only by the creation of material goods and

institutions, but non-material structures such as society.

These structures need constant maintenance to keep the world

meaningful.  Berger argues that “society...occupies a

privileged position among man’s culture formations” (6).

This social world, as created by humans, exists to order our

experiences. Berger calls this order a nomos, or a

“meaningful order” (19). Without this ordering of experience

humanity would be subject to meaninglessness, chaos and

death.

By applying Berger’s lens to Virginia Woolf’s Mrs.

Dalloway, character motivations take on a whole new

dimension. Clarissa Dalloway and Septimus Warren Smith are

transformed into soldiers in the battle against

meaninglessness. They exist as two sides of the same coin,

Clarissa represents society’s fight to maintain illusory,

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yet crucial structures to maintain humanity, while Septimus

represents what happens when traumatic experiences call

attention to the fragile nature of the illusion of human

culture and identity.

Though they initially seem frivolous and wasteful,

Clarissa’s parties are of immense significance, not only to

Clarissa, but the entire world she inhabits. Berger argues,

“it is impossible to become or to be human...except in

society” (16). The parties represent the pinnacle of British

society. They exist to uphold the illusion of culture and

maintain the theory that life is meaningful. Clarissa’s high

society parties are a defiance against meaninglessness and

an attempt to uphold socialization. Berger states “the

success of socialization depends on the establishment of

symmetry between the objective world of society and the

subjective world of the individual...” (15). Clarissa

strives to find this balance by hosting both close friends

and symbols of British society (such as the Prime minister)

at her party. Clarissa’s parties act as a holy sermon

supporting the collective hallucination of the human world.

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According to Berger “man’s world-building activity is always

a collective enterprise. Man’s internal appropriation of a

world must also take place in a collectivity” (16). Humans

cannot accept their world in isolation. They must gather

together in communities for culture to be maintained and

socialization to take place. This is why Septimus is in the

thralls of madness. He is completely isolated from British

society and is unable to engage in the process of

socialization. Because of this isolation, Septimus has a

unique, though degenerative, perception of the tenuousness

of human culture.

While Clarissa does not completely see the fragility of

human culture like Septimus does, she realizes her parties

hold power. She believes the formalities and attire required

for her parties allow attendees “to say things you couldn’t

say anyhow else, things that needed an effort; (it was)

possible to go much deeper” (Woolf 187). This going “deeper”

in conversation helps her create meaningful bonds with her

guests and instill a sense of community. Berger convincingly

argues that “the world is built up in the consciousness of

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the individual by conversation with significant others. The

world is maintained as subjective reality by the same sort

of conversation...if such a conversation is disrupted (the

spouse dies, the friends disappear...), the world begins to

totter, to lose its subjective plausibility. In other words,

the subjective reality of the world hangs on the thin thread

of conversation” (17). If this is the case, the

conversations Clarissa hopes to inspire by throwing parties

are actually maintaining the existence of the human world,

at a time when World War I has shown many people how fragile

human existence is.

World War I is the traumatic event that calls attention

to, and disrupts humanity’s conversation. This happens quite

literally in Mrs. Dalloway when the Bradshaws interrupt

Clarissa’s party by telling her about Septimus’ suicide.

Clarissa thinks “in the middle of my party, here’s death”

(201). She realizes drawing attention to human mortality

will ruin the extravagance of her party. Clarissa goes on

to think “the party’s splendor fell to the floor…what

business had the Bradshaws to talk of death at her party? A

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young man had killed himself. And they talked about it at

her party – the Bradshaws talked of death” (202). Woolf

crafts Clarissa’s thoughts wonderfully. The short syntax and

repeated lexicon express Clarissa’s feelings of indignation

and frustration directed at the Bradshaws, but then

something transcendental happens. Woolf allows Clarissa to

break the barriers of space and time to mentally share

Septimus’ suicide. Clarissa’s “dress flamed, her body

burnt. He had thrown himself from a window. Up had flashed

the ground; through him, blundering, bruising, went the

rusty spikes. There he lay with a thud, thud, thud, in his

brain, and then a suffocation of blackness” (202). This

shared experience acts as a moment of being for Clarissa.

She is momentarily connected with poor Septimus and shown

the bleak alternative maintaining human conversation. This

moment realigns Clarissa’s sense of importance. Initially

she was concerned with creating the perfect party atmosphere

conducive to conversation, now she realizes that “she must

assemble. She must find Sally and Peter,” (204) two of her

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oldest and truest friends whom she has not spoken to all

night.

An event as traumatic as World War I has ripples of

effect, like one of Woolf’s echoing bells creating “leaden

circles dissolved in the air” (204). These ripples can be

both regenerative and destructive because they congruently

call attention to the meaning and chaos that surrounds human

made belief structures. These structures, or nomos as Berger

calls them are used as a “shield against terror” (Berger

22). World War I embodies this terror, while Clarissa’s

party is rife with contemporary culture and embodies

humanity’s nomos. The war has exposed Septimus to the chaos

of a violent world void of human culture. By experiencing

“radical separation from the social world...he loses

orientation and...he loses a sense of reality and identity"

(Berger 22). Septimus falls into the thralls of madness and

cannot tell the difference between a hallucination and

reality.

Septimus realizes “ it must be the fault of the world

then - that he could not feel” (Woolf 96). World War I

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isolates Septimus from the majority of British society. He

cannot relate to the culture he has returned to. Berger

believes that "the ultimate danger of such separation...is

the danger of meaninglessness" (23). This is illustrated

when Septimus’ wife Lucrezia is seen sobbing over Septimus’

emotional withdrawal from her and the rest of society.

Lucrezia at one time held an immense amount of meaning to

Septimus, but now when “he heard her sobbing...he compared

it to a piston thumping. But he felt nothing” (Woolf 99).

Septimus sees his wife as a mechanized part of

industrialized modern society. She loses all humanity in his

eyes during this interaction. By demonstrating the chaotic

and meaningless nature in which soldiers and civilians die,

the war pollutes belief structures such as marriage,

procreation, and materialism that once gave Septimus

protection and a sense of purpose. He is given the

impossible task of reintegrating into a society that ignores

death and whose only form of communion is consumerism.

Berger argues that when nomos are shaken to their core,

like they are in Septimus’ case the “danger is the

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nightmare...in which the individual is submerged in a world

of disorder, senselessness and madness. Reality and identity

are malignantly transformed into meaningless figures of

horror. To be in society is to be “sane” precisely in the

sense of being shielded from the ultimate “insanity” of such

anomic terror. Anomy is unbearable to the point where the

individual may seek death in preference to it” (23). Death

is exactly what Septimus seeks when he is confronted with

society’s corrective measures. With very few exceptions,

Septimus is living in a nightmare. He sees the visage of his

fallen comrade Evans, and he is subject to hellish

hallucinations. Here we come to an example of the genius of

Virginia Woolf. There is no arguing that Woolf writes

Septimus as being insane, but this insanity allows him to

see the faults of British society.

Woolf writes Septimus as a doomed Christ figure who is

used to critique society. This is illustrated when “every

one looked at the motor car...and there the motor car stood

with drawn blinds, and upon them a curious pattern like a

tree, and this gradual drawing together of everything to one

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center before his eyes, as if some horror had come almost to

the surface and was about to burst into flames...” (16).

Surely this is a nightmarish vision along the lines of what

Berger has in mind when someone is stripped of worldly

meaning, but Woolf uses Septimus’ insane vision to pull back

the curtain on a flawed British society. Septimus sees the

interconnectedness of his society, but they are connecting

on a hollow symbol. Citizens are awestruck by this

automobile. They all imagine the car contains someone of

great societal importance. This faceless black car imbues a

feeling of subordination in the denizens of London. While

the car probably contains the Prime Minister, it could be

empty but for a driver, yet this inanimate object, this

hollow, yet “enduring symbol” (17) would still hold immense

power over the characters. By giving a character suffering

from madness, like Septimus, the ability to see the flawed

nature of society Woolf suggests human society itself may be

on the brink of madness because they have put their faith

symbols that aren’t strong enough to support the illusion of

human culture.

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Septimus’s suicide is a rebellion against human culture

and socialization. Woolf explores this rebelliousness when

Clarissa says of Septimus’ suicide, “death was defiance.

Death was an attempt to communicate, people feeling the

impossibility of reaching the center which mystically,

evaded them; closeness drew apart; rapture faded; one was

alone. There was an embrace in death” (202). By committing

suicide, Septimus rebels against societal belief structures.

He calls attention to the impossibility of reaching complete

socialization with humanity. Berger believes that

“...socialization can never be completed...it must be an

ongoing process throughout the lifetime of the individual”

(17). Seen through this filter, Septimus not only sacrifices

himself to call attention to the tenuous nature of society,

he becomes a martyr by freeing Lucrezia from her duty as his

wife, allowing her to re-enter the flawed society.

Society contains a self-regulating power to insure its

continued acceptance. Berger argues, “above all, society

manifests itself by its coercive power. The final test of

its objective reality is its capacity to impose itself upon

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the reluctance of individuals. Society directs, sanctions,

controls, and punishes individual conduct. In its most

powerful apotheoses...society may even destroy the

individual” (11). Society achieves coercive power by

creating definitions for what is to be considered normal.

This normalcy is something each citizen strives for. We

should stop for a moment to think about the multitudes of

ways we categorize our peers through the guise selfless

help. Whole careers and institutions have been established

to isolate undesirable conduct from the rest of society.

While this Foucauldian view has its detractors, it has

always been true that when someone is pushed, or chooses to

live outside of the community they invite social and perhaps

physical death. I am not arguing on the behalf of some grand

human conspiracy. Through different time periods different

behaviors/qualities will be deemed unacceptable and humanity

will always isolate and treat what it feels threatened by.

This is in fact what happens to poor Septimus, society tries

to treat him and ends up murdering him.

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Septimus’ own physicians drive him to commit suicide.

They act as agents of regulation with aims to diagnose,

isolate, and treat Septimus like an infection. These

physicians, Dr. Holmes and Sir William Bradshaw are the

physical manifestation of society's coercive power. These

characters exist to control Septimus and assimilate him back

into society. Septimus’ paranoid and mad demeanor allows him

to see these characters’ motivations from an objective

viewpoint, away from the illusion of society. In Pericles

Lewis’s excellent Religious Experience and the Modernist Novel, Lewis

examines Woolf’s recurring use of character’s searching for

the answers to life’s great questions. Lewis states” Woolf’s

characters continually search for an answer to the meaning

of existence and come up empty-handed. In his lucid moments,

the war veteran Septimus Smith fears that ‘the world itself

is without meaning,’ but during his fits of madness he

becomes convinced that he knows the meaning of the world”

(152). I believe, that while Septimus does often drift into

“platitudes of universal harmony” (152), as Lewis argues,

Woolf gives Septimus the ability to see the hollow and

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tenuousness of British society and its belief structures.

Simply stated, Woolf gives Septimus the power of divine

sight. Dr. Holmes and Bradshaw are not merely doctors; in

Septimus’ eyes they are “human nature” (Woolf, 101) whose

sole purpose is to “bring back into line recalcitrant

individuals” (Berger, 12). This is not rampant paranoia on

Septimus’ part. He is correctly sees these individuals as a

threat. They wish to diagnose and isolate him from the one

thing that has a chance of making him better, his wife

Lucrezia.

Initially Lucrezia incorrectly attempts to reintegrate

Septimus in society. She takes his doctor’s advice and tries

to distract Septimus from exploring his past traumas from

the war. By immersing Septimus in society she only draws his

attention the disconnect between his post war self and the

commoditized British society. Woolf illustrates society’s

belief structure has become increasingly disposable in this

post war culture. Consumers look for instant gratification

through the purchase of material goods to uphold their

belief structures. This is seen when Lucrezia thinks “and

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there were the shops - hat shops, dress shops, shops with

leather bags in the window, where she would stand staring.

But she must have a boy” (97). Woolf’s syntactical structure

suggests that Lucrezia’s desire to give birth to a boy is

another form of consumerism and the gender of the child an

option in a shop catalogue. Post war consumerism creates a

tenuous disposable culture constantly looking for the next

new product. This culture is not compatible with Septimus,

who has been surrounded by loss and change from the war.

What Septimus needs, and gets very briefly, is the personal

connection and conversation with Lucrezia that comes with

creating something together.

Moments before his suicide Septimus and Lucrezia begin

work on a hat for their neighbor, Mrs. Peters. Lucrezia

believes Septimus has turned a corner during this process

and is recovering from madness. She thinks “how it rejoiced

her that! Not for weeks had they laughed like this

together...never had she felt so happy! Never in her life!”

(157). This process creates a heavenly moment for Septimus.

“He would wait in this warm place, this pocket of still air,

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which one comes on at the edge of a wood sometimes in the

evening...warmth lingers, and the air buffets the cheek like

the wing of the bird” (158). This profound happiness is so

unexpected given these characters previous appearances that

the reader can’t help but feel dread. This moment of being

is too good to last. Septimus looks at the hat, “it was

wonderful. Never had he done anything which made him feel so

proud. It was so real, so substantial...”(158). A decorated

veteran of World War I, who protected his country from a

foreign force, is more proud of a hat he made with his wife,

than any act of valor in the war. This is because the hat

represents humankind’s inherent drive to create. Mrs.

Peter’s hat is Septimus’ first (and sadly his last) step in

rebuilding his world through culture.

Dr. Holmes could not be further off base when he tells

Lucrezia “to make her husband...take an interest in things

outside himself” (23). What Septimus needs most are

meaningful human connections, which are only attainable by

engaging the self in society and creating culture. Even his

final physician, William Bradshaw says “the people we are

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most fond of are not good for us when we are ill...they must

be separated” (161). Now that he has connected once again

with Lucrezia and is a participant in human culture he

thinks, “life was good” and “he did not want to die” (164).

Yet when he is faced with Dr. Holmes’ visit and the

potential loss of Lucrezia he commits suicide. Holmes, an

agent of societal control forces Septimus’ hand. Septimus

believed he had no control and would be stripped of the only

belief structure that mattered to him, Lucrezia. I believe

something similar happened to Virginia Woolf when her nomos,

writing, was threatened by her illness.

Virginia Woolf “denies the existence of God…” (Lewis

156) so she looks to the creation of fiction to fill the

void. Woolf battles with a near impossible task, she uses

her novels to “pour meaning into reality” (Berger 28), yet

reigns herself in when she approaches transcendental and

mystical ideas. Lewis believes that Woolf’s “constant

concerns regarding novelistic form is the problem of how to

create a work of art that reflects the underlying ‘pattern’

of experience without imposing on it the views of an author-

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God”(156). Her novels are meant to connect with the reader

on a deep and meaningful level. Though she aims her fiction

at the common reader, her goal is anything but common. Her

goal is so lofty, so beyond human, that she cannot help but

include transcendental experiences in her fiction. This is

why the rules of time and space are broken when we see

Clarissa merge minds with Septimus. I believe Woolf’s self-

described audience, her “common reader,” is veiled in

meaning. Woolf was not just writing for a bell curve

audience, she was writing for communion with the whole of

humanity. Lewis explores this idea when her writes:

For Woolf, no communion is possible with God or Christ,but she does seek some form of communion among selves. Such a communion can even seem to augur a form of immortality. For Woolf, it seems, the dead contribute to

the problem of other minds, since belief in the immortality of the soul depends on the idea that other minds survive death, or, in a more secular variation, thatone survives death only in the minds of others. Sublime

moments of being temporarily allow the barriers betweenone mind and another to evaporate, the problem of other minds to be resolved; in this way, they form the basis for a sacred communion, an alternative to the communion of the Church of England. (153)

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Woolf touches upon this idea of the immortality of the soul

by leaving an imprint in the minds of others in Mrs. Dalloway.

The main reason Clarissa holds her parties is to defy death

and create permanent memories in the minds of her peers.

Clarissa states that “our apparitions, the part of us which

appears, are so momentary compared with the other, the

unseen part of us, which spreads wide, the unseen might

survive, be recovered somehow attached to this person or

that, or even haunting certain places, after death” (167).

I believe that Woolf’s fiction serves the same purpose as

Clarissa’s party.

Woolf believed the “only authentic religious or

‘spiritual’ experience available can be found in intense

moments of vision or ecstasy, which the techniques of art

can preserve and transmit (Lewis 155).” Woolf looked to art

as her prime societal belief structure. Her nomos,

"language…can readily be seen as the imposition of order

upon experience" (Berger 20). She used her art form to give

her life order, purpose and to help create a common

experience with humanity by engaging readers in culture.

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Woolf’s writing should not be seen as merely fiction, but as

an attempt to create a new religion. Berger believes that

“religion implies the farthest reach of man’s own

externalization, of his infusion of reality with his own

meanings” (28). Woolf used her scripture to transmit her

transcendental beliefs to her reading public. She hoped to

infuse her ideas about interconnectivity and shared

experiences on her society and her reality. This is an

insurmountable task that is impossible to maintain. Berger

states “religion is the audacious attempt to conceive the

entire universe as being humanly significant” (28). He uses

the word “audacious” because a belief structure this

ambitious requires constant maintenance and rebuilding.

Religion attempts to achieve preservation through rituals

and repetition because “men forget. They must...be reminded

over and over again” (Berger 40). Woolf’s use of repetition

compliments this concept nicely. Time and time again Woolf

has her characters think the same thoughts, see the same

animals, walk though the same mist, hear the same sounds.

What at first appears to be convention is may actually be

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Woolf’s attempt to inject ritualistic concepts in her

fiction to lead her readers towards psychological communion.

Whether intended or not, Virginia Woolf’s artistic

genius has provided her with symbolic immortality. Even now,

72 years after her death, she continues to share communion

with her common reader. Works like Mrs. Dalloway are so rife

with meaning and moments of being that new ideas are

revealed with each reading. This analysis is not intended to

belittle Woolf’s genius, or her meaningful fiction by

applying Peter Berger’s sociological concepts to her work.

If anything, I hoped to honor her work treating it as a

religion. Taking a sociological approach often comes across

as diminutive, as it too has the impossible task of

providing meaning to the human condition.

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Works Cited

Berger, Peter. The Sacred Canopy; Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion. New York: Doubleday & Company, Inc, 1967. Print.

Lewis, Pericles. Religious Experience and the Modernist Novel. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010. eBook.

Woolf, Virginia. Moments of Being. London: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1976. Print

Woolf, Virginia. Mrs. Dalloway. London: Penguin Books, 1992. Print

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Works Consulted

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Lee, Hermoine. The Novels of Virginia Woolf. London: Methuen & Co Ltd, 1977. Print.

Gordon, Lyndall. Virginia Woolf, A Writer’s Life. London: W.W. Norton & Company, 1984. Print.

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