Multiple Narrators
Virginia Woolf’s technique of using every character’s perspective gives us a chance to create a complete sense of each character throughout Mrs. Dalloway. While in most other books (that at least I’ve read) we only mainly view the world through one character’s perspective, in Mrs. Dalloway Woolf is able to create a better overall picture of the characters through her switch of perspective. In The Mezzanine, for example, the only perspective we’re introduced to is Howie’s and we remain with him for the duration of the book. While this doesn’t make The Mezzanine an incomplete or inferior book, we never truly get a sense of how other people view Howie or think about him -- we can only infer what they might think. In Mrs. Dalloway we not only get to listen to the thoughts and emotions of a character (for example Clarissa) but we also get to see how everyone around views her from the outside.
When the reader is introduced to a character’s thoughts it immediately gives them a bias when inferring how others view them. When we get to see multiple perspectives this helps keep our biases slightly in check. We have a more complete sense of each of the characters, yet we are still able to infer about their relationships to each other and how that affects their views. Even when we are in the perspective of a stranger (in relation to a character they’re talking about) we can use our complete sense of the character speaking to infer why they view someone in a certain way. For example, if someone of a lower class were to talk about Clarissa, their view of her would be much different than a person who is richer or better off than her.
I definitely find it more difficult to relate to any of the characters in Mrs. Dalloway than I did to Howie in The Mezzanine but I like having everyone’s perspectives and being able to use them to learn more about each other. I think the way Woolf uses everyone’s perspectives gives me a chance to learn about the characters fully, even if I can’t relate to what they are thinking or experiencing.
I agree that it is very interesting and helpful to have multiple viewpoints from different characters, and you get to see the inner workings of each of them and their thought processes. I've read a couple books with that type of story telling and I think it helped a lot with my understanding of each of the characters motives and actions.
ReplyDeleteI do believe that having multiple narrators is a very powerful story telling tool. In another book I've read with multiple narrators uses them as a vessel for seeing plot and having multiple character arcs going on at the same time. This book on the other hand uses it to see the complex relationships between each character from different characters points of view. Neither is a bad use but both have different purposes, that I think can be used well to tell different stories.
ReplyDeleteThis was a pretty great post. I start the vast majority of my comments with "I agree," and I feel like that intro's a bit tired out but I REALLY agree with this one haha. You took some of my thoughts and worded them better than I did. But yeah, we definitely get a better view of the characters. With The Mezzanine, we are fully exposed to the workings of Howie's mind, and from the interactions we read we can guess Howie's a relatively nice guy, but outside of that and his obvious quirkiness, we can't really glean much more about his personality. On the other hand, Woolf's characters display a range of different personality traits, that can change and develop across perspectives. Woolf's characters are also a lot harder to relate to, like you said, which I think in part comes from the fact we're teenagers with much less life experience. Some of us have wildly different ethnic backgrounds, and we're all from a much different time period. Howie's story on the other hand takes place much closer to the present, and includes a lot of aspects of life we can come into contact with every day. Anyway, cool post.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you that although the general format of "The Mezzanine" and "Mrs. Dalloway" is very similar, a primary difference between them is the fact that Mrs. Dalloway addresses the viewpoints of several characters while The Mezzanine is confined to Howie's mind. Meanwhile, in Mrs. Dalloway, we have the privilege of visiting several of the characters' minds. As I think one of the main topics of this book is to focus on how different experiences affect different people differently as they react to them differently, its definitely good we get to learn about what everyone is thinking.
ReplyDeleteOne way to frame this important distinction between the two novels might be to say that Baker focuses intensely on *subjectivity* (one person's idiosyncratic and individuated view of the world), while Woolf is more interested in *intersubjectivity*, or how individual subjects interact with each other, and how "character" is a matter of multiple perspectives coming together. In Woolf's view, we are largely defined by our interactions with others, and "character" is a blend of self-perception and others' perception. She's far more interested than Baker in this ambiguous space *between* people (and between their self-perceptions and others' perceptions of them).
ReplyDeleteOne specific example I can think of when we talk about the impact of this narration style is Richard Dalloway. If we were looking at Richard from either Clarissa's or Peter's perspective, we would get the sense that he is very dull and there's nothing going on in his head. However, when we are finally looking at things through Richard's perspective, we learn there's a lot more going on in the background and it just doesn't make it to the outside.
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