Chapter Two

The Illusion of the Unitary Self: Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness and Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway






What is the illusion of the unitary self ? Where does it come from ? According to the psychoanalysis of Jacques Lacan, the normal development of human consciousnes includes a particularly important period called the mirror stage. Beginninng at about six months, the infant becomes cognizant of the fact that its own body is composed of both an image and a separate being. The mirror stage is so named because this process takes place as if the child were gazing at itself in a mirror. The child comes to identify with its own image, differentiating it from all those images it receives from all the other objects that enter its field of vision. It is at this point that the child forms what Lacan terms the "Ideal-I," an immature form of the I that has yet to identify with the image of the other and has yet to have its consciousness infiltrated by language. Here we have a child standing before the mirror of its consciousness and gazing at an image of itself. As that child's reflection in the mirror is an image rather than a material object, the child's vision of itself as a complete and unified entity is, Lacan says, an illusion. In coming to identify itself with this image, for the first time the child finds a wholeness and unity that springs from its cognizance of itself as both material presence and absent image. That is, the child is seduced by an image of itself as an integrated whole, fooled into believing it is empowered by a mirror reflection, essentially, by an illusory image. In this chapter I will analyze Heart of Darkness and Mrs. Dalloway, two novels that center around the idea of a double self. As will be made evident, these two novels each contains a pair of figures that can be seen as reflecting some components of the other.

The literary critics Tony Jackson and Vincent Pecora incorporate their readings of Darkness into the history of modernism, naming this work as a prfoundly important event in the establishment of the modernist voice. In Tony Jackson's view of literary history, the character of a literary age is dependent on its not being conscious of itself. Like epochs in the Marxist history of production, when literary works beguin to reflect upon themselves, they irretrievably lose their authenticitiy and pass into a different mode of production. For instance a form such as realism, once seen as resolutely nonconformist and inferior, becomes the normal forms of literary production by the end of the nineteenth century. This had the effect of opening up a space for the productions of modernism as realism, now conscious of its plot-structure as a normalizing standard, departed from the stable registers of realist fiction and burst into disordered ambiguity. Vincent Pecora, too, understands Darkness as a narrative where characters represent successive forms of literary consciousness. Marlow's narrative is the inscription of the metaphysical need of the modernist moment, a narrative form that succeeds Kurtz's command of his outpost of progress. Although Conrad does not specify the form of the narrative represented by Kurtz, his repeated descriptions of his vocal presence make him representastive of a bygone form of narrative that relied on voice for the development of a phenomenological presence.

In my analysis of Darkness, I propose a reading that sees the work as, essentially, a psychodramatic staging of Conrad's struggle with the image of the modern writer. Wanting to achieve popular success and, simultaneously, yearning to write works that were comparable with the great literature of the past, Conrad could not escape this contradictory position. I intend to show that Conrad saw the position of the modern writer as a dangerous one, in that modern existence was at odds with the social position of the writer; this opposition by itself represented a challenge to the authenticity of the work. As a result of holding these contradictory principles, Conrad believed that in order to become a public favorite, by necessity, he was required to agree to a cheapening of his literart talents. Before we proceed into the heart of the text itself, we will first look to biographical evidence in order to establish a reasonable ground for such a thesis.

This evidence may be gathered from a volume of correspondence between Conrad and Edward Garnett, which begins with an essay wherein Garnett remembers his friend in the early stages of his career, in the period before he had written any of his great works. Garnett recalls how Conrad placed particular emphasis on his experiences in 1890, when he was put in charge of an English sailing ship in the Congo. This mission into Africa constituted the turning point in his life, for it was then that he decided to become a writer; as Conrad states, he thought it was simply a matter of converting the wealth of experience he had gained as a sailor into a literary form. Yet after the publication of Almayer's Folly (1895), Conrad was still living a hand-to-mouth existence, in much the same conditions as before he became an author. Garnette recalls how Conrad was tortured by his lack of commercial success, somewhat naively expecting an instant recognition from an ignorant public. On one such occasion, Garnett reminded Conrad of the writer's role as an exile from the crowd; he spoke of the writer's "need to follow his own path and disregard the public's taste."

Stunned by this suggestion, Conrad looked Garnett in the face with an expressive stare, saying, "But I won't live in an attic...I'm past that, you understand? I won't live in an attic!" Seeing that Conrad was losing confidence in his abilities, Garnett attempted to alleviate his fears by listing several authors whose works had become so popular that they were able to live as if they were members of the aristocracy: Stevenson, Kipling and Rider Haggard. These writers lived like true gentleman, like nobility; they were by no means the paupers Conrad feared becoming. Still, upon hearing the last name in Garnett's trilogy Conrad recoiled at the prospect of having his name associated with that of Rider Haggard. He disparaged Haggard's work and all varieties of popular literature as bveing simply "too horrible for words."

Following this incident, Garnett met Conrad in several other locations throughout England: visitng Conrad's place of residence on Newgate Street, meeting him at St. Paul's Churchyard and dining together at the cafe in Cheapside. These encounters are notable because here Garnett observed the unassuming air that Conrad now carried. He had learned to subdue his inclination to boast of the literary tasks before him. Still more evident to Garnett was the fact that Conrad was caught in the grip of great literary forces. At the time Garnett remembers Conrad as exhibiting all of the behavioral idiosyncracies of the modern writer, such as the emotional mood swings that, as Garnett terms them, resembled a perpetual cycle of "fits and exaltations." Indeed, Conrad was subject to phases that would cause one to think at one moment of a superannuated veteran, icily professional in his conduct and comportment; the next moment would bring on a more manic phase, as Conrad would take on the persona of a literary terrorist, showing a desire for experiementation typically associated with a genuis in his youth. Daring in character, this alter-ego of Conrad's professional persona stands for the side of his personality that continually placed his work in jeoprady, attempting to paint large cavases with a furious hand.

Conrad would continue to be frustrated by his lack of success for several more years. Additionally, the time he spent at sea that he considered to be a bottomless source of literary material provde to be, in fact, a second source of frustration. Regarding the success of other writers of his day, Conrad said, "Nothing of the kind has ever come my way! I have spent half my life knocking about in ships only getting ashore between voyages. I know nothing, nothing! Have to guess at everything." And, in a letter to Garnett dated 10 June 1902, Conrad writes: "Insofar as writing goes, I hardly dare to look you in the face. I am simply afraid to show you my work; as to writing about it--this I can't do. I have utterly lost all faith in myself, all sense of style, all belief in my power of telling the simplest fact in a simple way. My expression has become utterly worthless: it is time for the money to come rolling in." However before the money came rolling in, Conrad would spend many years of his life living in poverty and obscurity. In my opinion, this was also the period that saw his greatest achievements as a literary artist: one of those works is the focus of this chapter, Heart of Darkness (serialized 1898, published 1902). This short story is told through a narrator, Marlow, the same persona Conrad employed in Lord.

At the beginning of the story Marlow tells us how, during his childhood, he felt extremely passionate about maps of the world, and he took a special interest in those parts of the globe that contained the largest blank spaces. His first destination was to be the North Pole; however, by the time he reached maturity, another person had entered that blankness, and the glamour had faded away. His attention now turned to the biggest, blankest space left in the world--the mystery of Africa. Although this continent, too, had ceased to be a purely blank space, he neevrtheless found "this place of darkness" enticing. Marlow's obsession to expand the territory of the human world, to colonize these regions of darkness, leads Rosemary Pitt to view him as a Faustian figure. Marlow will meet his Faustian double, says Pitt, in the figure of Kurtz.

Now an adult, Marlow finally obtains the fulfillment of his wishes when, due to his Aunt's connections, he finds himself of a journey into the jungles of Africa. It is only then that he first hears of Kurtz, the chief of the Inner Station, who the Company's chief accountant characterizes as a man of the highest distinction. As Marlow proceeds along the river, he continues to hear more news of this extraordinary man whose unprecedented accomplishments have made him a figure of great repute within the Company. Unsurprisingly, hearing all these people cotinually valorize this great individual, Kurtz becomes an attractive and enigmatic figure of mystery. When Marlow hears the rumors of Kurtz's illness, he reacts with emotion, telling the reader how he "felt weary and irritable." By this point Marlow's curiousity about Kurtz compels him to ask the brickmaker of the Central Station, "Who is this Mr. Kurtz?" Although he first responds with a curt answer, when Marlow presses him for more information, he learns that Kurtz is "an emissary of pity, and science, and progress, and the devil knows what else." The chief brickmaker draws a connections between Marlow and Kurtz, saying enigmatically, "...you know what he will be in two years time. You are the new gang--the gang of virtue. The same people who sent him specially also recommended you."

With these revealing words of the brickmaker, we are first able to see that Conrad uses Darkness to dramatize the revolutionary changes that literature was undergoing in his day; specifically, the dethronement of one literary era, the one prescribed under the codified body of realist literature and the institutionalization of a new form, that of modern fiction. Modern fiction may be understood to include the great number of authors who were producing texts in the early 20th century, including the British authors Joseph Conrad and Virginia Woolf. An analysis of the brickmaker's dialogue with Marlow may be used to advance this thesis: explaining the position of his class, he says, "We want...for the cause entrusted to us by...higher intelligence...a singleness of purpose." We can interpret this statement as his admission that he spends his days in constant waiting, continually desiring that his superiors will grant him additional insight into the overall purpose of their mutual endeavor. Coming from the 'higher intelligence' of Kurtz, any instructions will be highly regarded by the brickmaker, for he needs them to legitimize any action he takes. Here at the Central Station he waits to receive further commands before he can move on with his own life; he has resolved on a single course of action, and has become blind to his own personal desires in favor of the Company's drive for production.

Here we might draw a connection back to Garnett's observations on Conrad's literary situation, a dilemma that centers on the struggle between an idealized writing that established a coherent bond with the great literature of the past and the economic necessity of creating work that would be read and appreciated in the modern world of cultural materialism. "You are the new gang--the gang of virtue," the bricklayer says, and in this way we come to view Marlow as a representative of a new regime of literature, a mamber of that group that has come to replace the old guard. Once a member of the new guard, Kurtz's aura authenticity has since faded. Although his superiors believe that Kurtz will continue to go far, when Marlow finally meets him, it is clear that Kurtz can no longer fulfill his responsibilities in the modern era. As Marlow continues to push own towards Kurtz's station, he becomes fascinated by the prospect of a face-to-face encounter with this man who is both his ideological predecessor and the iconic presence to whom he is indebted. In fact, he has placed such significance on this meeting that, when the Manager suggests that Kurtz may be already dead, Marlow reacts as if this possibility were devastating. When Marlow considers the prospect that he might never meet with Kurtz he thinks, not in terms of visualizing the person, but in auditory terms; he imagines that he has lost the opportunity, not to see him, but to hear him.

According to Vincent Pecora, Kurtz's presence is signified primarily by his voice throughout the novella, with Marlow conceiving of Kurtz as a voice in several passages. For Marlow, the purely phonic qualities of Kurtz's voice are able to assume the status of a phenomenological presence, even in the absence of his immediate physical presence. Marlow admits as much in an earlier passage, saying, "For a long time he had been no more to us than a voice. I listened for the sentence that would give me the clue to this narrative that seemed to shape itself without human lips." Various critics, such as C.B. Cox and Albert Guerard, note that Marlow is continually in dialogue with Kurtz throughout the narrative, reading Darkness as a psychoanalytic record of Marlow's self-experience. In his biography of Conrad, C.B. Cox says that Kurtz, in transgressing the bounds of civilization, "represents Marlow's shadow self, and the voyage of exploration is a journey into the unconscious." Albert Guerard also sees Darkness as an excursus on the self, and he sees Marlow's meeting with Kurtz as a "confrontation with an entity within the self." In a letter to Elsie Hueffer, Conrad revealed his intentions, lamenting that he had "made Kurtz too symbolic."

Immediately following the passage discussed above, Marlow informs the reader that he did eventually get the opportunity to hear Kurtz, whom he describes as "A voice...little more than a voice." He goes on to tell the reader of the make-up of Kurtz's person, a pluralistic combination of English education and French ethnicity" "All Europe contributed to the making of Kurtz..." he says, which is also in line with our thesis, for this quality defines the cultural consciousness from which is born the spirit of the modernist author. Later it will come to our attention that Kurtz was a writer himself, and Marlow provides us with a critique of the pamphlet he had produced, an article commissioned by the International Society for the Suppression of Savage Customs. Marlow describes this report as a deft piece of writing, expressive and articulate, but bearing the traces of Kurtz's hysteria. Marlow admires Kurtz's writing, which begins with a series of statements about the situation that stands before the foreign colonists: the whites, Kurtz says, "must necessarily appear to [the savages] in the nature of supernatural beings--we approach them with the might as of a deity." Starting from these propositions, Kurtz then continued to advance his argument, building a rhetorical oration that brought the reader to the sublime heights of literary experience.

What is this work that Kurtz has produced ? In which field of discourse might it be situated ? Does it contain the political anthropology its title would seem to suggest, or is it an example of philosophical system-building ? Kurtz's rhetorical skills are considerable, for it is stated that the work is most impressive in its use of "peroration." As Marlow admits, "It game me the notion of an exotic Immensity ruled by an august Benevolence." It could be argued, then, that the significance of Kurtz's obscure is that it may be applied to any of these fields, or all of them. Certainly, it is a work whose polymorphous shape puzzles Marlow in terms of categorization. Reading this work, Marlow, Conrad's personification of the modernist writer, experiences a form of vertigo that derives from his encounter with a form of literature that does not recognize the inherent boundaries of the modernist marketplace of ideas, the categorical order that comprises the base of modern knowledge. The example of Kurtz's writing, a text that does not observe the rationally boundaries consensually agreed upon in the modern age could be more accurately described as the writing of a madman, a schizphrenic, or a genius. Regardless of such inquiries into the categorization of literary forms, Marlow suggests that the pamphlet, which continues on without allowing, at any moment, "the magic current of phrases" to be interrupted, produces a textually-induced hypnosis over its reader. Although the text itself approaches the level of perfection, there is one feature that breaks its control over Marlow's thinking, the bizarre handwriting at the end of the text, a signature that reveals the irrationality at work in the mind of the author--"Exterminate all the brutes!" With this final disclosure, it becomes evident that Kurtz's tortured writing in the pamphlet represents the birthpangs of modernism and of the modernist author that has come to replace his textual forefather.

Arriving at the inner station, Marlow is told by the Russian sailor who has become one of Kurtz's disciples, "You don't talk to the man--you listen to him." This, too, may be taken as evidence that Kurtz stands for that conception of the writer who instructs through speaking, the pre-modern writer whose discourse remains guided by sensible, articulate, iterable, and rational procedures through which one attains a specific degree of knowledge. Perhaps he represents the writer who, during the age of romanticism, created a text out of his own emanations, his ponderous, weighty thoughts--certainly, this is Kurtz. The solitary death of this feeble man personified the demise of the image of the writer who is closed off from all interactions with the surrounding members of his community; the Africans are careful not to intrude on his space but continue to worship him as a god, while Kurtz stays in his hut, absorbed with the desire of the writer who wished only to reflect on the genius-character of his own inscriptions.

The above description of Kurtz and his writing constitutes, as Jacques Derrida might say, a classic gesture of logocentrism. This stems from the fact that when words are spoken the speaker and the hearer are supposed to be present to each other as two pure, unmediated conversants. Inextricably linked to the Greek and European cultural traditions, logocentrism is part of a larger phonocentric necessity, which presupposed the idea of a perfect self-presence, of the immediate possession of meaning. Writing is denounced as subversive insofar as it creates a spatial and temporal distance between the author and the audience; writing presupposes the absence of the author and for this reason we can never be sure what is meant by a written text. In European cultures this phonocentric necessity developed into a systematic logocentric metaphysics. The destruction of logocentrism is a major component of the modernist movement in literature, in that it transforms the deep realist concern with language into what is, in essence, a critique of logocentrism, the search for the other. One could plausibly read Darkness and see Marlow as a witness to the change undergone by literature in the modern era, seeing Kurtz as representing the phonocentric model of literature whose works emphasized a verisimilitude to vocal presence.

It soon becomes evident that the Russian is fanatical in his devotion to Kurtz, for he gives Kurtz the license to act in an irrational fashion, praising him without thinking critically, and thereby undermining his own rationality: "He made me see things," the Russian says, an effect which, as Conrad states in his preface to The Nigger of the "Narcissus", is the prime function of the writer. Indeed, the Russian is so overwhelmingly enraptured by the images he has seen that he has placed his idol beyond the bounds of conventional morality, saying, "You can't judge Mr. Kurtz as you would an ordinary man." However, Marlow does not subscribe to the idol-worshipping doctrine held by the Russian. Unknown to the Russian, Marlow, the representative of the modernist writer, has come not to honor Kurtz for his past achievements but to succeed the earlier mode of literature with a new form of literary production: "I suppose it did not occur to him that Mr. Kurtz was no idol of mine. He forgot that I hadn't heard any of these splendid monologues on love, justice, conduct of life." As they walk towards Kurtz, surrounded by the heads of rebels that had been set on poles, Marlow suggests the the discipple's life-experiences may be similar to Kurtz's, at which point the disciple becomes agitated: "I! I! I am a simple man! I have no great thoughts! I want nothing from anybody. How can you compare me to [Kurtz]." In this way the disciple sets himself apart from his ideologue, Kurtz, who represents the heavy monoliths of the past whose presences have been rendered invisible in the modern world.

When Marlow finally meets Kurtz, he describes a figure who weakened condition resembles nothing like the superhuman person that has been described to him. As Marlow's testimony reveals, the heroic writer of the pre-modern age turns out to be, upon close inspection, a figure whose emaciated body portends his impending death. Marlow notes how the floor is covered with letters and other correspondence, and watches Kurtz search through the pile before turning to his visitor and saying, "I am glad." It is obvious to Marlow that Kurtz has been expecting this visit. Guided towards this voice without physical presence, Marlow's narrative constituted a direct link between the story of Kurtz and the formation of the modern subject. Marlow, both fearing and admiring Kurtz, represents his double and his replacement. My argument, that Darkness represents the passing of one mode of literary narrative and the advent of a new regime of textual production, can be extended by viewing Marlow's modernism as coming to replace those authors whose work relied on a phonocentric discourse to achieve a verisimilitude of presence. Vincent Pecora compares Kurtz's voice to "the echo that reverberates soundlessly within Marlow's consciousness." Marlow admits that, even in life, the non-corporeal presence of Kurtz's voice obscured the physical body: "The voice was gone. What else had been there?" and "Of all his gifts the one that stood out preeminently...was the ability to talk, his words."

Jackson says that the classic realist novel derived its plot-structure from romantic fiction, wherein the hero completed his journey to enlightened self-knowledge by recognizing how romanticism and idealism affected his life. In contradiction to this point of view, the hero's self-realization in Conrad's early novels has the effect of revealing "the subjectivity of the narrative structure." In light of these critical statements, I contend that Marlow stands in relation to Kurtz in the same way that modernist fiction stands in relation to its literary predecessors. Like realism's reflection upon itself as a quotidian and ever-present norm, a succession of literary regimes takes place when Marlow recognizes Kurtz's moral decay as the corruption of a textual being whose life can no longer be sustained. According to Jackson, the story of Kurtz is the story of as literary form that has experienced the disturbing realization that a literature of predetermined values is no longer tenable in the modern era. As seen from Marlow's responses to the problem of Kurtz's degeneration, it is clear that the modernist hero both views the aura of the realist text as an eroded authenticity and feels compelled to move its plot-structure beyond that of classic realism.

To place Darkness with respect to the history of the narrative subject, recall how Lord failed to move beyond the "privileged reader of naturalism." Like Heidegger's situating of Nietzsche as the limit-point in the history of metaphysics, with Darkness Conrad transgresses this limit and makes the decisive move beyond naturalism with Marlow's tale of Kurtz. In this way Conrad creates one of the earlier explorations in modernist fiction. Indeed, the book symbolically stages the history of the novel as a literary form, in that Conrad portrays Marlow's relation to Kurtz in a way that resembles modernism's relation to a succession of past literary forms, showing how modernism constitutes itself out of the irreclaimable demolition of romantic, realist and naturalist versions of the self. For the first time in literary history, Darkness reveals the structure common to all these forms of the novel, as Marlow notices of the essential element of realism, the higher return, remains unavailable. The subject, appearing to itself for the first time, becomes the hero of modernism.

Meeting with Kurtz for the first time, Marlow's consciousness is destabilized, but remains firmly rooted in the narrative requirements of his society, and in his own method of literary production. Even after he has died, Kurtz remains with Marlow as an internalized presence, aiding Marlow by stabilizing the self Marlow is unable to center on his own. Pecora believes that this is due to the fact that Kurtz's voice is much more than an act of human speech. Marlow views Kurtz as someone who had once been, as these literary movements were before they became common, naive and pure and of great moral character. Yet, in his death scene Kurtz represents man in his most unromantic state, having devolved into total depravity. But Kurtz's death is wanted not in order to fulfill romanticism, or to verify realism, or to legitimize naturalism, but to carry out the logic that allows Darkness to pass over the limits of naturalism. The total ambiguity that surrounds Kurtz is the direct result of the attempt to reproduce within the formal structure of a narrative his conceptual position as a literary form that, in the throes of deterioration, is obscured from any clear view.

In this encounter between Marlow and Kurtz, Conrad depicts the segmentation that occurs within the psyche of the writer, and within his own psyche as well, as this scene may be taken as a psychodramatic representation of the contradiction Conrad faced as a writer in the modern age. This scene contains the two basic archetypes Conrad struggled with throughout the early phases of his career, incoporating the dual images of the writer: one image, represented in the figure of Kurtz, stands for the cultural notion of the writer as a person who devoted their entire being to literature; and a second image, represented in the figure of Marlow, stands for the modern view of the writer whose ambition is success in his own lifetime. As Conrad demonstrates in Darkness, it is up to Marlow, the modern writer, to take up the guantlet that the etiolating figure of literature passes on as it withers away. That Marlow chooses not to betray history by debunking literature as the pallid near-ghost Kurtz has become can be seen from his declaration to the Russian: "Mr. Kurtz's reputation is safe with me." Upon hearing this statement the Russian feels at ease again, and continues to praise Kurtz's talents, even though Kurtz himself is suffering an inexorable death: "Ah! I'll never, never meet such a man again. You ought to have heard him recite poetry... Poetry! ... Oh, he enlarged my mind!" As we can see from this passage, literature will continue to be exalted, for it has contributed a poetic dimension to man's self-understanding, in this way enlarging the mind, expanding consciousness and thereby extending the range of one's sensibilities.

Although on some levels, Kurtz's death signals the replacement of one history by another, as in a paradigm shift inaugurating a new era for literary history, this succession of forms does not in itself constitute a clean break with the past. At the end of the narrative, sometime after Kurtz's death, Marlow discovers that modernist texts, too, derive their power from their proclivity to mythologize the past, as he finds himself reaffirming a false image of the reputation of literature. In the scene with Kurtz's fiance, Marlow lies about Kurtz's last words, saying, "The last words he said were--your name," as a way of conceding to her desire to retain an idealized picture of her beloved. In truth, Kurtz's last words were uttered in reocognition of the chaos of modern existence, "The horror! The horror!" Forced to define the image of his predecessor through this false memory, Marlow becomes Kurtz's legatee, something he feels guilty about even as he speaks. Yet Marlow agrees to this false image of Kurtz's last breath because, as the representative embodiment of modern literature, he wants to ensure the continual maintenance and preservation of the institution of literature. Like Kurtz in his prime, before his period of decadence, Marlow, too, desires a rational societal framework that contains a definable and explicable quotient of truth. To die repeating a loved-one's name, this apocryphal last moment in Kurtz's life is a consummately romantic gesture--and with this falsehood the circle is completed; the act of Marlow's choosing this path must be interpreted as a choice for the complacency of the living over the memory of the dead, the peace of mind of loved ones over the authoritative record of the past. Most importantly, Marlow's decision indicates modernity's overpowering urge to see life return to truth, even if that truth is a lie.

Marlow's next actions demonstrate how modernism remains faithful to the philosophy of writing held by its literary antecedents through its commitment to rendering an authentic vocal presence. In his attempt to mend the epistemological break that was enacted with his assumption of Kurtz's position as the dominant form of structural narrative, Marlow reveals what Nietzsche called "the metaphysical need." It is through Kurtz's voice that Marlow is able to satisfy this need, and it is in Kurtz's memory that Marlow's lie is sanctified. While we might choose to end our discussion of Darkness at this point, there are several questions that have not yet been resolved. For instance, why was it necessary that a new textual standard should replace the old, venerable model we had come to cherish ? As Pecore points out, the moment Kurtz creates a new moral order by transgressing the moral code of the surrounding world is also the moment when this shift in regimes becomes necessary, for this act of hubris triggers an unpremeditated reaction that fundamentally alters the narrative sphere. The dialectical relationship between Marlow and Kurtz may be seen as one form of literary structure succeeding another, older form, engendering a new literary form by discarding those features of the realist text that have been outmoded, like the realist plot-structure, and appropriating those facets that make further literatures possible, such as the sublime oration of the realist text.

As the work of Joseph Conrad suggests, the modern age is the cite of the apocalypse of literature, for Darkness may be taken as a symbol for that form of subjectivity that is produced under the economic system of capitalism, the urge to expand, to colonize, to dominate. It is the spirit of capitalism that directly precipitates the changing of the guard in literary history, as this new form of modernist writing will come to displace all other forms of writing. Finally, one may return to Garnett's observations of Conrad's bipolar psychology, for this may provde to be of profound significance for an understanding of Darkness, in that much the same process may be found to occur within the narrative. The early passages on the crisis Conrad experienced clearly illustrate his desire to codify a new order of literary production, a project he followed through with in Darkness by dividing himself up, splitting into the figures of Marlow and Kurtz; these two selves meet one another in the darkness of the African jungle to act out the apocalypse of one form of literature and the baptism of another--that of modernism.

Like Darkness, Mrs. Dalloway (1925) also features the theme of the journey into the self. In Woolf's novel, Clarissa and Septimus are parallel figures who, like Marlow and Kurtz, dare to travel into the dark heart of the other. While Conrad focuses his journey on the darkness of the self, Woolf centers on the ecstasy of being. What is this ecstasy ? Etymologically, the word "ecstasy" derives from the Greek word ekstasis, which is itself a combination of two words, existanai, to derange, and histonai, to cause to stand, out-standing. Ecastasy is a state of being where, in a state of intense bliss, a powerful perception lifts one out of oneself, causing the ego to stand outside of being. What is this so-called ecstatic being, and does it hold any significance for the inhabitants of the modern world ? Is the attainment of ecstasy a realizable goal in today's society ? If so, then where are we supposed to find it ? If it can be located, can it be embraced ? There are innumerable questions one might address to the being of ecstasy. Historically, the experience of ecstasy is associated with Gnosticism, cloaked in veils of sublimity as a mystic, secret knowledge. Woolf's central intention in Dalloway is the dymystification of this concept. I will attempt to show how she takes in the idea of ecstasy and, removing it from its religious aura, brings this experience within the realm of the personal. Woolf positions Septimus Smith, a character who represents the older paradigm of ecstatic thinking, against Clarissa Dalloway, a character who represents the new paradigm of ecstasy, revealing how ecstasy is, simply, being in the world.

The books begins with a narrative sequence related from the perspective of the book's titular character, Clarissa Dalloway. Woolf draws the reader directly into the consciousness of her subject, entering the workings of Clarissa's mind. As she thrills to the beauty of the new morning, Clarissa considers the preparations that had to be made before her party that evening, the doors that needed to be taken off their hinges, the delivery that was expected from Rumplemayer's, the bouquet of flowers that needed to be purchased. Yet, for a moment, she is so overwhelmed by the freshness of the morning that she finds herself drawn to the past, a time that held simlarly hopeful prospects for her future happiness. Woolf implies the she considers this immersion into her own personal history equivalent to a "lark," thirty or more years later. these memories seem immediately present to her; she can almost hear the sound of the latch as she "burst open the Fench windows and plunged at Bourton into the open air." In addition, and just as clearly, she remembers a sense of dread she had experienced at the time, "that something awful was about to happen." Moving away from this memory, she focuses on the task she is about to perform and, departing from her luxurious home, she walks onto the crowded streets of London. Immediately she is surrounded by a variety of products, including consumer goods, like chocolate toffees advertised by jet planes and ideologies, represented by the royal car bearing the Queen. Combined with the symbols of cosmopolitan London such as Big Ben, Parliament, motor-cars and double-decker buses, Clarissa realizes that her love is here, presents in a fully realized state--"life; London; this moment in June." Clearly, Clarissa's home is here, in the present moment of the real, as Woolf presents her reader with a character whose ecstatic being locates itself in the vision of things around her.

Happily, Clarissa begins her journey and ventures into the world, vicariously engaging in the world of human activity around her. Standing at the entrance of the park, she watches the traffic circle through Piccadilly, whereupon she succumbs to a rush of profound ecstasy, for a moment standing outside her own being. It is implied the, for Clarissa, the concept of a permanent identity has been called into question; she makes a promise to herself never again to treat identity as a fixed and immutable property. Simultaneously at the beginning of her life and near its end, Clarissa's state of disconnection is emphasized as Woolf describes her sense of being removed from her body, isolated and abandoned. This is accompanied by her sense of being caught in a perpetual present, truncating her vision of her personal history; where there had been a limitless horizon continually extending itself over time, there is now only a singular perspective firmly rooted in the sphere of immediate concerns. The sense of dread that had often preoccupied her in her youth returns again, emboided in her paralyzing intuitions of the danger that lurks even in the most typical of days. She marvels at the fact that the world around her is moving so efficiently, and that she is moving through it so carelessly, without having any practical knowledge to speak of. Clarissa's world is the world of the present, a stage-setting where all objects are able to shine beautifully, whether these things are cars of carriages or an arrangement of flowers. On this otherwise average London morning, she has entered a plane of intense experience: her normative range of sense-perceptions, emotions and psychological observations are all honed to an acute and super-concentrated state. This passage describes a sudden extension of her perceptive faculties accompanied by her recognition of the present as the one truly significant moment, the one inevitable delight she has in a world unable to offer its inhabitants an ultimate moment of transcendent selfhood. Lacking an origin-centered history that could explain her formation up to the present moment, Clarissa is in the present, the sole history one can be said to possess.

Caught in the web of ideology, Clarissa's thinking is entrenched and imprisoned by her imagination. The critic Ben Wang sees Clarissa as having internalized the false notion that there is a connection between the cultural capital of her world and the real conditions of her existence. The Russian word byt can be used to refer to Woolf's description of the ideological seizure that paralyzes Clarissa as she steps out into the city-streets of London. Although it is essentially untranslatable, byt signified both the cultural forms of materialist society, such as the consumer products advertised in the sky, as well as the material accouterments of bourgeoise existence (for example, the coffee cup, the table and chairs, the curtains on the window, and so on). As Roman Jakobson says, byt is "opposed to the creative urge towards transforming the future, the stabilizing force that covers over the present with a stagnating slime that stifles life." While Jakobson warns of the dangers inherent in a person's unmitigated exposure to the world of byt, Clarissa reacts to this scene with only acceptance and excitement. She is unaware of the cultural emptiness of byt. It is hardly surprising, Wan says, that Clarissa finds it impossible to resist the law of cultural consumption, the capitalist law that dominates her consciousness and invites her to "plunge" into existence.

After exposing her readers to the world of Clarissa Dalloway and the consciousness that composes it, Woolfe switches the focus of her narrative to Septimus Smith, a war veteran who has gone mad. In this next section, Woolf uses a narrative technique that endeavors to simulate the workings of a mind that has been destabilized. Woolf portrays the mind of a man that has become imbalanced due to his increased awareness, his sublime sense of perception into the interconnections between the self and the world. Unfortunately for Septimus, the growth of his perceptive faculties has made him into a paranoiac, giving him a kind of transcendental insight into a world where every object bids for the attention of his consciousness. His ability to orient himself having been displaced, Septimus is unable to attribute a proper sense of significance to the objects and events that constitute his experience of the world. As the result of his years septn in the gas-filled trenches of World War One, where he witnessed life being exchanged for death day after day, the realization that he has escaped death has shocked him at such a profound level that his sense have abandoned him. Along with the shock of recognition that accompanies his new insight into the glorious temporality of one's existence, Septimus grasps the fact that the natural world, too, is alive. Plunging headlong into the revealation, Septimus discovers the not only are trees and leaves alive, but the straiated mircostructures of the leaves are alive as well. Unable to arrest his frenzied thinking for even a moment, Septimus takes yet another plunge into this ecstatic thinking to make yet another discovery of profound significance: he draws a correspondence between the leaves and his body, perhaps connecting the pattern of microscopic filaments found to structure these plant-forms and the connective neurons that form the structure of his central nervous system. In attributing great significance to this discovery, these insights into the recurrence of patterns in nature have great effects of his view of the world, and on his life as well.

A combination of these three factors--his insights into a deeper reality, his shift to a world where the concepts of life and death no longer possess stability and permanence, and his new comprehsnion of the workings of his mind--cause Septimus to link every form of life within his vision, forming an ever-expending concatenation of being, and conflating the entire universe of being into one individual--himself. Intoxicated with the bliss of being, his madness develops from his inability to halt this associative process at a reasonable point, expanding his awareness of these patterns more and more in an attempt to prove his universality by embracing all of existence, affirming the totality of life through the erasure of his subjective existence. Even the sparrows that lilt in the trees around him are significantly involved in his life, as the melodies of the birds perforate his consciousness and, in an act of unprincipled semiosis, are transformed from ordinary warblings into the sound of his name being chanted in an ancient tongue. For Septimus Smith, thinking itself has become an implicity tautology; his reasoning follows a circular course that precludes the introduction of rational thinking. This ecstatic thinking, Woolf declares, is what is understood by the word madness. Unsurprisingly, his exposure to the infinity of being has caused Septimus to regress to a state where his wife has to care for him as if he were an infant. As a result of his ecstatic thinking, the expansive awareness of the interconnections of the world, Septimus has become estranged from himself.

According to James Naremore, this change in Septimus' consciousness, his linkage with the objects of the world and his subsequent loss of identity as a unitary subject, is equivalent to a schizophrenic experience. In reaction to his ecstatic thinking, Septimus finds himself drawn to the image of God, the divine presence that maintains the internal coherence of this universal order, the reigme of patterns that run through the world. Woolf shows how this mode of thought promotes belief in a divinity, a representation of an eternal ahistorical force that can be regarded as the apotheosis of ecstatic thinking. Yet in Woolf's portray of Septimus' condition, this internalized ecstatic thinking that preserves the order of the world becomes a choice for alienation in a world dominated by externality. In supposing the world to be divinely ordered through a multitude of infinite patterns, Septimus' perception of his personal existence has been confused with the life of the world, creating a confusion between the personal sphere, where consciousness adheres to that range of thinking commonly labeled as normal, and the public sphere, where consciousness transcends the personal, adopting a position of intersubjectivity. In revealing the incommensurable disparity between the external public sphere of totalized being and the internal private sphere of subjective being, Woolf indicates, through the character of Septimus, that internalized ecstatic thinking has radical effects on one's perceptions of the external world.

Several pages later, we rejoin Septimus at the hospital where he is undergoing observation. At this point Woolf introduced the fame Sir William Bradshaw, a man with a sterling reputation as a clinician, in part for his methods of treating soldiers who have been driven insane, individuals whom the war-machine of modernity produces by the millions. The psychoanlytic institution represented by Sir William intends to forcre everybody to comply with its laws "by internalizing them and becoming the perfect subject of the state." Septimus' schizophrenia constitutes a danger to Sir William's desire to create a world ruled over by a normal standard. The fact that Septimus has allowed his unconscious mind to break away from the place of identity prescribed by social convention threatens his conception of "Morality, Law, and Order." Indeed, Bradshaw has come to hold a set idea of what the human mind needs in order to remain in a state of health. This way lies health, Sir William promises: the restoration of order, proportion, propriety--all in one fell swoop. Through rest and relaxation the disturbance will smooth itself out, and the mind will become placid, unconscious of its predicament; specifically, this split is the rupture in consciousness manifested in the cleavage between the private and the public, the rift between the external and the internal. In this way Bradshaw treats the madmen of society, the out-standing ego, the individual who thinks ecstatically. Bradshaw's method of treating madness can be seen as a programmatic means for the restoration of an ego-imbalance, re-centering and re-stabilizing the out-standing ego. In much the same way as Septimus thinks of the patterns that order the world, Bradshaw, too, claims to have discovered the pattern of life that produces an orderly and socially hygenic ego-consciousness. With his common sense techniques, Bradshaw counters the irrastionality of war-victims like Septimus whose mind, being in a state of inchoate formlessness, resists conforming to the imposition of a fixed identity. However, there is a middle position between "formless" and "fixed", a position that Woolf suggests is the best way to experience the world without succumbing to madness.

The final section of the book takes place later that evening when, at the appointed hour, Mrs. Dalloway's party is set to begin. Surprisingly, with the arrival of the first group of guests, Clarissa feels a distinct sense, not of happiness, but of unease. Clarissa discovers, to her displeasure, that she feels as if she has been homogenized, de-individualized, easily replaceable by any other member of the party. She feels as if she has become an inanimate object, her persona having been submerged into the social role she inhabits. If this represents the experience of the statuefied ego-ideal toutewd by Sir William Bradshaw, Clarissa wants nothing to do with it. She finds that she does not like being fixed and stable, statuefied and immobile; she prefers to hold on to her fantasy of being. Specifically, her fantasy in this culture of byt incorporates the wish to perceive the whole of being, thereby preserving, with the space of her party, being as a somplete personal history. In her lifetime, she has been able to realize these fantasies to a great extent; indeed, these social gatherings are events where, for a time, identity is fixed, the ego is stabilized, and the social fabic of her personal history is unified in the parade of being that passes through her front door. This fantasy-cycle, which recurs with each of her parties, passes from Clarissa's increasing tension and anxiety to a joyous exhilaration at the moment of climax, a fulfillment where she recognizes her own being. In one moment of intense lucidity, surrounded by friends and lovers both past and present, Clarissa immerses herself in ecstacy, standing in the light of the present.

This unease marks her growing realization that life is not a fantasy to be played out at one's behest, a realization thast is intensified when, during the party, Lady Bradshaw draws her aside and, speaking in a low voice, tells her of Septimus' recent suicide. This announcement comes as a joly to Clarissa who, while playing hostess, had not been prepared to receive news of this sort: "Oh! thought Clarissa, in the middle of my party, here's death, she thought." Although this is the only instance in which Clarissa and Septimus meet, the death of Septimus affects Clarissa greatly, as she ponders deeply about the significance of the death of this lone individual.

Hearing people speak with such feeling about Septimus' death, an event that occurred outside the members of the group, Clarissa faces the painful realization that her party cannot exist as a perfectly enclosed totality, for each person has an independent existence, a separate perspective from which they come into contact with the facts of the world. For the idealistic Clarissa, the realization that life exceeds the limits of the group strikes her as a depressing piece of nihilism. With great sorrow, she laments the fact the her attempts to establish a precise order within the space of her party, to realize a spectacular social network that would ensure the full preservation of being, has failed. In her bid to preserve the totality of the self, Clarissa discovers that fully realized being will always be found to have escaped, for the specter of death weilds a disturbing power over all being, making her fantasy, ultimately, an impossible one. In addition, Clarissa's affirmation of death's power over and above life labels death as the unpredictable presence which subverts all of one's attempts at closure. From her reaction ti the entrance of the figure of death at her party, the reader learns the Clarissa, too, confronts the same kind of hypersensitive paranoid knowledge that Septimus encountered before his suicide; if Sir William disagnosed Mrs. Dalloway, perhaps he would prescribe that she, too, needs a long period of rest and relaxation. Her mind, like the mind of Septimus, suffers from an ego-imbalance; she attributes a disproportionate weight of significance to the interconnections within her social group. Beginning with a subtle sense of dis-ease, Clarissa's paranoid reaction to Septimus's suicide indicates the ecstatic grief she feels when confronted with the signs of death, the end-point of one's existence. Thinking of Septimus' fall from the window, Woolf allows Clarissa to surrender to an emotional "plunge" where meanings collapse as individual identity falls away.

With this scene Woolf makes the fundamental dichotomy of Dalloway readily apparent to her readers. On the one hand we have Clarissa Dalloway, a woman who, through her sanctification of the social, produces a network of consciousness equivalent to asking a most profound question of being. that is, to what extent are we, by necessity, separated from one another ? Her response to the question, affirming the diversity of reactions produced when consciousness becomes aware of itself, is to throw a party, a celebration in the name of being, in recognition of that consciousness that is forever without end--the present. On the other hand, we have Septimus Smith, a figure who, although believing himself to have transcended reality, is unable to unify his perceptions well enough to attend to the reality of the present. These characters, Woolf suggests, illustrate the two paths a mind can take: internalized ecstatic thinking, represented in the figure of Septimus--or externalized ecstatic thinking, represented in the figure of Clarissa.

According to Deborah Guth, the connection between Clarissa and her "symbolic double", Septimus, is developed through a motif of ascent and descent. These two separate live implicitly encode alternative routes open to the subject. Guth compares the lives of both characters to a single mystical experience: "the first part, that of a transfiguring revelation, is experienced by Septimus while the second part, the aura of grace that arrives in its wake, by Clarissa as she bows her head in the hallway feeling blessed and purified." Septimus portrays the sufferings of Christ, the divine man whose capacity for feeling exceeds that of every other human being, while Clarissa personifies the devotion of the worshipper, as she ascends to the cloistered space of her imagination. Although similarities are present, the differences between these two characters are substantial. While Clarissa's imagination moves outward, into the commercial world of desacrilized bodily experience, Septimus chooses to negate his physical existence in favor of the sacredness of his visions. With Septimus' suicide at the end of the novel, the ascensional motif is reversed; it is then that these two lives are joined, as Clarissa meets her alter-ego and, momentarily, experiences the ecstasy of "a visionary plenitude." Woolf's mocking of the psychoanalytic institutions represented by Sir William indicates her belief that an ordered form of existence is, at best, a contingency.

Is the materialistic ideology and the culture of byt that Clarissa subscribes to an alternative route of departure from a socially conditioned form of thinking that Septimus deviates from ? Which direction does Woolf consider to be more profitable ? Certainly, Septimus' suicide indicated the potential dangers of ecstatic thinking through an internalizationof being. However, Clarissa's choice for the external over the internal has the effect of flattening her personality in a way similar to the reshaping of consciousness advocated by Sir William Bradshaw. Her impulse to engage in the world resembles the process where Septimus' mind comes to lose his sense of proportion; she has developed a psychological fantasy-life which allows her to transcend the exigencies of time, removing the historical contingencies that foreground her conscious experience of the moment, and allowing her to go beyond these events, to participate in the ebb and flow of an existence unbound from time. For this reason, the news of Septimus' death comes as an affirmation of the emptiness Clarissa feels, marking her engagement with the physical world as the site from her retreat from being. In this light, too, Septimus and Clarissa are similar, for although they are moving in different directions (he, inside; she, outside), they are each moving away from being. Both are condemned to be disssociated from themselves forever. Using these two characters as her examples, Woolf makes her case for the central problem of the modern subject, for she sees modernity as a time when a manifold consciousness ceaselessly propounds the fragmentation of the self through its resolute affirmation of the distance separating one life from another. With these observations, one realizes that Woolf is quite pessimistic about the difference between these two models for the development of consciousness, one a cognitive internalization (Septimus), the other a proprioceptive internalization (Clarissa). Traces of Woolf's pessimistic sensibility may also be found when one considers that Clarissa possessed her fantasy of being fully present only through her high social rank. This is in stark contrast to the position of others such as Mrs. Kilman who, being of a lower social rank, adheres to a religious ideology which promises a better world to come, becoming one of the masses who must resign themselves to the deferral of the present moment.

As we have seen, Dalloway illustrates the conflict between ecstatic thinking and ecstatic being. Whereas Septimus' ecstatic experience resembles the ecstasy of the subject alienated from being, the ecstasy Clarissa experiences as she performs her daily errands constitutes an ecstasy of being-in-the-world. Whereas Clarissa's ecstasy radiates from her being at home in the world, Septimus Smith eventually commits suicide as a result of his being unable to situate himself properly in the same world. For Septimus, the ecstasy of thinking only takes place through the renunciation of being; Clarissa derives her ecstasy through the sacrilization of the social, where being is accepted unequivocally. That Clarissa's ecstasy is obtained through her retrieval of the past in these social gatherings indicates that the experience of ecstasy is identified by its infinite lack of closure, for as Woolf reveals, ecstasy is, simply, Being-in-the-world, to be obtained through a fatal "plunge".

As we have notes above, the characters of Kurtz and Septimus are closely linked with the consciousness of Marlow and Clarissa, and due to this intimate association we may see the former pair of characters, in Lacanian terms, as the imago or double of the latter pair. According to Mikkel Borch-Jacobson, Lacan used the psychoanalytic concept of the imago, a word derived from the Latin word for statue, to indicate a mental object associated with the early experience of the ego. For this reason, Lacan conceives of the ego as a statuefied presence that is derived from the earlier and psychologically more primitive formation of the imago. For from being phantasmatic, imagoes, says Lacan, are actually real. They embody the pre-history of the ego in a mirror image that forms the ego. According to Lacan, the imago, and not the ego, is the true root governing the formation of the ego. In Freudian theory, the ego falsely aquires the stature and standing of an originary formative principle. In Lacan's view the status of the original formative principle is more appropriately given to the imago. The proof of the imago's developmental priority being that it is the imago that determines the subject's behavior and personality.

What reason might account for the fact that what is most familiar to Marlow and Clarissa, their own ego, has such destabilizing effects ? In Lacanian terms, the imago represents a previously surmounted stage of psychic development, at a time when the distinction between the image and the ego did not yet exist. During this period, which antedates the mirror stage, there was no space between ego and image, nor was there are delay between wish and representation, or division between interior and exterior. The primary narcissism of the chid, a stage that has been surmounted with the completion of the mirror-stage, returns as the entrance of the double signals the reversal of psychological development. As a result, far from being a token of power or an assertion of immortality, the figure of the double, represented by Kurtz and Septimus, becomes the harbinger of death. Here Conrad and Woolf continue to show how the illusion of a transcendent reality, when allowed to continue unrestricted, eventually becomes part of mental reality. Subsumed within the ideology of the subject, the image of the self doubles and the unitary self becomes a binary self. As we will see in the next two chapters, this binary image of the self is something that the modern subject desires to resolve.