Scrope Purvis

Rebecca Young

Scrope Purvis. Truly one of the worst character names in literary history. Don’t get me wrong—I adore Virginia Woolf and Mrs. Dalloway. Still, I have to wonder what a character of your own creation could have done to warrant such an atrocious name. Linguistically, it doesn’t make sense. To end one word with an aspirated /p/ and then follow it immediately with another one? Not only is it hard to say, but its rarity in the English language throws native speakers for a loop. Then, with the extra lexical connotations, everything gets worse: Scrope (grope) Purvis (pervert). Virginia, why? I would get it more if the readers actually got to know this fellow throughout the novel, and we were all meant to hate him as an unforgivable creep or something gross. In reality, though, his character barely gets a single paragraph! Through free indirect discourse, readers “hear” him thinking about Mrs. Dalloway. He compliments her as a charming woman, one of his neighbors, and considers how her recent illness has affected her. And…that’s it!

I feel for my guy Scrope, I really do. As lackluster as this spot in the story may be for him, though, it’s actually incredibly insightful as a snapshot of real life and how we all exist to other people. Almost any time I’m out to dinner with my parents, they see someone they know. As soon as this happens, I get a run-down of that person’s life in an oversimplified synopsis much like that presented by our friend Mr. Purvis. In hushed-but-still-a-little-too-loud voices, my parents will tell me, “That was So-and-So and his wife. They have the big red house up next to the lake, you know the one that has the maple tree out front? They almost didn’t get to build that house, he lost his job at the farm the same year they were supposed to start construction. They’re doing better now though, I think they have a son in college up north. Oh, what do you think about splitting the steak dinner tonight?” And, just like that, we move on. I may never see or hear about that person again, but I’ve just gotten to see them—albeit briefly—through someone else’s eyes, without So-and-So and his wife ever knowing who I am.

Similarly, I find myself commenting on others’ existences at times, following my thoughts the way Virginia Woolf had her readers follow Scrope’s. As I walk along my college campus and pass a former classmate, my own internal monologue might shift toward them for a moment: “Oh, is that Claire? I thought she graduated. I wonder if she’s still dancing after that leg injury last spring. Wow, they already started construction on the dining hall?” And again, the story’s focus has shifted. Here, I’m practicing free indirect discourse in my own life, slipping in and out of my “character’s” consciousness as I narrate my day-to-day existence. We all do this, regardless of whether we notice it. And, in such an interconnected world as our own, it’s practically impossible to imagine a day where we don’t follow others in our thoughts and conversations. Yet, we almost never seem to acknowledge this. We get so caught up in our own stories that others become mere background characters to us, the extras we don’t take time to make ourselves aware of. Further, we rarely get to hear others’ snippets of thought about ourselves, making it even harder to imagine how often we pop up in everyone else’s minds, too.

“We are all the main characters in our own story.” This cliché is one that I truly buy into, hook line and sinker. Even the dullest of individuals is the hero in their own life, and our personal motivations are the only ones driving us. In Mrs. Dalloway, Scrope Purvis’s only (apparent) reason for existence was to tell the readers a bit about Mrs. Dalloway herself. Had the book been Mr. Purvis, however, we can assume readers would get to know him so much more intimately, and it may have been Mrs. Dalloway whose internal commentary about him we eavesdropped on. Beyond literature, we are all still playing roles in our own story and in others’, whether we know it or not. There are likely dozens of people whose minds drift to you at some point in the day, thinking back to something you did in school, or an encounter with you in the grocery store, or an email you sent but have no recollection of anymore. With or without our knowledge, understanding, or agreement, our identities are not just our own.

People’s identities are constructed in the minds of others, our own included, and our connections to and thoughts of others affect our understanding of the world and our own place in it. Thus, we can ask ourselves, is there really such a thing as a “minor” character? As long as we’re living the social lives of humans, we are always being influenced by others and influencing them in turn. Can we simultaneously be propelling someone else’s personal narrative and unimportant in their story? Woolf’s inclusion of Scrope Purvis—that poor, horribly-named character—is a representation of this dual experience. Neither Scrope nor Mrs. Dalloway seem aware of this; it’s just a small moment in their otherwise unconnected days. Likewise, most of us in the real world are unaware of our own interconnectivity, and the roles we play in each others’ lives—I think we would do well to remember this more often. Despite the inevitable separation between us as individuals, our human experience is dependent upon each other. Even though we may be the protagonists of our personal stories, we’re all the Scrope Purvis in someone else’s.