Mrs. Dalloway: Cubism in Words

When Virginia Woolf first published her renowned novel, Mrs. Dalloway, in 1925, Cubism was slowly fading out and a new cultural movement was being ushered in. Even with Cubism’s slow fade out, it is still clear to see the strong impact it had on writers such as Woolf. Mrs. Dalloway is a prime example of how writers of the early 20^th century attempted to translate artistic movements into their literary pieces.

 When one observes a Picasso cubism painting, such as Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, the feeling that his art first evokes may be confusion. However after careful observation and study, one is only filled with awe and amazement at how Picasso could have drawn something so unique! These same feelings are observed after reading Mrs. Dalloway. Woolf’s novel expertly executes a perfect translation of Cubism from the canvas to the page. Cubism was a literary movement that gained popularity before the First World War and continued in popularity until the early 1920s. The Cubist cultural movement focused on depicting objects from more than one viewpoint, as seen in Picasso’s paintings. In the painting, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, you can see how Picasso has depicted each woman a little differently, as if he has drawn parts of them from different angels and in different lightings.  

Mrs. Dalloway also demonstrates this technique of depicting different angles during the display of the plane writing letters in the sky. As the plane soars through the sky, attempting to spell a word with smoke in the air, the whole city of London looks on with fascination and curiosity. They look up and attempt to decipher the message being written out. This event is described to the reader through the many eyes of a crowded London street, “The aeroplane…began writing a K, an E, a Y perhaps?” The uncertainty of the lettering is just a small example of how Woolf incorporates different point of views in her novel.

Cubism also attempts to display how relative space is by intermixing different planes of an object. This can also be seen in Mrs. Dalloway whenever Woolf quickly and without warning switches the point of view of the novel. An example of this is when the reader meets Maisie Johnson for the first time.  It is a very fast transition from Rezia, another character in the novel who is described before the sudden encounter with Maisie. It is difficult to describe this particular event without citing entire paragraphs. It is best described as if all of a sudden the point of view of the story has changed from that of Rezia to Maisie. Instead of “Rezia exclaimed”, phrases such as “Maisie thought” are being used to describe Maisie’s point of view. If the reader is not paying close attention, then it is easy to get somewhat lost and they may need to backtrack to once again figure out where they are. Another example appears directly before Maisie’s appearance. The two characters Rezia and Septimus, who are married, are sitting in the park. Their appearance begins with a brief introduction of Rezia and goes on to shortly describe why they are in the park. Then it suddenly switches to Septimus’s mad ramblings, which at the same time include Rezia’s sane observations and worries about being seen in public with a mad man. It is as if they are one person, “’Look,’ she repeated. Look the unseen bade him.” The dialogue is all said by Rezia, however in the inner dialogue/observations are described through Septimus.

One would think that a written form of cubism may be easier to interpret and understand. However Mrs. Dalloway proves to as difficult, if not more so, than Picasso’s paintings, it is clear to see what influence Cubism had on early 20^th century artists. 


-Katherina Delgado

Woolf, Virginia. Mrs. Dalloway. 1925. Harcourt Inc. Print
Wikipedia. Cubism. 2011. Wikipedia. Web. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cubism.