Jordan Trantham
Professor Johnsen
Eng 320C
November 24th, 2013
The Seen and Unseen Self within Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway
One of the main ideas addressed throughout Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway is the idea that
there are two parts to every person; the seen and unseen self. The seen self is a person’s physical
representation, while the unseen self is a person’s very essence, their thoughts and feelings, their
consciousness. However, the seen and unseen self hardly ever exist in the same space and time
simultaneously, therefore a person must choose which self to exist within. However, there are certain
advantages and disadvantages that come from this choice. There is certain disconnect between a person
and the self that is disregarded. This notion is particularly expressed through the characters of Septimus
and Clarissa. While Clarissa often throws parties as offerings of her seen self, Septimus alters the context
of death by committing suicide in order to preserve his unseen self.
For the majority of the novel, Clarissa performs within the context of her seen self. Her life is
one that is very much concerned with outward appearances and everything being just right. While
Clarissa tries to wade through the glittering perfection of her reality, she is constantly searching for
some sort of deeper meaning. Although Clarissa lives and performs within the context of her seen self,
she spends her days searching for a connection to her unseen self. However the two selves that a person
possesses hardly ever exist in the same space and time, so the closer she gets to connecting with the
unseen self, the looser her grip on her seen self, her reality, becomes. Clarissa believes that after death
your seen self ceases to exist while the unseen self could survive via connections with other people and
perhaps even other places.
“Odd affinities she had with people she had never spoken to, some woman in the street, some
man behind a counter—even trees, or barns. It ended in a transcendental theory which, with her horror
of death, allowed her to believe, or say she believed (for all her skepticism), that since 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…perhaps—perhaps.” (149).
This is particularly interesting because although Clarissa is searching for a deeper meaning and
recognizes the possibilities of these connections, she still chooses to live within the context of her seen
self and even going so far as to greatly exaggerate it by throwing outlandish parties. She considers them
offerings, of her ability to combine different people and create a certain environment, but she doesn’t
know to whom the offering is given. The particular party during which the novel takes place is one of
these offerings, and Clarissa is becoming even more aware of their futility and the separation from her
unseen self that they create.
“Every time she gave a party she had this feeling of being something not herself, and that every
one was unreal in one way; much more real in another. It was, she thought, partly their clothes, partly
being taken out of their ordinary ways, partly the background, it was possible to say things you could say
anyhow else, things that needed an effort; possible to go much deeper. But not for her; not yet
anyhow.”(166-167).
Clarissa is very much aware of the distinction between her reality and her unseen self, to the
point that her reality begins to seem altered to the point of being almost unrecognizable. She begins to
question everything around her, and the underlying meaning of it all. She gets very close to making a
connection with her unseen self during the party when her guests, the Bradshaw’s begin to discuss a
young man’s suicide. At first Clarissa is shocked and possibly even angered that they would bring up a
topic such as suicide and death, but then she begins to question how he went about doing it, and beings
imagine going through the movement of the suicide. But the one thing she could not wrap her head
around was the reason why the young man committed suicide. Clarissa comes to the conclusion that:
“Death was defiance. Death was an attempt to communicate; people feeling the impossibility of
reaching the centre which, mystically, evaded them; closeness drew apart; rapture faded, one was
alone. There was an embrace in death.”(180). However she did not know if the young man had “plunged
holding his treasure” (180), meaning she did not know if he was able to reach the “centre” or the state
of existing within both the seen and unseen self simultaneously. Clarissa then decides to that she did not
pity the young man and even goes as far as to recognize a connection between them:
“She felt somehow very like him—the young man who had killed himself. She felt glad that he
had done it; thrown it away. The clock was striking. The leaden circles dissolved in the air. He made her
feel the beauty, made her feel the fun.”(182).
Clarissa is able to connect more with nature and often goes into her garden to get peace that
she cannot find within men and women. She finds people to be difficult, a result of living her life
disconnected from her unseen self, her emotions. However the novel ends with the reader unsure if
Clarissa was ever able to connect with her unseen self, if she was ever able to reach the state of existing
within both selves, or if she was going to continue existing solely within her seen self.
In contrast with Clarissa is Septimus, who is ironically, the young man that committed suicide
and the man that Clarissa felt a connection to. While Clarissa existed solely within the seen self,
Septimus is the exact opposite, choosing to exist in the unseen self. Septimus is a World War I veteran
who suffers from shellshock and is therefore urged by his doctors and his wife, Lucrezia to look at the
things around him, to find the beauty in nature. They go out for walks together and his wife is constantly
trying to get him to look at other things and to distract him from his thoughts but when he finally does
look up, he is always disappointed. This is something that he greatly struggles with it, preferring to exist
within an internal world where, consciously or not, he even has a set of truths:
“The supreme secret must be told to the Cabinet; first that trees are alive; next there is no
crime; next love, universal love, he muttered, gasping, trembling, painfully drawing out these profound
truths which needed, so deep were they, so difficult, an immense effort to speak out, but the world was
entirely changed by them for ever.”(66).
These truths are incredibly important to Septimus’ entire being, but because he is so wrapped
up within the unseen self, he has trouble performing in the context of language and expressing these
truths to others.
Much like Clarissa, Septimus goes through times where he is bombarded by the knowledge that
he is separated from the seen self and therefore incomplete. However, because Septimus is so deep
within the unseen self, he has to be careful with how he goes about establishing connections to the seen
self, or in another word, reality.
“He began, very cautiously, to open his eyes, to see whether a gramophone was really there.
But real things—real things were too exciting. He must be cautious. He would not go mad. First he
looked at the fashion papers on the lower shelf, then, gradually at the gramophone with the green
trumpet. Nothing could be more exact. And so, gathering courage, he looked at the sideboard; the plate
of bananas; the engraving of Queen Victoria and the Prince Consort; at the mantelpiece, with the jar of
roses. None of these things moved. All were still; all were real.”(138-139).
Septimus has a very systematic approach when it comes to establishing connections to the seen
self because for him, real things and reality are too overwhelming because he is such an emotional,
feeling person. He has a difficult time relating to human nature, or people that in his eyes, embody all
that is human nature, for example, his doctors, Holmes and Bradshaw. Septimus despises them, and
despises human nature. This hatred is what ultimately led Septimus to commit suicide. He saw Holmes
and Bradshaw as people who were trying to force him to abandon the unseen self and exist solely within
the seen self. However, on the day which Septimus committed suicide, he was able to reach that centre
between the two selves. He was joking and laughing with his wife, and embracing the world around him,
while still holding onto the truths which he so strongly believed. Hearing that Holmes and Bradshaw
were coming for him caused Septimus to conclude that death was the only way to preserve both the
seen and unseen self. “It was their idea of tragedy, not his or Rezia’s (for she was with him).”(146).
“Their” is referring to humanity; Holmes and Bradshaw. “But he would wait till the very last moment. He
did not want to die. Life was good.”(146). Septimus did not see his death as a tragedy. In fact, it wasn’t
that he even wanted to die. He was having a good day, he was finally successful in establishing
connections with both the seen and unseen self, but Holmes was a threat to those connections.
Septimus saw his death solely as preservation.
Septimus’ suicide is such an important factor in Mrs. Dalloway. For Septimus, it completely
alters the meaning of death, turning it from a tragedy to a means of preservation of the good in human
nature and the overlapping of selves. It was much the same for Clarissa. She did not think it was sad that
he committed suicide; she did not pity him either. She just hoped that he was able to die “holding his
treasure”, or in other words she hoped that he was able to reach the centre of the seen and unseen self.
The talk of this suicide at her party was an eye opening experience for Clarissa, because it was then that
she was able to realize and begin to establish connections to her unseen self. She connected with
Septimus, even though she did not even know his name. Clarissa was finally able to begin balancing her
life between her seen self and her unseen self.