Feeling and meaning: the exceptional centrality of feel in Mrs Dalloway

Abstract

This article deals with the use of the verb feel and the substantive feeling in Mrs Dalloway. The high number of occurrences of those lexemes testifies to their centrality in the novel, which gives them an exceptional status. This contribution aims to demonstrate that the great polysemy of feel, which refers to sensations, affects and cognition, is underpinned by a semantic core that recalls not only the Woolfian vision of perception but also the role that writing and language play for Woolf as she defines them in some of her non-fiction writings. Indeed, unlike other verbs of perception, feel expresses a sense modality related to the direct contact between the perceiver and the perceived, and the effect that the latter has on the former. It is connected with both fusion and distinction. In that sense, it is reminiscent of the semi-transparent envelope that Woolf evokes in “A Sketch of the Past” and which stands for the contact with and the protection against the outside world. We shall see that feel’s semantic core is to be found in all its uses and that the text exploits this potential to make sensations and feelings the privileged access to the outside world and to meaning. The thesis defended here is therefore that the polysemy of feel is a central interpretative key to the novel, hence its exceptional status in Mrs Dalloway.