What’s up with Miss Kilman and Heron in Mrs. Dalloway and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man?
The dislike of the protagonists of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and Mrs. Dalloway regarding the two characters, Heron and Miss Kilman, essentially function as a partial reflection of the modernist dislike and criticism towards the forces of society that oppress and constrain the individual subjectivity by confiscating one’s freedom to determine zir own life and self. Taken in this context, Heron and Miss Kilman appear as figures that threaten the experience, formation, and actualization of the self.
In both novels, the dislike is a reaction to and a defense against what dismisses the individuality of the self and its inner freedom. This idea finds its expression in the novel Mrs. Dalloway most clearly through the concept of “privacy of the soul”, which Miss Kilman or rather the “idea” of her seems to violate. The concept is what lies behind Clarissa’s life decisions, her ultimate motivation in her efforts to create a pleasant and safe reality for herself, away from her intense emotions, troubling thoughts, fixation on death, and mental instability. Therefore, essentially, the threat that Kilman poses in her life relates to her being an invader of the soul upon her connection to religion, and to have the power to stir the order of things.
Woolf specifies the nature of Clarissa’s hate as one that goes beyond the person of Miss Kilman “For it was not her one hated but the idea of her, which undoubtedly had gathered into itself a great deal that was not Miss Kilman” (107), “now that the body of Miss Kilman was not before her, it overwhelmed her — the idea” (232). Just like Septimus, who, when confronted with the doctors- who are the upholders of the bourgeoise values of “proportion” and “reason”- instead of seeing them in their individuality, sees human nature that he declares it to be a “brute”, Clarissa too, sees in Miss Kilman the domination of religion over individual’s soul, its dogmatism and impositions, the violation of its subjectivity and privacy, through which she means the autonomy of the individual and the right to use their will as they wish, without adhering to any external cause: “Love and religion! thought Clarissa […] The cruelest things in the world, she thought, seeing them clumsy, hot, domineering, hypocritical, eavesdropping, jealous, infinitely cruel and unscrupulous, dressed in a mackintosh coat” (232). Clarissa detests what does not respect one’s decision to be as they want and to live as they want and thinks that “love and religion would destroy that, whatever it was, the privacy of the soul. The odious Kilman would destroy it.” (262). And indeed, behind her “rigid complacency” and “self-righteousness” lies the desire to dominate and to convert Clarissa’s soul: “it was the soul and its mockery that she wished to subdue; make feel her mastery.” (260).
Furthermore, Kilman and the idea of her also appear as a threat to the upper-class social system which functions as a protective shield for Mrs. Dalloway, in that it protects her from losing her sense of proportion and composure. A total outsider and a resister to this system, Kilman repudiates its values and disturbs the order “she was never in the room five minutes without making you feel her superiority, your inferiority” (107); and more importantly, Kilman ignites hate in Clarissa, which is one of the feelings that do not have “hollowness”, that is from the heart and not “at arm’s length” (327), causes a stir in her soul, in that part of her being that she carefully tried to make sure is safe and calm with the type of life and social environment she chose for herself so that she might not “perish” altogether (341). Kilman disturbs the mental balance that Clarissa tries to maintain by constantly distracting herself from her inner complexities through a loveless but stable marriage, elegant parties, and a meticulous love of life: “It rasped her, though, to have stirring about in her this brutal monster! […] to feel hooves […] in that leaf-encumbered forest, the soul; never to be content quite, or quite secure, for at any moment the brute would be stirring, this hatred” and that is why she sees a “tyrant” in her, who becomes a dangerous “spectre” that “suck up half [her] life-blood” (107), in other words, a dominator that threatens the specific type of existence that is so integral to the character and identity of Clarissa.
The dislike of Stephen, on the other hand, rather than to be inferred from explanations- as Stephen does not comments on it in so many words as Clarissa does- is to be read from various instances. In The Portrait Heron, who is a typical product of the conventional Irish society, executes one of the most overt and symbolic acts of oppression- no matter how childish it is- against Stephen, and to that extent, by being an ordinary yet symbolic member of the society, demonstrates an assertive desire to dominate, which finds its expression in his words, his cane, and his bird-like appearance[1]. Hence, the dislike of Stephen, with his artistic temperament and sensitiveness, connects to a more fundamental and wider frustration of his social environment because of its commonness, oppressiveness, and dullness that he finds “idle and alien” (161) and that which fills him “with unrest and bitter thoughts” (137).
Julien’s time in Belvedere corresponds to the end of his childhood and records his youth's beginnings, which appears as a phase of identity crisis in his development. Heron, therefore, is one of the figures who tell him what to think and how to act that Stephen confronts in the beginnings of his project of self-origination, his strife to express himself as he is (284). The two instances that comprise the confrontation of Heron and Stephen are the quarrel over the best poet and the banter before the school theatre play, both in which Heron appears as an assertive, quarrelsome companion, whom Stephen views under the light of a certain pride, with a belief in his inferiority (like the rest of his friends), and an awareness of his coarse attitude that has a “silly indelicateness” (136). Stephen’s condescending look becomes evident in his bursting laugh against Heron’s liking of the eminent, Poet Laureate Tennyson whom he only sees as a “rhymester” despite his popularity while Heron’s desire to repress him asserts itself in his insistent call to Stephen to denounce his claim of Byron as the best poet, at the same time, giving him blows with his cane (141). Ultimately, the incident in which the two “rival friends” are contrasted to each other sharply, shows the rigid convention that leaves no room for self-expression and individual subjectivity: Stephen’s liking of the “subversive”, rebellious, and the scandalous Byron immediately causes him to be labeled as a “heretic” that needs to be punished. Stephen’s indifferent and almost impersonal reaction to the torture of Heron, that is, the fact that he feels no “malice” towards the ones who tormented him but still acknowledges their act as “cowardice and cruelty” points to his growing feeling of estrangement and alienation.
In the second instance, Stephen relates Heron with the other “voices” around him constantly urging him to be in a certain way, to take on a given identity- more specifically to be “a gentleman above all things and […] a good catholic above all things.” (143). Heron is a part of this herd valuing the matters that Stephen finds “trivial”- like honor-, part of this reality that has “limited and limiting character” (Deane, 31) that Stephen tries to repudiate “he was happy only when he was far from them, beyond their call, alone or in the company of phantasmal comrades.” (144). Stephen’s self-begetting necessitates his flight from the “nets” and the negation of all types of impositions that he deems as “hollow-sounding”. In an act of will, Stephen refuses to attach his soul to anything outside himself to find his inner freedom, just like he refused to praise the poet of the majority, and to “be one of [them] (283): “I will not serve that in which I no longer believe […] and I will try to express myself in some mode of life or art as freely as I can and as wholly as I can […]” (355). Hence, arguably, it is valid to evaluate his dislike for Heron not as an isolated and private case but as a part of his “restless moodiness” that stems from his deep unsatisfaction with the dull and restrictive reality that he tries to fly from.
[1] Remarkably, the role Heron takes on in his relationship with Stephen reminds that of a priest, constantly urging him to “admit” of his sins -the pre-eminent restrictive force in Stephen’s life is Catholicism- and his punishment with the use of cane re-enacts the punishment of Stephen as a child with a pandybat. Moreover, Heron’s bird-like appearance mirrors the use of bird image in the early phases of Stephen’s life with a threatening quality: “the eagles will come and pull out his eyes”, similarly to compel him to apologize for his unorthodox thought.
WORKS CITED
Deane, Seamus. “Introduction”. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. New York. Penguin Group, 1992.
Joyce, James. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. New York. Penguin Group, 1992.
Woolf, Virginia. Mrs. Dalloway. New York. Oxford University Press, 2000.
