Clocks make the difference between elapsed time and experienced time visible. A bell can organize a city while a memory interrupts one person’s morning. A broken clock can turn a reunion into an awkward struggle with years that cannot actually be recovered.
Two novels published in 1925 offer a useful comparison: Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway and F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. They do not use timepieces in the same way. Reading their scenes closely is more revealing than treating every clock in modernist fiction as a symbol of oppression.
Big Ben: a public event with private consequences
In the opening of Mrs Dalloway, Clarissa’s movement through Westminster is accompanied by Big Ben. The morning has already opened into memories of Bourton. The clock locates the present without removing those other times from her attention.
Notice the order of perception. The narrative registers anticipation and bodily feeling before the striking hour. A measurable public signal is experienced through a particular person. The bell does not stand outside consciousness as a purely objective fact; Woolf shows what it feels like to await and hear it.
This creates a practical structure for the reader. When narration moves between memories and observers, an hour can restore our bearings. We may know where the day has reached while remaining unsure how much emotional distance a character has travelled. The clock supplies coordination, not a complete account of experience.
Why synchronization does not mean agreement
People can share an appointment or hear the same chime without giving it the same significance. That distinction matters in a novel concerned with separate lives occupying one city. Public time provides a connection that is real but limited.
It is tempting to call clock time the enemy and memory the liberating alternative. Test that claim. Readers need some shared reference points to follow the novel, and characters need arrangements that allow them to meet. Remembering can also hurt or trap a person. Woolf’s contrast is more complicated than a contest between a bad machine and a good imagination.
Gatsby catches a clock, not the past
Turn to chapter V of The Great Gatsby. At Nick’s house, Gatsby leans against a defunct mantelpiece clock during his reunion with Daisy, then catches it when it tilts. The object participates in an uncomfortable physical performance: he is trying to appear relaxed and failing.
The scene gains force from that small accident. Desire becomes visible through posture, a trembling movement, and an apology. The timepiece need not be decoded before the embarrassment can be felt. Symbolic significance develops from an object doing something in a room.
Gatsby soon specifies how long he and Daisy have been apart. That precision contrasts with the uncertainty of the meeting. Counting the interval cannot tell him whether Daisy now occupies the future he has imagined. The clock is inactive, but the people beside it have continued living.
A comparison that preserves the difference
| Detail | Woolf | Fitzgerald |
|---|---|---|
| Scale | A public signal across London | An object in a private room |
| Physical action | A chime enters perception | A clock tilts and is caught |
| Time problem | The present coexists with remembered experience | A reunion confronts an imagined recovery of the past |
| Reader’s task | Follow shifts of attention | Compare aspiration with the awkward scene |
Clocks did not become literary objects overnight
The device has a long history before modernism. Dickens’s Great Expectations, chapter VIII, places stopped timepieces in Miss Havisham’s room. That earlier example prevents us from treating symbolic timekeeping as a modernist invention. What changes between texts is the arrangement of time, narrative perspective, and action.
Comparison should therefore ask how a clock is used, not assume that a date or movement predetermines its meaning. A working clock, a stopped watch, and a bell can generate different kinds of narrative pressure.
Try a two-clock annotation
- Choose one scene and record its stated hour or interval.
- List the memories, expectations, or associations occurring within it.
- Identify the exact action or phrase that brings the timepiece forward.
- Explain what would change if the clock were removed.
If the object merely supplies an appointment time, say so. Not every clock requires a grand symbolic claim. The most persuasive interpretation accounts for the local detail before expanding to a novel’s larger treatment of time.
Continue reading
Follow walking and memory in Woolf. Return to the reading guide for more essays.
Revision note — October 26, 2026: Rewritten around specific texts and scenes, with source links and an exercise for close reading. These are interpretations, not fixed definitions of literary symbols. Editorial Policy · Corrections