Loneliness is not only when we are alone, but also when we are with others. We cannot avoid loneliness due to our limited communication, lack of understanding of others, and our independent consciousness. However, in the process of accepting our loneliness and understanding the loneliness of others, we can find the possibility of overcoming it.
In this blog, I want to talk about loneliness. One day, I was lying on the couch alone in my house, reading a book, when I suddenly felt lonely. The feeling of loneliness can come out of nowhere. It’s not just when you’re alone, but also when you’re with other people. You’ve probably felt the limits of communication, thinking that the other person doesn’t truly understand you. Loneliness is something that hides in the depths of our minds, and it comes out against our will.
In ‘ One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel García Márquez deals with the idea of loneliness as an inevitable human condition. The people of the Macondo family feel their own loneliness in the great cycle of time and struggle to overcome it. Here, loneliness becomes a fundamental issue of human existence.
We will understand Virginia Woolf’s ‘ Mrs. Dalloway ‘ from the perspective that this idea of loneliness is closely connected to human life. ‘ Mrs. Dalloway’ deals with the events of one day in June 1923. The story begins when the main character, Mrs. Dalloway, goes out to buy flowers for a party and ends when the party ends in the evening. During this one day, the stories of Mrs. Dalloway, Peter Walsh, Septimus Warren Smith, Lucrezia Warren Smith, and others intertwine, and the author follows their stream of consciousness to guide the novel.
Virginia Woolf believed that conventional outward narrative methods could not fully reveal a character’s inner life; she preferred to list and interweave her characters’ impressions of events and sights rather than use traditional realism. She believed this was a better way to express character. By unfolding the characters’ stream of consciousness in this way, the reader gains deeper access to their inner lives. And the common thread that runs through this process is loneliness. Let’s take a look at how loneliness is revealed in each character.
Septimus is a soldier who witnesses the death of his friend Evans during the war. He returns to London safely, but is deeply scarred. He sees visions of Evans, and the visual and auditory stimuli around him are amplified inside him, haunting him. He believes that the world is sending him signals and that he must take on the role of savior. His wife Lucrezia tries to bring him back to reality, but Septimus sees her efforts as a distraction and believes he is doomed to eternal isolation, a premonition of man’s primal solitude in the midst of war.
Septimus’s wife, Lucrezia, met him during the war, married him, and came to London with him. She loves him, but cannot understand what he says. He announces that he is going to kill himself, and she is unable to confide in anyone. Her life, so happy not long ago, has been shaken to its core. It’s hard for her to admit to herself that he’s thinking of killing himself, and she’s afraid that what he’s saying will be true. In this situation, she believes that love makes a man lonely.
As a young woman, Mrs. Dalloway was in love with Peter Walsh, but she left him and married Richard Dalloway. Now in middle age, she loves her husband and thinks she has a relatively happy family, but loneliness is still at the center of her life. She likes to throw parties in an attempt to connect with other human beings, but her husband finds it childish. Her relationship with her daughter is also unsatisfactory. She is uncomfortable with her daughter’s close relationship with her tutor and her deep involvement in religion.
This sense of loneliness is not only related to her relationships with other people, but also to her own situation. In the novel, the description of her bed getting smaller and smaller symbolizes the shrinking of her life. She has reached the age of menopause, when she is no longer able to conceive life, which means death for her. She feels that a part of her life is disappearing, and she is left alone in the midst of it.
The loneliness felt by the characters stems from two sources. The first is the specificity of each individual’s consciousness. Virginia Woolf shows how each character perceives the same event differently. The same event is interpreted differently by each character. This suggests that each person’s consciousness is independent and individual.
The second cause is a lack of understanding of others. Virginia Woolf believes that a person’s outward appearance does not define him. The inner life of a human being is very complex, with many different emotions and thoughts. We often judge others based on their outward appearance, which leads us to miss the essence of who they are.
Is there a way out of this loneliness? In the novel, empathy is presented as a possibility to overcome loneliness. Septimus and Mrs. Dalloway have never met each other, and are of different ages, genders, and backgrounds. However, when Mrs. Dalloway hears of Septimus’s suicide, she feels that he has upheld important values through his death. By resisting oppression and choosing to die, Septimus has achieved a moment of full communication with Mrs. Dalloway.
In the end, we may never be able to completely overcome loneliness, but we can confront it by recognizing and accepting it. Understanding our own loneliness, and recognizing the loneliness of others, may be our only response to loneliness. Loneliness is an inherent human problem that we cannot avoid, but we need to embrace it as a part of life rather than avoid it. This will allow us to become stronger in the face of loneliness.
