Mrs. Dalloway? Conservatism and Liberalism in Government?

 

Throughout Mrs. Dalloway, we see several references to Clarissa's Husband, Mr. Richard Dalloway.  As far as we all know, he is a conservative politician in the parliament of the United Kingdom.  Otherwise, up until this point, he is considered "a minor character".  In this blog post, I have tried to mirror the setting and characters of the story into the relative social politics of today.  Yet, the stark contrast between liberalism and conservatism is brought up through Clarissa's thought process and symbols.  Furthermore, Clarissa's past also brings up a liberal lifestyle quite contrary to her manner in the present form.

"Sally went out, picked hollyhocks, dahlias - all sorts of flowers that had never been seen together - cut their heads off, and made them swim on the top of water in bowls.  The effect was extraordinary - coming in to dinner in the sunset (Of course Aunt Helena thought it wicked to treat flowers like that)."  In this, Aunt Helena, the supposed supervisor of said young Clarissa, represents the conservatism in her life.  As you can guess, Sally would represent the "bad" influence of liberalism.  It's the pang of nostalgia Clarissa gets every time she makes a different observation.  The two parties of conservatism always at odds with each other, but yet even the people within their own parties begin to doubt their own beliefs.

I kind of imagine this present setting as an island of red.  Clarissa has chosen to live a conservative aristocratic lifestyle with her "conservative husband".  This action has put her into a pool of conservatism - parties with other conservative politicians and their conservative families. The people she surrounds herself are heavily associated with conservatism.  Yet, she has (maybe I wouldn't call them complete doubts) half-doubts about whether she should've married Peter Walsh, which in itself, is an erratic and liberal decision.  He made hyperbolas claims of being the future prime minister, and has a British wife in India.  He didn't accomplish his goals, but is unpredictable in his actions nonetheless.  

Her past memories in Bourton with Sally and Peter Walsh have embedded themselves in her mind as different.  Her self-reflection may be analogous to that of any person put in a heavily singularly politically concentrated area.  They begin to question whether their choice of party, their choice of lifestyle is just a product of pressure and education from the environment.  I personally have had reflections of this idea as well.  I am extremely liberal, yet I was brought up in a liberal household, in a relatively liberal town, with an extremely liberal supportive education.  My experience with conservatism is much smaller compared to that of the liberalism, and I begin to half-doubt of whether I am truly as a person untouched, a liberal.  

""Tell me," he said, seizing her by the shoulders. "Are you happy Clarissa? Does Richard - " As the chance for an experience of blue liberalism opens up, the conservative wall blocks it.  Her immediate family (who can represent conservatism in this case), Elizabeth blocks the way, symbolic of how when we question the other party's points, our own environment blocks it out unknowingly suppressing our own ideas.

Comments

  1. CollinSeptember 17, 2020 at 5:40 PM

    Interesting. I definitely didn't interpret the story up till now as a political commentary but I can see where you're coming from -- Clarissa's husband being a politician certainly supports your argument. With that being said, I also see this novel as maybe more "simple" than you are making it out to be. Like in the Mezzanine, it seems that the author is not hiding too much other than perhaps the narrators inner thoughts. What if these characters are representing not "Conservative ideals" but the beauty of Pastoral ways of thinking. My interpretation of this novel could also be attributed to the fact that I personally do not enjoy the idea of politics but it's another thing to think about. Since these novels seem to be about the narrator's thought process and mind, maybe the author was trying to subtly incorporate the fact that many people, even if they don't like/don't want to think about politics, it's always something present in society.

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  2. LillianSeptember 18, 2020 at 1:33 PM

    I think this is very interesting and also true in a lot of ways, but I would argue that Peter and particular Sally rather than representing liberalism, in actuality a right wing ideology, represent the more nonconformist ideology of Marxism. About Sally, she said "They meant to found a society to abolish private property, and actually had a letter written, though not sent out. The ideas were Sally's, of course--but very soon she was just as excited". While liberalism is classically laissez faire capitalism with small government, Sally wanted a society without private property, escaping capital and changing the relations and means of production- a communist society. In addition, at one point Peter said "He had been a Socialist, in some sense a failure--true." (However the modern usage of socialism is broad and doesn't always mean pre stage communism or a state where the prole owns the means of production- it is currently often used to refer to revisionist marxism, but the point still stands) Anyways thats what I immediately think of in the context of politics in this book.

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    1. ZoeySeptember 19, 2020 at 8:25 AM

      I think it also shocked me to see Sally introduce the idea of abolishing private property, since that's not something I could ever see her thinking about, being the hostess married to a conservative man, and that this is more in line with Marxism than liberalism. However I think in this post liberalism is just being used as a general term for progressive - which would definitely be true of Sally and Peter as they diverge from the traditional, more conservative, version of the norm. I also think the comparison between politics and the conflicts in this book makes a lot of sense, however I think it could also just be more directly their opposing views or personalities getting in the way of each other, since it's hard to imagine Woolf thinking about politics over just the way these characters would interact with each other.

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  3. MitchellSeptember 23, 2020 at 12:51 PM

    It's true that Richard is a Conservative MP--that's the name of his party. But on this reading of the novel, I was struck by how liberal some of his "conservative" views seem, from the vantage of the early 21st century, where American "conservatism" is veering ever closer to fascism. When Richard is walking through the park on his way to see Clarissa, he thinks about how he "doesn't care a straw" about the Canadian immigration issue Lady Bruton is writing letters to the Times about, he is indignant that there aren't better rules in place to keep children from running into traffic, he contemplates defunding the London police ("he was collecting evidence of their malpractices"), and he reflects that "the fault" for prostitution is not with prostitutes themselves (or the men who patronize them) "but in our detestable social system and so forth" (113). All this sounds pretty "liberal" to a contemporary American reader.

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  4. Noel ChiSeptember 27, 2020 at 4:55 PM

    The moment where Peter asks if Clarissa is happy is, I think, a very good example for your argument. Before Uni, I was one of just a few liberals at a highly conservative school, and I noticed that a lot of conservative mindsets are based on not asking questions, not thinking, and therefore never changing or venturing "outside the box". Of course, it's very biased of me to say that conservatives never think critically, while all liberals do--that might be too big of a blanket statement. (Maybe it's not *that* outrageous a blanket statement, considering the current political climate in America, but that's a conversation for another day...) But anyways, Clarissa's choice to marry Richard Dalloway, set aside her independence, and become the "perfect hostess" seems strongly rooted in conservatism. On the other hand, Peter urgently asking if she's happy implies that he wants Clarissa to really think and reflect on her life and tell him whether or not she wishes she'd chosen a different path. We know that Clarissa's mind often dwells on her more "liberal" past, on Peter and Sally. Is Woolf condemning conservatism? Does she want us, like Peter, to feel disappointed in Clarissa's transformation into the "perfect hostess?"

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