Virginia Woolf's Mrs Dalloway is a novel about time: its quality, its depth and its composition. Woolf conveys the complexity of time by drawing attention to her characters' unique efforts to create meaning for themselves within the confines of passing time. The entire novel takes place over the course of one day, stretching the experience of time and exploring time beneath its ordinary surface of fleeting events. Ricoeur characterizes the dimensions of time in Woolf's novel as follows: monumental time is the time of history, and is determined by “figures of authority and power”; the novel's characters experience constantly advancing “clock time” through their individual actions (buying flowers, walking in the park); and individual reflection digs beneath the surface of time, investigating its depths through "extensive excursions into the past". These dimensions return a vision of time as a fabric, woven from those threads of personal experience (Ricoeur's "clock time"), individual reflection and memory, and held together by the monumental time to which all Woolf's characters must conform . There is no single experience of time in Mrs. Dalloway; instead, the multiple dimensions of time to which Woolf exposes the reader interact with each other to create the web that forms a single narrative. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay The characters in Woolf's novel oscillate between different dimensions of time, generating a "temporal depth" composed of experience, reflection, and memory. Clarissa Dalloway's actions in the novel – going out to buy flowers, mending her dress, talking to Peter Walsh – are amplified by simultaneous excursions into memory and thought. From the first sentences of the novel these parallel processes are evident: “Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself. Because Lucy had her work cut out for her. The doors would have been unhinged; Rumpelmayer's men were coming." These three sentences represent a single moment; Clarissa has a thought and makes a statement. Yet this moment contains at least two experiences of time. There is both the action of Clarissa's words – “she will buy same as the flowers” ​​– is the contemporary thought behind those words. The action is part of clock time – the events that make up the minutes and hours of each day – while the thought that Clarissa has towards her maid, Lucy. , is a reflection on that action, Clarissa experiences two dimensions of time at once. In the sentences that follow, Woolf gives an additional level of depth to this single moment in time: “And then, thought Clarissa Dalloway, what a morning. – as fresh as if she had been released to children on a beach... Because that's how it had always been for her when... she had thrown open the French windows and dived into Bourton in the open air his action and his thoughts present in the light of his memories. For Ricoeur, this process gives depth to time in the novel. He describes this blend of thought, action and memory as an “intertwining of the narrated present and the remembered past”. Even as events progress and actions take place in the present, the reader is drawn into the past. This process brings the reader's attention to the inner complexities and turmoil of every action. The experience of time is deeper than it appears on the surface, as it is enriched by concomitant thoughts and memories. Just as Woolf's characters experience this temporal depth, so they struggle to find ways to orient themselves in relation toconstraints of monumental time. Ricoeur describes monumental time as a secretion of historical events (“monumental history”) and explains that chronological time, the clock, is its expression. Clock time continually advances as the sum of individual experience. But as individual actions unfold along its continuum, clock time is ultimately pushed forward by those in power, and characters are forced to make meaning of their lives within the confines of authority time: monumental time . Clarissa Dalloway struggles to reconcile her personal experiences with this monumental time. She races against time in an attempt to make sense of her life despite its apparent emptiness. The bells of Big Ben highlight this struggle and mark Clarissa's day. Clarissa feels “…a particular silence, or solemnity; an indescribable pause; a suspense... before Big Ben explodes. She feels great anxiety about the passage of time and worries at every opportunity that it will remind her of the time when she did not lead a meaningful life. There is a conflict within Mrs. Dalloway; Big Ben's monumental tick-tock time shows that he is getting older, while his thoughts and memories still seem young. He feels “very young; at the same time, unspeakably aged”, worried that her life is approaching its natural end, but confident that she has much more to give. She often wonders what would happen “…if she could have her life to relive…” Clarissa feels lost in the moment, a victim of the ferocious and constant advance of time. Septimus faces a parallel struggle with monumental time. He and Clarissa face the same dilemma: how to orient themselves in order to find meaning within the limits of monumental time. But as Clarissa faces monumental time in the hourly chimes of Big Ben, Septimus comes face to face with the forms of Dr. Bradshaw and the First World War. Septimus is tortured by the death of his friend and comrade, Evans. Although the two were close, Septimus was numb until his death due to the war: far from showing any emotion when Evans was killed or recognizing that it was the end of a friendship, he congratulated himself on having felt very little and very reasonably. of death generates a sense of guilt that tortures him in the subconscious. Septimus repeats over and over that he “could not hear,” claiming that “his brain was perfect; then it must be the world's fault – that he couldn't hear." He feels guilty for not feeling sad when his friend died, and is unable to move forward in time because of that guilt. Here, once again, is Ricouer's monumental moment; a tormented Septimus blames “the world,” but it is the figures of authority and power – figures of a monumental time – who truly torture him. Monumental time is everywhere: in the backfire of the car that sends Septimus back to the battlefield, and in the faces of strangers that remind him of his dead friend. The war stole his friend and the ability to feel remorse, and time makes him a victim, incessantly reminding him of those losses: The word "time" has cracked the peel; he poured out his riches on him; and from his lips fell like shells, like airplane shavings, without his making them, hard, white, imperishable words, and flew to stick to their place in an ode to Time; an immortal ode to Time. He sang. Evans replied from behind the tree…'For God's sake, don't come!' Septimus shouted. Because he couldn't look at the dead. Time tortures him, showing the ghosts of his past everywhere. It is time that drives him mad and forces words of madness to fall from his lips involuntarily – “without him uttering them”. Here, Septimus clearly demonstrates that time., 2003.