Dalloway Vs. Lear Dawn of Justice

By John Humphreys

Throughout hundreds of years, London has bred writers that express humanity in a myriad of ways. From the mysteries of Sherlock Holmes, the horrors of Count Dracula, or revenge of Sweeney Todd, London inspires the world’s most prolific authors. As Anthony in Sweeney Todd says, “There’s no place like London.” The most shocking realization when reading British literature is the consistency between eras, and how authors from older generations can continue to find a through line to express the human experience that the modern generation identifies with. The most prominent example is King Lear by William Shakespeare, and Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf. These two stories, written three hundred years apart, have stark similarities that portray fundamental existentialist themes and social truths in complete parallel.

Shakespeare was actively writing in London, in the heat of the Renaissance Era roughly between 1592 and 1608, and King Lear came out towards the end of this era. Alternatively, Virginia Woolf ’s Mrs. Dalloway was published in 1925, in mind, a pessimistic, post-war London. The attitudes between the two Londons were starkly different. Where Renaissance London was a time of liberal arts and passion, and post-war London was a time for social structure and “proportion” as Virginia Woolf puts it. This gives many scholars a sense that these books have nothing in common, and at first glance, they are not wrong. 

There is an idea that humanity is either improving towards glory, or on a swift downslope towards extinction. Every generation in London (and any other part of the world) expects this linear trajectory that serves society as an unspoken rule. As if humanity is understanding more or less as they continue to thrive or dispair on Earth. If London’s post-war society has improved and grown more “sophisticated” since the Renaissance era, why does it feel like the characters are just suppressing what Shakespeare expresses? King Lear and Mrs. Dalloway can be compared to disprove any linear trajectories for humanity, and readers can understand that the human experience is stagnant through a comparison of both pieces.

In Mrs. Dalloway, there are many instances when what the character is thinking, does not express the way they act. This is the basis of good drama, but it is also ingrained in the human condition. In this passage on page 80, Peter Walsh meets Clarissa for the first time in a few years, and is struggling to talk to her about his new love in India.

“And who is she?” she asked. Now this statue must be brought from its height and set down between them. “A married woman, unfortunately,” he said; “the wife of a Major in the Indian Army.” And with a curious ironical sweetness he smiled as he placed her in this ridiculous way before Clarissa. (All the same, he is in love, thought Clarissa.) “She has,” he continued, very reasonably, “two small children; a boy and a girl; and I have come over to see my lawyers about the divorce.” There they are! he thought. Do what you like with them, Clarissa! [Woolf 80]

This passage so beautifully expresses the feeling of holding a sensitive piece of information, and the feeling of plainly stating the truth. Woolf uses this metaphor of Peter Walsh’s statue placed as an exhibition to Clarissa, to see what she thinks. The history between them makes this particular information difficult to admit. Compare this to the final line in King Lear spoken by Albany in Q1, or Edgar in the Folio.

The weight of this sad time we must obey;

Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say.

The oldest hath borne most: we that are young

Shall never see so much, nor live so long. [Lr. 5.2.392]

This message in the final moments of Lear express a truth that if people do not “speak what we feel”, will miss out on the valuable things life has in store for them. In Mrs. Dalloway, most of the characters struggle with this distinction. The characters live in a society of attaining a sense of “proportion”, as Sir William, Septimus’s doctor explains. On page 207, Clarissa’s husband, Richard outright decides that he is going to buy roses for his wife to finally express his truthful love for Clarissa. And this obvious conflict for Peter Walsh in the passage above. Both stories play on the idea that truth and love coincide. 

Cordelia in King Lear is a wonderful antithesis to the possibly damaging expectation of burying one’s truth when she says famously “Nothing, my lord.” [1.1.96] In this scene, she is rejecting ever needing to prove her love for her father, because she loves him enough to be honest with him. Whereas, her sisters are willing to lie to their father for their claim of the kingdom. In Mrs. Dalloway Clarissa’s love for Sally Seton is onset by her truthfulness:

It was an extraordinary beauty of the kind she most admired, dark, large-eyed, with that quality which, since she hadn’t got it herself, she always envied — a sort of abandonment, as if she could say anything, do anything; a quality much commoner in foreigners than in English women. [Woolf 57]

Sally goes on to kiss Clarissa in the heat of the moment, and it reads as a moment Clarissa truly understands love. The difference between the two pieces is that King Lear reacts horribly and banishes his daughter for her truth, and Clarissa cherishes it. Eventually, King Lear comes to accept her love as the truest, while Clarissa does not pursue it because in those times it was not socially acceptable. Clearly, in both pieces, love is manifests itself in truth, and those who “speak what they feel” benefit by being present for  vital moments that could be solved with a simple conversation. James Baker points out Lear and Gloucester’s lack of social skills in his essay, “An Existential Examination of King Lear.” “Lear is singularly inept in his management of his relations to others. A tyrant- ‘when do I stare see how the subject quakes’ - he had never had to practice tact. A large part of the play is Lear’s education in humanity” (Baker 548). One could make the argument that a similar social situation is happening to the wealthy characters in Mrs. Dalloway, who are conflicted socially from their high class perspectives on a war torn London, or just getting back from India. They are supposed to be social elites in Mrs. Dalloway yet, every character struggles with relating to one another.

Furthermore, there is a surprising perspective on religion for both Dalloway and Lear. Clarissa in Mrs. Dalloway specifically challenges faith in God, as this clearly reflects post-war attitudes. If God existed, how could he allow such atrocities. It is not an entire denouncement of religion, but Clarissa definitely questions her faith. In her essay, “Religious Belief in a Secular Age: Literary Modernism and Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway”, Emily Griesinger argues that Clarissa is not throwing away religion, but looking for it in the humanity around her. “... Like other modernists, Woolf seeks to ‘mask and yet disclose sacred experience’ while ‘alternatively displacing and yet embracing the theological imagination’ (McIntire 6)” (Griesinger 445). Clarissa is attempting to substantiate her faith in something more tangible and measurable, other than blind faith. She is searching for God amongst her friends and the city of London.

In addition, the characters in King Lear rely on similar tensions between humans, and their perception of God’s absence. Edmond has a famous line in which he says, “Now, gods, stand up for bastards!”[Lr. 1.2.23] And alternatively, King Lear challenges the Gods to reveal all of their enemies and in a way, King Lear is beginning to question the Gods’ so called authority on the Earth.

Let the great gods,That keep this dreadful pother o'er our heads,Find out their enemies now. Tremble, thou wretch,That hast within thee undivulged crimes,Unwhipp'd of justice: hide thee, thou bloody hand;Thou perjured, and thou simular man of virtueThat art incestuous: caitiff, to pieces shake,That under covert and convenient seemingHast practised on man's life: close pent-up guilts,Rive your concealing continents, and cryThese dreadful summoners grace. I am a man more sinn'd against than sinning. [Lr. 3.2.52]

In this particular line, the way King Lear claims he is more “sinn’d against than sinning”, he is aligning himself with the imagery of a God. King Lear’s prayers go unanswered, and poor Gloucester, who prays for death, is not allowed the luxury to die after his eyes are ripped out. Instead, they start searching for God in the people around them. In this particular line, Lear is speaking directly to destitute beggars in the woods. A king, searching for God, in decrepid human beings is an image that represents Lear’s expectation for God after his unanswered prayers. There’s a horizontal integration of religion, instead the vertical praise of deities the viewer would expect.

Very clearly, there is another through line between the themes of Dalloway and Lear. Religion is questioned, and the characters try to make sense of God in the people around them. If God was not real, what is the purpose of life? Is Clarissa doomed to be a “perfect hostess” for the rest of her life, or is there more? If God was not real, is love and truth real? King Lear finds it in Cordelia, and Clarissa finds it in the humanity in London. Their search for God connects them through their hardships and experiences. Clarissa, living in post-war London, has lived through the war to end all wars, and King Lear is experiencing betrayal from most members of his family.

The connections that each piece makes with one another is a testament to innate human experiences that are always true. The belief that human nature has a tendency to fluctuate, or cycle on a pendulum is false, so why do people still subscribe to these ideas? The feeling that society is progressing is a naive idea, and the observation that the human race is in a swift downward spiral to hell is unsettling. The connections between each book negates this idea because each book taps into innate human experiences that cross hundreds of years. The reason audiences are still reading either pieces is because the experiences portrayed in them are still relevant in 2019, and will be relevant forever. This is proof that people have been the same for a very long time, and their evolution as a species is not furthering or dropping by any means. There will always be a lack of “speaking what you feel”, challenges in faith, and truth will always remain supreme, even in a post-truth society. At the end of the day, year, and century, “Nothing will come of nothing.”

Works Cited

Baker, James V. “An Existential Examination of King Lear.” College English, vol. 23, no. 7, 1962, p. 546., doi:10.2307/373090.

Griesinger, Emily. “Religious Belief in a Secular Age: Literary Modernism and Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway.” Christianity & Literature, vol. 64, no. 4, 2015, pp. 438–464., doi:10.1177/0148333115585279.

Shakespeare, William, et al. King Lear. Methuen, 1987.

WOOLF, VIRGINIA. MRS DALLOWAY. PENGUIN Books, 2019.