Novel #4: Extraordinary in the Ordinary

Virginia Woolf's expansive sampling of minor characters in Mrs. Dalloway implies that any person's story on any given day is worth writing about. At times, the omniscient narrator in the novel floats around the city and enters the thoughts of random people on the street. For instance, in the span of a few paragraphs, the narrator chronicles the thoughts and actions of men and women of different classes as they all watch an airplane spell out a toffee advertisement. Woolf takes on the voice of these different people and treats all of the people with respect, as seen in her tone as she recounts the people's memories and life situations; for instance, she accounts how Emily Coates thinks of "the housemaids, the innumerable housemaids" when Emily sees the Palace (19). Just in this one phrase, Woolf is able to characterize this young woman and therefore humanize her. Woolf also reveals the deeper natures of others; for example, she says an elder Mr. Bowley is "sealed with wax over the deeper sources of life but could be unsealed suddenly, inappropriately, sentimentally" (20). Woolf is using this poetic description for a man who does not even remain in the story, yet she dwells on him as if he were a major character.

Woolf's way of treating her characters offers a different perspective on how to see random people in the street and perhaps forces readers to consider different types of emotions or thoughts in the minds of the people around them. The hodgepodge of people in the novel makes it easy to imagine Woolf describing any other equally random assortment of people; this adds to the idea that any person may look out of his window and see another assortment of people all interesting in their own ways. Woolf's writing also encourages the reader to look at his own thoughts, for she treats every character's ponderings as interesting and insightful bits of information. Indeed, though Woolf gives some characters more page time than others, her respectful tone remains as she challenges the readers to look deeper at people in their own life.