Mrs. Dalloway gives a surprising sense of violence for a novel that takes place within the stereotypically tame, domestic circles of Clarissa’s comfortable London class. Part of this forceful diction comes through with the vehemence in Woolf’s treatment of Clarissa’s—as well as other characters’—mental landscapes. Woolf’s stream-of-consciousness relies in part on that tough, forward force and the action-verbs and metaphors that fuel it. With repetitive, powerful language, memory “plunges” again and again on page thirty-seven, mornings have “pressure,” and moments are “transfixed” (37). Even in one short segment of the text, the process of language and thought becoming striking, active, and physical is apparent. As so much of the novel’s action is mental, that forceful language of Mrs. Dalloway transforms the safe, sanctioned, and controlled domestic life—the “lark” of buying flowers—into “dart-like; definite” action, bringing to life thought as tangible action, visceral and tumultuous through the unexpectedness of violent or at least highly physical language.

There are instances where the shock of Woolf’s language is used explicitly, to express a small moment of daily life not only as visceral but as grotesque. On page thirty-six, “She felt only how Sally was being mauled already, maltreated; she felt [Peter’s] hostility; his jealousy, his determination to break into their companionship.” His intrusion into the brilliant moment of intimacy between Sally and Clarissa “was like running one’s face against a granite wall in the darkness! It was shocking; it was horrible!” (36). This language is expressly violent, the male invasion into an earnest, free moment of interpersonal connection crafted as “mauling” or the heavy, painful grinding against a “granite wall”—in either case, there is real, physical harm implied in the metaphor. The stake of visceral danger in this explosive—but, literally, momentary—freeze-frame is a method Woolf uses to express the weight of immediate, mental activity, the inner sphere portrayed through gut-level reactions. That method of physically-grueling language, and the expression of danger there, also impresses the reader with the validity, the real stake in these moments for the characters, shaping these reactions not as personal indulgences but as “plunging” tangible events.