Synopsis:
Direct and vivid in its telling of the details of a day in the life of Clarissa Dalloway, the novel manages ultimately to deliver much more. It is the feelings that loom behind those daily events--the social alliances, the shopkeeper's exchange, the fact of death--that give Mrs. Dalloway texture and richness.
Topic:
APRIL 2000 BOOK -- MRS. DALLOWAY (5 of 7), Read 35 times
Conf:
CLASSICS CORNER
From:
Dottie Randall (randallj@ix.netcom.com)
Date:
Friday, March 17, 2000 01:12 PM
Having just picked up my Mrs.Dalloway yesterday (?) -- seems longer
ago already! -- I am ready with it and The Hours at hand and am at
the present three-fourths of the way through the Hermione Lee
biography of Woolf as well. I am looking forward to this duo as much
as I was to the combo discussion of this month!
I'll crack Mrs. Dalloway Tuesday at the earliest probably but then I will
be off and reading.
Dottie
ID is an oxymoron!
Topic:
APRIL 2000 BOOK -- MRS. DALLOWAY (6 of 7), Read 20 times
Conf:
CLASSICS CORNER
From:
Barbara Moors (bar647@aol.com)
Date:
Monday, March 20, 2000 06:13 AM
I started Mrs. Dalloway this week-end as well and read a few pages of
The Hours just to get a feel of it. I think I'm really going to like this
duo. I find myself reading many of the sentences in Dalloway 3 or 4
times to try to get all of the meaning, but, each time I do it, it's worth
it.
Barb
Topic:
APRIL 2000 BOOK -- MRS. DALLOWAY (7 of 7), Read 5 times
Conf:
CLASSICS CORNER
From:
Steve Warbasse (wk4@uswest.net)
Date:
Monday, March 20, 2000 11:43 AM
Yeah, you're right, Barb. It's read, reread, and reread when it comes
to Virginia Woolf. I even purchased an old used copy of Mrs. Dalloway
and am hi-liting hell out of it to get the characters sorted.
Sara pointed out an audio presentation concerning Virginia Woolf
available on the front page of The New York Times book section:
http://www.nytimes.com/books/home/
I have not had time to listen to it yet, but one of the participants is
Cynthia Ozick, a writer I am anxious for you to become acquainted
with.
Steve
Topic:
APRIL 2000 BOOK -- MRS. DALLOWAY (8 of 8), Read 10 times
Conf:
CLASSICS CORNER
From:
Steve Warbasse (wk4@uswest.net)
Date:
Monday, March 20, 2000 12:15 PM
A follow up on that audio site. It is nicely set up in the sense that
one can pick and chose among the presentations. Michael
Cunningham, the author of The Hours, does a relatively light
weight presentation concerning Mrs. Dalloway.
Steve
Topic:
APRIL 2000 BOOK -- MRS. DALLOWAY (9 of 9), Read 11 times
Conf:
CLASSICS CORNER
From:
Barbara Moors (bar647@aol.com)
Date:
Monday, March 20, 2000 09:10 PM
I couldn't get through to the ny times site tonight, Steve. I got a
server error message, but will try it later. Is Cynthia Ozick primarily
a writer of essays? If so, I've been interested in her for a while.
The mental health site does look harrowing. I think sometimes that
Woolf attracts a certain kind of cult follower who loves all of that
personal angst...exactly the kind of person that I imagine she
would disdain. However, I've never read any of the biographical
books about her so what do I know?.
Barb
Topic:
APRIL 2000 BOOK -- MRS. DALLOWAY (10 of 11), Read 27 times
Conf:
CLASSICS CORNER
From:
R Bavetta (rbavetta@prodigy.net)
Date:
Tuesday, March 21, 2000 12:53 AM
I've read VW's collected letters and found them very interesting,
in fact, much more interesting than her novels. I think I've read
her diaries, too, but I'd have to check my bookshelves.
Ruth, planning to give Mrs. Dalloway a reread
Topic:
APRIL 2000 BOOK -- MRS. DALLOWAY (11 of 11), Read 27 times
Conf:
CLASSICS CORNER
From:
Steve Warbasse (wk4@uswest.net)
Date:
Tuesday, March 21, 2000 08:09 AM
Really, Barb, I did not expect you to drop everything and run over
to that Times site immediately. There's plenty of time. And good
thing, too, because I have occasionally encountered problems with
that server.
As for Cynthia Ozick, she writes novels, short stories, and essays.
I nominated one of her short stories over in that conference for a
read, and it is coming up in a while.
Steve
Topic:
APRIL 2000 BOOK -- MRS. DALLOWAY (12 of 12), Read 22 times
Conf:
CLASSICS CORNER
From:
Ann Davey (davey@tconl.com)
Date:
Wednesday, March 22, 2000 05:17 PM
Ozick is wonderful, Barb. I've read her book THE PUTTERMESSER
PAPERS, which has the story Steve nominated. She's very funny,
but also poignant --my favorite combination.
Ann
Topic:
APRIL 2000 BOOK -- MRS. DALLOWAY (13 of 18), Read 35 times
Conf:
CLASSICS CORNER
From:
Daniel LeBoeuf (dan1066@yahoo.com)
Date:
Thursday, March 30, 2000 12:55 PM
I just finished Mrs. Dalloway and I am stunned and mesmerized by
this novel. How could I have gone this long without savoring the
prose and insight within this seemingly tiny little book?
I thank the person who nominated this novel and especially thank
the people who voted for it this year. I am going back to page one
to re-read the work. Amazing piece of literature, really.
Dan
Topic:
APRIL 2000 BOOK -- MRS. DALLOWAY (14 of 18), Read 36 times
Conf:
CLASSICS CORNER
From:
Sherry Keller (shkell@earthlink.net)
Date:
Thursday, March 30, 2000 12:58 PM
I finished it a few days ago, too. I loved it. I can understand your
wanting to reread it right away.
Sherry
Topic:
APRIL 2000 BOOK -- MRS. DALLOWAY (15 of 18), Read 35 times
Conf:
CLASSICS CORNER
From:
R Bavetta (rbavetta@prodigy.net)
Date:
Thursday, March 30, 2000 03:05 PM
Isn't it funny. I read this eons ago, and can hardly remember a
thing about it. But I've wanted to reread it ever since we went to
see the film in Milwaukee during Sherry's 50th Birthday Bash. I'm
picking it up at the library tomorrow.
Ruth
Topic:
APRIL 2000 BOOK -- MRS. DALLOWAY (16 of 18), Read 26 times
Conf:
CLASSICS CORNER
From:
Ernest Belden (drernest@juno.com)
Date:
Thursday, March 30, 2000 09:40 PM
From the postings I just read Mrs. Dalloway is quite the book to
read. I ordered it today from our library but this may take for ever.
So I am going to look at the used book stores in our town. I have
read a few of V. Woolf's book and found them interesting, unusual
and sometimes puzzling. I also read stuff about her husband
somewhere. Quite a guy. The To the Lighthouse stands out in my
mind. If I remember correctly VW was another author who benefit
ted from her precarious mental state. Did Jamieson mention her in
her book Ann?
Well I am looking forward to reading her book. Still reading Ulysses
I got quite interested in Joyce and picked up a short biography.
After being acquainted with several of his books he has become a
puzzle to me. Well I have a question which probably can't be
answered by anyone. How and Why did Joyce write Ulysses. Why
pick this particular style of writing? Well the contrast of what he
looked liked, sort of conventional bourgeois does not fit his literary
output. Well how would one ever know these things?
Ernie who is curious what makes people tick.
Topic:
APRIL 2000 BOOK -- MRS. DALLOWAY (17 of 18), Read 26 times
Conf:
CLASSICS CORNER
From:
R Bavetta (rbavetta@prodigy.net)
Date:
Thursday, March 30, 2000 09:52 PM
Those are great questions about ULYSSES, Ernie. Why don't you
re-post them in the Classics Corner ULYSSES thread? I'm sure
they'd add a lot.
Ruth
Topic:
APRIL 2000 BOOK -- MRS. DALLOWAY (18 of 18), Read 22 times
Conf:
CLASSICS CORNER
From:
Ann Davey (davey@tconl.com)
Date:
Thursday, March 30, 2000 10:39 PM
Ernie,
I don't own Jamison's book TOUCHED BY FIRE so I can't check, but
since it is about the relationship between creative artists and
depression/bipolar disorder, I think she must have at least
mentioned Woolf. If I remember correctly, Woolf killed herself by
loading her pockets with stones, walking into the ocean and
drowning herself.
Ann
Topic:
APRIL 2000 BOOK -- MRS. DALLOWAY (19 of 22), Read 42 times
Conf:
CLASSICS CORNER
From:
R Bavetta (rbavetta@prodigy.net)
Date:
Friday, March 31, 2000 11:16 AM
I think you've got Woolf's suicide right, Ann, except wasn't it the
river?
Ruth, being nitpicky
Topic:
APRIL 2000 BOOK -- MRS. DALLOWAY (20 of 22), Read 41 times
Conf:
CLASSICS CORNER
From:
Ann Davey (davey@tconl.com)
Date:
Friday, March 31, 2000 12:41 PM
That sounds right, Ruth. She seems to have lived a tortured life.
Ann
Topic:
APRIL 2000 BOOK -- MRS. DALLOWAY (21 of 22), Read 57 times
Conf:
CLASSICS CORNER
From:
R Bavetta (rbavetta@prodigy.net)
Date:
Friday, March 31, 2000 02:17 PM
Ann, I think I mentioned here that I've read her collected letters
and (I think) journals. I have a real fascination with that whole
Bloomsbury scene.
Ruth
Topic:
APRIL 2000 BOOK -- MRS. DALLOWAY (22 of 22), Read 61 times
Conf:
CLASSICS CORNER
From:
Steve Warbasse (wk4@uswest.net)
Date:
Friday, March 31, 2000 02:57 PM
In the river Ouse, it was. The web site addressing her psychiatric
history cited above is really quite an interesting one. You can read
the meat of her suicide note there, if you are morbidly curious. In
retrospect she suffered from manic-depression of the bipolar
variety, a condition that is apparently very common among
creative types, particularly writers. This was all complicated by
other illness and serious sexual abuse as a child. An incredibly
difficult life.
Steve
Topic:
APRIL 2000 BOOK -- MRS. DALLOWAY (23 of 26), Read 23 times
Conf:
CLASSICS CORNER
From:
Daniel LeBoeuf (dan1066@yahoo.com)
Date:
Saturday, April 01, 2000 03:59 PM
While I am only starting to scratch the surface of this whole Woolf
thing, I must add that Cunningham describes Virginia Woolf's
suicide in the river in 1941 in the opening section of The Hours,
the book scheduled in the other section this month. It is a
fascinating opening, I must say.
Regarding Mrs. Dalloway, it would seem to me that the description
of Septimus's mental state is so painfully delineated that I even
wondered where an author in the mid-20s was picking this stuff
up. There's a biting edge of realism to his madness. Septimus'
manic behavior and thoughts of suicide do not seem contrived to
move the plot along. Instead, he is a stone in the narrative flow
that all events must swirl around.
I admit I went through a heavy session of suicidal thoughts in my
early 20s and Woolf captures such a mood vividly and accurately.
You have a wonderful moment of clarity, maybe a bit of humor,
and then; "It's now time to go and kill myself" and actually find
yourself walking up the stairwell of a tall building or standing on
the edge of a curb watching the grills of 18-wheelers flash by. I
find Woolf's inclusion of the Septimus character a stroke of genius
and not distraction. Some handle life like Peter, some like Clarissa,
and some, unfortunately, like Septimus.
Dan
Topic:
APRIL 2000 BOOK -- MRS. DALLOWAY (24 of 26), Read 9 times
Conf:
CLASSICS CORNER
From:
Ann Davey (davey@tconl.com)
Date:
Sunday, April 02, 2000 10:52 PM
Dan,
I have about 75 pages left to go. I'll try to finish it up in the next
couple of days. I think there is a lot to discuss. This is not an
easy book, but there are passages of amazing insight and beauty.
Ann
Topic:
APRIL 2000 BOOK -- MRS. DALLOWAY (25 of 26), Read 4 times
Conf:
CLASSICS CORNER
From:
Steve Warbasse (wk4@uswest.net)
Date:
Sunday, April 02, 2000 11:50 PM
Wow, that's an understatement, Ann! I must confess that I have
attempted this book before, and I am grateful that it came up on
the Classics Corner list. I was thereby motivated to give it another
run and finished it today.
Dan is the first here to get past the fascinating, tragic story of
Virginia Woolf herself and attempt something about the merits of
the book. I may still be a little too dazed for that. I don't know
whether Virginia Woolf is the English William Faulkner or whether
William Faulkner is the American Virginia Woolf.
What I am attempting to convey with that is that I found this
jumping from the stream-of-consciousness of one mind to the
stream-of-consciousness of another mind brilliantly done. For
example, in the street scenes (and when one has gotten into the
swing of this a little), one is transported to the London she is
portraying in a manner I have never encountered before and would
not have thought possible.
In part the impact of this work on me may have been a bit
idiosyncratic in the sense of my easy and perfect identification
with Peter Walsh. This guy is my alter-ego to the extent that is a
bit frightening.
Steve
Topic:
APRIL 2000 BOOK -- MRS. DALLOWAY (26 of 26), Read 5 times
Conf:
CLASSICS CORNER
From:
Dottie Randall (randallj@ix.netcom.com)
Date:
Monday, April 03, 2000 12:04 AM
Well -- I haven't readied the thoughts on this one yet but did
finish it up a day or so ago. I enjoyed the flow of thought with
which much of the tale is told also -- and the seamless shifts from
one mind to the next were amazing to me. Once in a while I would
read right through and suddenly be startled to find I was now
reading another character, but usually it didn't put a bump into
the process at all.
I found passages which I recognized as being in others of Woolf's
works which I have read or reread recently enough for them to be
fresh. Maybe I was looking for these connections to TTL and
AROOO and NAD from my current reading of the Lee bio of VW but
I did pick them up.
Dottie
ID is an oxymoron!
Topic:
APRIL 2000 BOOK -- MRS. DALLOWAY (27 of 28), Read 28 times
Conf:
CLASSICS CORNER
From:
Sherry Keller (shkell@earthlink.net)
Date:
Monday, April 03, 2000 08:15 AM
Maybe, it's because I saw the movie first, but I found this book to
be amazingly cinematic. I can imagine Robert Altman doing a great
version. He would keep the camera going and shift from one
person to the next without any cuts. Somehow I was in complete
accord with Woolfe and knew instinctively when she was shifting.
The scene in the park was especially successful for me. I find this
an amazing book. And I understand completely Daniel's desire to
start right over again. This will be a book I read again, but I think
I'll wait awhile.
Sherry
Topic:
APRIL 2000 BOOK -- MRS. DALLOWAY (28 of 28), Read 31 times
Conf:
CLASSICS CORNER
From:
Dale Short (dshort5005@aol.com)
Date:
Monday, April 03, 2000 09:07 AM
Sherry & All: Speaking of the film version of MRS. DALLOWAY,
which I thought was brilliantly done, the most harrowing scene to
me was the intercutting of the spiked black iron fence and the
view of it from the window above, just before the tragedy. It's still
fresh in my mind, and ever since, I can't walk by a spiked iron
fence in the neighborhood without feeling a twinge of panic.
>>Dale in Ala.
Topic:
APRIL 2000 BOOK -- MRS. DALLOWAY (29 of 37), Read 39 times
Conf:
CLASSICS CORNER
From:
Steve Warbasse (wk4@uswest.net)
Date:
Tuesday, April 04, 2000 09:32 AM
I found the portrayal of the prominent "psychiatrist," Sir William
Bradshaw, fascinating in connection with the Septimus story, Dan.
If there is any villain in this book, Sir William is it.
At the party after she has heard of Septimus's suicide, Clarissa
thinks:
"Or there were the poets and thinkers. Suppose he had had that
passion, and had gone to Sir William Bradshaw, a great doctor yet
to her obscurely evil, without sex or lust, extremely polite to
women, but capable of some indescribable outrage--forcing your
soul, that was it--if this young man had gone to him, and Sir
William had impressed him, like that, with his power, might he not
then have said (indeed she felt it now), Life is made intolerable;
they make life intolerable, men like that?"
And of course that is exactly what had happened. I interpret this
as Clarissa expressing her feeling that Sir William is a sort of rapist
of the soul.
STEVE
Topic:
APRIL 2000 BOOK -- MRS. DALLOWAY (30 of 37), Read 34 times
Conf:
CLASSICS CORNER
From:
Dottie Randall (randallj@ix.netcom.com)
Date:
Tuesday, April 04, 2000 01:59 PM
Notes in my edition suggest this is a reflection of how Virginia
Woolf felt about a prominent person known to her own family who
treated her during one or more of her early breakdowns. I will look
for the info and post specifics later but I can add that this
coincides with my reading in the Lee biography.
Dottie
ID is an oxymoron!
Topic:
APRIL 2000 BOOK -- MRS. DALLOWAY (31 of 37), Read 34 times
Conf:
CLASSICS CORNER
From:
Steve Warbasse (wk4@uswest.net)
Date:
Tuesday, April 04, 2000 03:17 PM
I suspected as much, Dottie. Thank you for the scoop.
As much as we would like to set an author's biography aside and
discuss his or her novel standing alone, I can see that this is going
be damned difficult with Virginia Woolf.
STEVE
Topic:
APRIL 2000 BOOK -- MRS. DALLOWAY (32 of 37), Read 31 times
Conf:
CLASSICS CORNER
From:
R Bavetta (rbavetta@prodigy.net)
Date:
Tuesday, April 04, 2000 04:34 PM
I'm right in the middle of the diatribe against Sir William Bradshaw,
and I agree, it most definitely has an autobiographical feel. I was
sure VW was getting her own rocks off here. Thanks Dottie, for
confirming it.
Not sure this section works, for just that reason---it sticks out as
a personal comment by the author.
Ruth
Topic:
APRIL 2000 BOOK -- MRS. DALLOWAY (33 of 37), Read 37 times
Conf:
CLASSICS CORNER
From:
Ann Davey (davey@tconl.com)
Date:
Tuesday, April 04, 2000 04:54 PM
I think you're right, Ruth. I checked out the internet site that
Steve posted, which provided details of Woolf's mental problems
and their treatments, and the Bradshaw character struck me as a
direct commentary on Woolf's doctors, who only seemed to know
how to deal with her illness by proposing the rest cure. Dottie has
confirmed that she had one of them definitely in mind.
There didn't seem to be much in the text to justify Clarissa's
categorization of Bradshaw as "evil"-- pompous maybe and
definitely guilty of bad taste in bringing up death at Clarissa's
party (which seemed to bother her inordinately), but hardly evil.
He impressed Septimus's wife the same way. Interestingly enough,
Rezia was very fond of the first physician, Dr. Holmes, who kept
assuring her that there was nothing wrong with Septimus--wishful
thinking I suppose.
Steve, I found Peter the most likable character in this book.
Society may have judged him a failure, but he seemed to be the
only character who was truly alive. I don't quite understand the
30 year old attraction to Clarissa. He repeatedly described her as
cold and her main accomplishment in life was being a good
hostess. What do you think?
Ann
Topic:
APRIL 2000 BOOK -- MRS. DALLOWAY (34 of 37), Read 40 times
Conf:
CLASSICS CORNER
From:
Daniel LeBoeuf (dan1066@yahoo.com)
Date:
Tuesday, April 04, 2000 07:58 PM
I disagree with this ongoing commentary on Bradshaw--there's
enough in Bradshaw's personality, his mannerisms, to justify
Clarissa's impression of him as "raper of souls," to borrow Steve's
colorful metaphor. Bradshaw was a self-assured ass, and Clarissa
detected this tendency readily enough. Given his chosen
profession was helping the mentally fragile, it would strike a person
like Clarissa that Bradshaw's self-arrogance and
narrow-mindedness could be anathema to many seeking his "help."
I was fascinated with Woolf's treatment of shell shock with WWI
veterans, especially in the 1920s. I am impressed with her ability
to depict, realistically, the mental state of a war veteran.
I say if Woolf's biography starts interfering with reading this text,
then put it away. Stop looking for Virginia behind every verb or
description. This novel is too powerfully written to be labeled an
"authorial pulpit of poor mental health practitioners of the 1920s."
Besides, the flowers cover everything.
And did anyone notice that Clarissa's sister was killed by a falling
tree? Given that the "tree" is used over and over to symbolize the
interconnectedness of life, it is fascinating to find it the tool to kill
within this novel.
Dan
Topic:
APRIL 2000 BOOK -- MRS. DALLOWAY (35 of 37), Read 37 times
Conf:
CLASSICS CORNER
From:
Dottie Randall (randallj@ix.netcom.com)
Date:
Tuesday, April 04, 2000 08:40 PM
Steve, Ruth, Ann and Dan -- I have been reading the bio since
long before I got either Mrs. Dalloway or The Hours in hand but I
didn't read any of it during my time with Mrs. D. I intentionally
voted for this dual discussion so as to get motivation to read at
least one of the two biographies of VW that have been residing on
my shelves ever since Dec. 1998 when both books and shelves
arrived in Hasselt by way of Rotterdam.
I am trying not to point to each and every little detail that is tied
to reality of VW's life but can't promise not to pipe up from time to
time if I think it will help clarify something. I happen to be one of
those who runs TO the connections rather than trying to skirt
them especially when they are as twisted within the fictions and
other works as is the case here.
I did indeed note the falling tree reference in there, Dan, but can
you elaborate a bit on your statement concerning the tree as a
symbol of the interconnectedness of life please?
And the power in this novel is the reality at its roots and VW had
first-hand experience with returned vets and shell-shock. As
STeve says -- it is difficult to take VW and her writing apart.
Dottie -- who WILL try not to babble much more on this
ID is an oxymoron!
Topic:
APRIL 2000 BOOK -- MRS. DALLOWAY (36 of 37), Read 16 times
Conf:
CLASSICS CORNER
From:
Steve Warbasse (wk4@uswest.net)
Date:
Wednesday, April 05, 2000 04:36 AM
If you will permit me, Ann? I think you have posed the central
question of this novel. I can't believe you hit on that question
right out of the chute! In fact, I believe it is the question that
Virginia Woolf intended for us to ask when she was writing this
novel. I'm serious.
You know what? I have thought and thought, and I don't have the
faintest idea.
STEVE
Topic:
APRIL 2000 BOOK -- MRS. DALLOWAY (37 of 37), Read 14 times
Conf:
CLASSICS CORNER
From:
Steve Warbasse (wk4@uswest.net)
Date:
Wednesday, April 05, 2000 04:50 AM
Wait a minute. Let me not presume to comment on Virginia Woolf's
state of mind. Let me rather say that it was the central question
of the novel as far as I was concerned.
STEVE
Topic:
APRIL 2000 BOOK -- MRS. DALLOWAY (38 of 49), Read 36 times
Conf:
CLASSICS CORNER
From:
Daniel LeBoeuf (dan1066@yahoo.com)
Date:
Wednesday, April 05, 2000 09:03 AM
Dottie: I don't have a copy of Mrs. Dalloway with me, but there
are passages where Septimus as well as Clarissa both have an
epiphany where they realize that all life is interconnected and
beautiful. In each of these epiphanies they articulate their feelings
by referring to the branching of trees. I will find these passages
and post them when I have the chance.
In fact, it is the interweaving of botanical imagery which roots this
novel. It starts with Clarissa going to buy the flowers and the
plant imagery just blossoms over and over in surprising ways. It's
hard to find any page where plants are not mentioned. The plants
seem a symbol of the interconnectedness of life. Everything must
be rooted in something. Without roots, people become like Sally
Seton's beheaded flowers floating in a glass bowl--fascinating to
look at but somehow grisly at the same time (I'm paraphrasing
Clarissa's reaction to Sally's flower arrangement). And that
"fascination" coupled with "grotesque" kind of sums up the way
Peter Walsh appears to many characters within this novel.
And to further this, there's the water imagery as well. The bells
tolling the hour ripple over London like waves. There's a metaphor
somewhere about a character compared to marsh grass and the
water being unsettled elsewhere causing the marsh grass to
shake. This is another image of this interconnectedness.
Fluid and flowers--the symbolic texture of Mrs. Dalloway. I wish I
had the time to illustrate these thoughts in a more organized
fashion, but I have 15 things to do all at once yesterday.
Dan
Topic:
APRIL 2000 BOOK -- MRS. DALLOWAY (39 of 49), Read 35 times
Conf:
CLASSICS CORNER
From:
Dottie Randall (randallj@ix.netcom.com)
Date:
Wednesday, April 05, 2000 12:32 PM
Dan -- I see what you are saying -- and will go back and see if I
can locate these myself -- thanks! Yes, I know time is tied to
water often and there are many flower/plant references -- I'm just
glad you got those thoughts of yours down here before you go do
those things yesterday!
Dottie
ID is an oxymoron!
Topic:
APRIL 2000 BOOK -- MRS. DALLOWAY (40 of 49), Read 29 times
Conf:
CLASSICS CORNER
From:
Steve Warbasse (wk4@uswest.net)
Date:
Wednesday, April 05, 2000 03:18 PM
My last two notes were perhaps classic overstatements by Uncle
Steve, Ann. Nonetheless, I am serious when I tell you that this
very question you raise stayed with me as the entire novel
unfolded.
We are told that Peter was continually critical of Clarissa in their
youth as if attempting to change her into someone she was not.
He is still critical of her in his later years. There is even a tinge of
real anger about this. Still on the face of it, the man seems to
have continued to be hopelessly in love with the woman.
Clearly, Clarissa is the realistic one in this context, realizing as she
always has that marriage to Peter Walsh would have led to misery
for them both. Or is she quite wrong about that?
STEVE
Topic:
APRIL 2000 BOOK -- MRS. DALLOWAY (41 of 49), Read 20 times
Conf:
CLASSICS CORNER
From:
Ann Davey (davey@tconl.com)
Date:
Wednesday, April 05, 2000 06:01 PM
Dalloway is a prince of a fellow, Steve, but he can't even manage
to tell his wife he loves her, even when he expressly buys flowers
and goes home to tell her that very thing. He strikes me as
someone who is the best of his type, i.e.the stereotypical public
school Englishman who can't express emotion, but genuinely tries
to use his position in society for the greater good. Apparently, he
is too sincere and not quite clever enough to rise to the highest
ranks of public service, i. e. the Cabinet.
With Peter, Clarissa might at least have broken out of the narrow
mold society had prepared for her and experienced something
fresh and unexpected.
Would she have been happier? Her present position doesn't sound
very appealing --a society hostess, alienated from her daughter
and sleeping in a separate room from her husband so that she can
get enough rest. I would definitely vote for Peter, but then I'm not
Clarissa. English society judged Peter a failure and Richard a
limited success. Society's judgment was important to Clarissa.
She had a lot more life in her as a girl. While Peter and Sally are
together at the party, Peter remembers her as a very sharp girl, a
skeptic, someone who loved life ("it was her nature to enjoy)" and
was amusing ("she had a sense of comedy, that was really
exquisite)." I think it is the young Clarissa who still holds Peter in
thrall thirty years later, the Clarissa with potential, if you will.
I do like the way Woolf alternates between their thoughts in the
scenes involving both Peter and Clarissa. Each of them criticizes
the other, but each character also seems to be able to anticipate
just what the other one is thinking.
I am intrigued that Peter remembers Sally wanting him to carry off
Clarissa when she was young so the Hughs and Dalloways of the
world could not "stifle her soul." Is that somewhat akin to
Bradshaw being "capable of some indescribable outrage--forcing
your soul"?
According to the introduction by Maureen Howard, Woolf
confirmed that Bradshaw's patient Septimus was "intended to be
the double of Mrs. Dalloway." Now that thought opens up all kinds
of possibilities, but I am not so sure I see a strong connection.
What do you all think?
Ann
Topic:
APRIL 2000 BOOK -- MRS. DALLOWAY (42 of 49), Read 21 times
Conf:
CLASSICS CORNER
From:
Kay Dugan (okaychatt@mindspring.com)
Date:
Wednesday, April 05, 2000 06:11 PM
Actually, I think the tree is the "Tree of Life," and each character
finds a different meaning there.
At one point, Peter Walsh is napping, and in his dream, he
"...endows them with womanhood; sees with amazement how
grave they become; how majestically, as the breeze stirs them,
they dispense with a dark flutter of the leaves charity,
comprehension, absolution, and then, flinging themselves suddenly
aloft, confound the piety of their aspect with a wild carouse."
For Peter, Clarissa is embodied in the trees, and serves as an
analogy of his love for her. "So, he thinks, may I never go back to
the lamplight; to the sitting-room; never finish my book, never
knock out my pipe; never ring for Mrs. Turner to clear away;
rather let me walk straight on to this great figure, who will, with a
toss of her head, mount me on her streamers and let me blow to
nothingness with the rest." (pp.85-87 in my edition.)
There are also many references to leaves, which symbolize life,
death, protection for the birds (Clarissa), and the endless plenty
life has to offer.
Septimus also uses the tree/woman analogy as a reflection of his
own relationship with Rezia. "Shuffling the edges straight, she did
up the papers, and tied the parcel almost without looking, sitting
beside him he thought, as if all her petals were about her. She
was a flowering tree; and through her branches looked out the
face of a lawgiver, who had reached a sanctuary where she
feared no one; no Holmes; not Bradshaw; a miracle, a triumph, the
last and greatest."
(pp.224-5)
Clarissa has just awakened, and come downstairs. ".......she felt
like a nun who has left the world and feels fold round her the
familiar veils and the response to old devotions........It was her
life, and, bending her head over the hall table, she bowed beneath
the influence, felt blessed and purified, saying to herself, as she
took the pad with the telephone message on it, how moments like
this are buds on the tree of life, flowers of darkness they are, she
thought (as if some lovely rose had blossomed for her eyes
only);......" pp.42-3
Kay
Topic:
APRIL 2000 BOOK -- MRS. DALLOWAY (43 of 49), Read 21 times
Conf:
CLASSICS CORNER
From:
Kay Dugan (okaychatt@mindspring.com)
Date:
Wednesday, April 05, 2000 07:32 PM
At one point, Clarissa says she did not marry Peter because "....
with Peter everything had to be shared; everything gone into. And
it was intolerable, and when it came to that scene in the little
garden by the fountain, she had to break with him or they would
have been destroyed, both of them ruined, she was
convinced............."
I think Clarissa is thinking that though Life is sometimes over filled,
it is better to just sit back and smell the roses for yourself. She
makes such a statement later in the novel, when considering
people that live in their heads all the time. (I cannot find the
quote.)
Clarissa and Richard have a relationship that seems to flow and
flourish without having to say, "I love you." I agree, though, that
Richard has a problem if he cannot vocalize that to his wife.
Even so, she accepts the roses and thinks that they don't need to
take their love apart to understand it. It just "is." Life just "is."
I think the roses throughout the book symbolize the best of Life,
and the constantly flowing inter connections that occur each day.
That is why she says she can handle cutting any flower, except
for the rose.
Do you all agree with Sally and Peter regarding Clarissa's choice of
marrying Richard, and becoming the socialite? I think she is much
more than that. Is it possible they don't know her as well as they
think they do?
Clarissa has the art of living life as it comes - in a constant
stream, and not as a cluster of analyzable parts.
Kay
Topic:
APRIL 2000 BOOK -- MRS. DALLOWAY (44 of 49), Read 18 times
Conf:
CLASSICS CORNER
From:
Daniel LeBoeuf (dan1066@yahoo.com)
Date:
Wednesday, April 05, 2000 07:54 PM
Here are the quotes I was searching for concerning this
interconnected "tree" imagery:
Did it matter then, she asked herself, walking towards Bond
Street, did it matter that she must inevitably cease completely;
all this must go on without her; did she resent it; or did it not
become consoling to believe that death ended absolutely? but
that somehow in the streets of London, on the ebb and flow of
things, here, there, she survived, Peter survived, lived in each
other, she being part, she was positive, of the trees at home; of
the house there ugly, rambling all to bits and pieces as it was;
part of people she had never met; being laid out like a mist
between the people she knew best, who lifted her on their
branches as she had seen the trees lift the mist, but it spread
ever so far, her life, herself.
Besides being a heck of a sentence, this is quite a bit of
information for page 12 of the novel. Notice she chooses Peter
"surviving" and not Richard--this is before she even realizes he is,
in fact, present in this very city. Also, there is the recurring motif
of the "mist" permeating everything, a mist which the sharp points
of London tries unsuccessfully to dispel later. This is much akin to
that swamp grass swaying in the rippled water.
Also, notice Clarissa's thoughts of death--"or did it not become
consoling to believe that death ended absolutely?"-- a thought
which could very well persuade someone to commit suicide if they
were unhappy enough.
I agree: There is much akin between Septimus and Clarissa. I don't
find Clarissa the slightest bit enviable--she is not the picture of
economy and sagacity that appears on the surface of this novel. I
think she made a mistake not accepting her love for Peter, but she
decides to forge ahead with society gatherings to mask the
feelings of regret, of loneliness, which punctuate her day.
And one final note: Concerning Bradshaw. Realize Clarissa's "only
gift:"
Her only gift was knowing people almost by instinct, she thought,
walking on. If you put her in a room with some one, up went her
back like a cat's; or she purred.
Evidently, with Bradshaw, "up went her back."
Dan
Topic:
APRIL 2000 BOOK -- MRS. DALLOWAY (45 of 49), Read 16 times
Conf:
CLASSICS CORNER
From:
Ernest Belden (drernest@juno.com)
Date:
Wednesday, April 05, 2000 09:36 PM
I just got started on this book a few nights ago and keep on
comparing style and flow of association with Joyce. I find her flow
of association easier to follow than Joyce's. The thread above
makes it easier for me to follow. I still am reminded of artistic
impressionism which was quite prominent at that time. Interesting
to see this art form in literature. Of course I am a bit puzzled why
impressionism became prominent in literature as well.
I am afraid I have to agree that one must read paragraphs and
perhaps the whole book over certainly more than once to get a full
understanding. But even a superficial reading gives you a feeling
tone and your own inner associations which may keep one
occupied.
Can't wait to read about this famous psychiatrist that was
mentioned by others. Does he fit the pattern of any that I have
met or worked with - the good and the bad?
Ernie
Topic:
APRIL 2000 BOOK -- MRS. DALLOWAY (46 of 49), Read 11 times
Conf:
CLASSICS CORNER
From:
Ann Davey (davey@tconl.com)
Date:
Wednesday, April 05, 2000 10:57 PM
Kay, I'm so glad you joined us. Thanks for pulling together all the
tree quotes. It made it much easier to appreciate the symbolism.
I also enjoyed reading your perspective on Clarissa and her
relationship with Peter and Richard. She obviously felt threatened
by Peter, even concluding that they would "destroyed" and
"ruined" if they ended up together. Richard was the safe choice.
Dan, the section you quoted is a perfect example of the beautiful
writing that makes this book worthwhile for me, in spite of its
difficulty. And you are so right about Clarissa's thoughts about
death. In fact, throughout the book, the characters seem to be
pulled between choosing to enjoy life or surrendering to the peace
of death . Septimus and Clarissa feel it, and there is a section
about Peter resting in the park which makes me think he feels the
attraction of death as well.
He daydreams about a solitary traveller who sees a figure "made
up of sky and branches" which "had risen from the troubled sea
(he is elderly, past fifty now) as a shape might be sucked up out
of the waves to shower down from her magnificent hands
compassion, comprehension absolution. So, he thinks, may I
never go back to the lamplight; to the sitting room; never finish
my book; never knock out my pipe; never ring for Mrs. Turner to
clear away; rather let me walk straight on to this great figure,
who will, with a toss of her head, mount me on her streamers
and let me blow to nothingness with the rest."
Right after this section, he wakes up saying "The death of the
soul." Immediately he thinks of an incident in the past involving
Clarissa, which he saw as signaling "the death of her soul." They
are discussing a housemaid married to well-born neighbor. Upon
being informed that the housemaid bore him a child before
marriage, Clarissa announces she will never be able to speak to
her again.
Hm, I wonder if Woolf thinks Clarissa's soul is already dead
because of the life she has chosen, even though her body lives
on. What do you think?
Ernie, I find Woolf's style difficult as well. I reread the first chapter
and it was easier to follow the characters' stream of
consciousness the second time around because I was at least
familiar with the people they were thinking about. Woolf more or
less plops us down inside their minds without any preparation.
Even so, there were still long passages I had to read more than
once. If there weren't for those many passage of startling beauty,
I might have given up.
Ann, one of the "elderly" over 50 crowd
Topic:
APRIL 2000 BOOK -- MRS. DALLOWAY (47 of 49), Read 11 times
Conf:
CLASSICS CORNER
From:
Dottie Randall (randallj@ix.netcom.com)
Date:
Thursday, April 06, 2000 02:52 AM
Ann -- You have chapters? I have just one long story with no
chapter breaks. I am having this funny, disconnected feeling of --
the more I read, the less I know I have read!
So -- I think I might just set out at the beginning again -- in the
Financial Times review of The Hours it is suggested that one
should read The Hours, then read Mrs. Dalloway and then come
back to The Hours -- maybe I will do it the other way around and
finish The Hours which I started a couple days ago before
rereading Mrs. Dalloway.
Dottie
ID is an oxymoron!
Topic:
APRIL 2000 BOOK -- MRS. DALLOWAY (48 of 49), Read 6 times
Conf:
CLASSICS CORNER
From:
Kay Dugan (okaychatt@mindspring.com)
Date:
Thursday, April 06, 2000 07:13 AM
Would you find Clarissa's soul to be "dead?" I think she is very
much alive. She has chosen to live more in a state of simply
"being," more than a state of "tearing things apart," as Sally,
Peter, and perhaps Woolf prefer.
She recognizes this choice she has made, and makes an allowance
for the possibility of change in herself. "Every time she gave a
party she had this feeling of being something not herself, and that
every one was unreal in one way; much more real in another. It
was, she thought, partly their clothes,partly being taken out of
their ordinary way,s partly the background, it was possible to say
things you couldn't say anyhow else, things that needed an effort;
possible to go much deeper. But not for her; not yet anyhow."
Clarissa is not content with "pulling things apart." She lives Life as
a whole, and looks to other people and things to complete the
whole of her soul. After riding on top of an omnibus, she says,
".......she felt herself everywhere; not 'here,here, here;' and she
tapped the back of the seat; but everywhere........So that to
know her, or any one, one must seek out the people who
completed them; even the places."
Perhaps Clarissa is not as shallow as Sally and Peter see her. She
has a considered reason for living her life as she does, and for
choosing Richard over Peter. Richard completed her.
This desire to "complete" Life is tied up with Clarissa's love of
giving parties. Part of her motivation is to bring people together,
to connect them.
Perhaps part of her attraction for the deep thinkers (Sally and
Peter) who disdain her choices is her ability to appreciate the
immediate moment. Clarissa completes them.
Kay
Topic:
APRIL 2000 BOOK -- MRS. DALLOWAY (49 of 49), Read 7 times
Conf:
CLASSICS CORNER
From:
Kay Dugan (okaychatt@mindspring.com)
Date:
Thursday, April 06, 2000 07:24 AM
What's the symbolism of Peter's knife? Every time he thinks of or
talks about Clarissa, out it comes. Everyone seems to accept and
understand its appearance. Is it self defense? An attack? A
penchant for cutting to the core of issues? A means of severing
connectedness?
I was also confused about the billowing yellow curtains at the
party. At first, they seemed to signify a threat and later a
resolution.
Kay
Topic:
APRIL 2000 BOOK -- MRS. DALLOWAY (50 of 66), Read 25 times
Conf:
CLASSICS CORNER
From:
Steve Warbasse (wk4@uswest.net)
Date:
Thursday, April 06, 2000 09:09 AM
I must shift my ground a little. The reasons for Peter's love of
Clarissa is not the central question here. After all, there is nothing
logical about that emotion anyway.
The central question has bubbled up in these great notes that
have been posted recently. Has Clarissa's soul been stifled as a
result of her choice of Richard as Sally feared it would be way
back when? Ann presents evidence for one answer to this
question and Kay for another. I suppose the answer is neither a
clear yes or a clear no. However, I have to wonder about a
woman who finds her identity as a society hostess and who
attaches such great importance to these parties. It seems to me
rather sad when the import of one's life is determined by whether
the Prime Minister shows up or not.
STEVE
Topic:
APRIL 2000 BOOK -- MRS. DALLOWAY (51 of 66), Read 34 times
Conf:
CLASSICS CORNER
From:
Ann Davey (davey@tconl.com)
Date:
Thursday, April 06, 2000 09:24 AM
Dottie,
I lied. My edition, a paperback from Harcourt, Brace & Company,
does not have chapters.
Kay, I like the fact that you view Clarissa so much more positively
than I do. It forces me to reconsider my own ideas.
Clarissa's main achievement in life is being a society hostess.
Although personal relationships are important to me, I dislike large
parties. That undoubtedly colors my judgment.
To me, Clarissa's life seems empty. Note that the book is not
called "Clarissa", but "Mrs. Dalloway." She is defined by her
relationship to her husband. It was, of course, another era, and
perhaps I am being too hard on her, but there were women, like
Woolf herself, who did much more to develop an independent life.
What do you think of her treatment of the poor cousin at her
party? I thought it showed a certain cruelty.
Peter's penchant for playing with his knife during every
conversation is certainly an odd habit. If I had to choose, I would
say that it symbolized his willingness to cut into complacency and
satisfaction with the status quo.
Steve, yes, it is impossible to rationalize love. The heart has its
reasons, etc. etc.
Ann, who really should be preparing for the invasion of her son's
soccer team for dinner, but who is, after all, a very bad hostess.
Topic:
APRIL 2000 BOOK -- MRS. DALLOWAY (52 of 66), Read 33 times
Conf:
CLASSICS CORNER
From:
Dale Short (dshort5005@aol.com)
Date:
Thursday, April 06, 2000 09:33 AM
Folks: Wonderful, wonderful notes. I know I'll be reading this
thread more than once.
Ernie: I like your idea that Woolf has the ambitiousness and range
of Joyce, but much easier to follow. Still not easy, though, for me.
Woolf demands my 100% attention to stay on board her train of
thought, and I've found that if I attempt her after just a glass of
Chardonnay, the connection is severed. And for me, going
wineless for the sake of a writer is the highest possible
tribute.{G}
>>Dale in Ala.
Topic:
APRIL 2000 BOOK -- MRS. DALLOWAY (53 of 66), Read 33 times
Conf:
CLASSICS CORNER
From:
Daniel LeBoeuf (dan1066@yahoo.com)
Date:
Thursday, April 06, 2000 10:25 AM
Actually Ernie, Mrs. Dalloway follows Joyce's story "The Dead"
before anything else. In that story, we have a social gathering
and in the end the main character achieves an epiphany while
watching the snow fall. It is a resignation that also pervades Mrs.
Dalloway. Woolf is careful to separate her characters and the
narrative guide is extremely cordial when it comes to
differentiating character thoughts.
In fact, as odd as it sounds, I couldn't get a grip on this novel
until I slowed my reading pace way down and relaxed, pausing
significantly at commas, more significantly at semi-colons, and
took almost 10 seconds at colons and periods. It clarified the
poetry at work. This novel is no quick read. As Dale stated, it
takes 100% concentration or you'll miss it.
As for Clarissa, she is an embodiment of the death of the soul.
Sure, she daydreams atop the omnibus that she is "connected"
and "connecting," but face it action speaks louder than thoughts.
On rereading the text, I notice Woolf does often have character
thoughts not matching character actions or impressions. Peter is
getting on in years, he isn't the "buccaneer" he pretends to be
when he follows the strange lady. He's deluding himself. Clarissa
is, as Ann said above, "dead in the soul" and is only an appendage
to her husband, a "Mrs. Dalloway." Clarissa thinks she welcomes
everyone equally, but in reality she is being a snob for most of the
party.
Again, I'll mention the rich symbolism in this novel. Woolf does not
gather metaphors at random--she ties her symbolism tightly using
a few powerful ones drawn from the fields of botany and
hydrology. She is able to weave these symbols into the text, into
the action, without it really being intrusive. As a reader, I never
felt: "Oh right, FLOWERS everybody--the character is holding
FLOWERS, thinking about FLOWERS, and his actions are being
described using FLOWERS."
Dan
Topic:
APRIL 2000 BOOK -- MRS. DALLOWAY (54 of 66), Read 31 times
Conf:
CLASSICS CORNER
From:
R Bavetta (rbavetta@prodigy.net)
Date:
Thursday, April 06, 2000 10:55 AM
I have to admit I'm flagging on this, may not make it into the final
round. I loved the film, but I feel like I'm going down for the third
time about 3/4 through the novel. As for Clarissa---can't stand
the woman. Passive aggressive in spades. Actually, I'm wondering
if the whole book isn't passive aggressive.
Ruth, feeling sour this morning
Topic:
APRIL 2000 BOOK -- MRS. DALLOWAY (55 of 66), Read 34 times
Conf:
CLASSICS CORNER
From:
Steve Warbasse (wk4@uswest.net)
Date:
Thursday, April 06, 2000 11:40 AM
Okay, okay, Dan. Botany and hydrology for sure.
You sent me to the dictionary with "hydrology." I previously
thought that referred to a method of growing killer marijuana,
another substance in addition to Chardonnay that does not work
at all well with Mrs. Dalloway.
To see Ann finally caught in a lie here has made my day.
STEVE
Topic:
APRIL 2000 BOOK -- MRS. DALLOWAY (56 of 66), Read 28 times
Conf:
CLASSICS CORNER
From:
Dale Short (dshort5005@aol.com)
Date:
Thursday, April 06, 2000 11:52 AM
Consigliere: Were you thinking, maybe, "hydroponics"?
(And do you know of a practitioner of this trade, in connection
with that botanical variety you mention, who does mail order? {G}
>>Dale in Ala.
Topic:
APRIL 2000 BOOK -- MRS. DALLOWAY (57 of 66), Read 29 times
Conf:
CLASSICS CORNER
From:
Dale Short (dshort5005@aol.com)
Date:
Thursday, April 06, 2000 12:20 PM
One more afterthought on MRS. DALLOWAY...
I think one reason this book continues to be relevant and
intriguing (above and beyond its amazing use of language, and
regardless of how the reader feels personally about certain
characters) is how cleanly it cuts to the center of one of our
chief human dilemmas.
There's a supposed (maybe apocryphal, but still) ancient Chinese
curse that goes, "May you live in interesting times."
Every day, every one of us makes numerous choices that circle
around just this question. Do we choose the "interesting" and
"educational" result, or the "logical" and "sensible" one? Each day
we age, I think, we tend more toward the latter than the former,
if only to conserve the eroding energy of our heart against the
inevitable slings and arrows of mortality we know are shortly to
follow.
MRS. DALLOWAY shows the result of making that choice at a
relatively young age, and brings to mind one of my favorite
contemporary American philosophers, songwriter Don Henley, who
once said, "Every form of refuge has its price."
I submit that truer words about the human condition have never
been spoken.
>>Dale in Ala.
Topic:
APRIL 2000 BOOK -- MRS. DALLOWAY (58 of 66), Read 25 times
Conf:
CLASSICS CORNER
From:
Kay Dugan (okaychatt@mindspring.com)
Date:
Thursday, April 06, 2000 02:50 PM
Dale-
Having reached those grand and glorious middle aged years, I find
myself freed to make whatever choices I please. I could identify
with Clarissa and Peter when they looked back on how much they
have experienced, if not learned.
Are we meant to simply accept Peter and Sally's judgement of
Clarissa's dead soul? I am not convinced that Woolf was writing
her off quite that neatly. I think Clarissa represents a vibrant part
of Woolf's own personality.
Peter certainly does not have what I would call a rich life, filled
with meaningful relationships. Of Clarissa, Peter, and Sally, I'd
have to say Sally has come the closest to living both an
intellectual and an immediate kind of life. She is the one I'd like to
spend some time with.
I don't see much intellectual depth to Clarissa, but I would not
describe her as a dead soul. At least she has spent some time
pondering the interconnectedness of life. Yes, she is petty and
mean at times, no question. However, she does know how to take
joy in a beautiful moment. That is not a symptom of a dead soul.
Hugh, on the other hand, is a dead soul, as he has neither an
inquisitive mind or meaningful emotional relationships with others.
He is oblivious to the constant motion of the world. Nor does he
spend time trying to make sense of life.
Kay, who is trying to make sense, period.
Topic:
APRIL 2000 BOOK -- MRS. DALLOWAY (59 of 66), Read 28 times
Conf:
CLASSICS CORNER
From:
Steve Warbasse (wk4@uswest.net)
Date:
Thursday, April 06, 2000 03:13 PM
While we are waiting for Dale, Kay, I wished to interject that my
earlier note was not intended to convey an uncritical acceptance
of Peter and Sally's assessment of Clarissa. There is not a thing
you have written here that I adamantly disagree with. Moreover, I
ask myself if this is a woman with a dead soul, why do I like her so
much?
The dead soul in this novel clearly belongs to Ms. Kilmer, and the
soul in the balance belongs to Elizabeth.
STEVE
Topic:
APRIL 2000 BOOK -- MRS. DALLOWAY (60 of 66), Read 38 times
Conf:
CLASSICS CORNER
From:
Dale Short (dshort5005@aol.com)
Date:
Thursday, April 06, 2000 03:27 PM
Kay: Woh! Your thoughtful and food-ful post raises many more
questions for me on this already rich food-for-thought thread.
The first reference that comes to mind, for me, is some
philosopher's contention that "the unexamined life is not worth
living," and a later critic's corrollary that "the over-examined life is
not capable of being lived."
It seems to me that all the characters in MRS. DALLOWAY (and
for that matter, its readers) fall between those two extremes.
I agree that Clarissa "doesn't have much intellectual depth," "has
[unlke Hugh] spent some time pondering the interconnectedness
of life." But I totally agree with your description that she "is petty
and mean at times, but does know how to take joy in a beautiful
moment." To (probably) misquote Shakespeare, I say "'tis a
consummation devoutly to be wish'd..."
Clarissa is, as are all the other characters to me, a real human
being. Love 'em or hate 'em, we have to give these folks their due
for merely surviving. And one of the supreme ironies of the human
condition is that we often fall helplessly in love with one we
"hate," on the logical plane. And, vice-versa.
I also agree that Hugh is "oblivious to the constant motion of the
world," and "does not spend time trying to make sense of life."
Which, for me, brings us back to the millennia-old question of the
two poles that sentient beings must choose from: to dwell in the
immediate sensory experience, like one of our pets, or to have the
benefit (?) of foresight and prepare for our (temporal, at least)
decline and ruin not too far down the road, and deal with same in
our every action. I firmly believe there is also a third path, which
is to be sacred and holy and perceptive enough to choose the
Third Way. I try and try, but I haven't gotten there yet.
>>Dale in Ala., temporarily stuck (I hope) between Way #1 and
Way #2
Topic:
APRIL 2000 BOOK -- MRS. DALLOWAY (61 of 66), Read 32 times
Conf:
CLASSICS CORNER
From:
Steve Warbasse (wk4@uswest.net)
Date:
Thursday, April 06, 2000 03:43 PM
We can't consider Hugh a total zero, folks. I am sure all those
letters he wrote to the Times made gripping reading.
STEVE
Topic:
APRIL 2000 BOOK -- MRS. DALLOWAY (62 of 66), Read 29 times
Conf:
CLASSICS CORNER
From:
R Bavetta (rbavetta@prodigy.net)
Date:
Thursday, April 06, 2000 05:21 PM
I'm over my snit and back into the book. Chalk it up to the
migraine, which is now fading.
Ruth
Topic:
APRIL 2000 BOOK -- MRS. DALLOWAY (63 of 66), Read 18 times
Conf:
CLASSICS CORNER
From:
Kay Dugan (okaychatt@mindspring.com)
Date:
Thursday, April 06, 2000 07:01 PM
I had wondered why we do not hear much from Elizabeth, and
Dale has answered my question.
She does represent the soul in the balance. She has not yet been
typecast as a poplar or a hyacinth. She has, however, already
opted out of a deadening friendship with Miss Kilman. That was a
blow for independence, and her right to live life on her own terms.
Clarissa had a similar decision to make. Had she married Peter, she
would have been expected to measure up to his definition of what
constitutes a worthwhile existence. By marrying Richard, she was
allowed to just "be." I understand her choice.
Kay
Topic:
APRIL 2000 BOOK -- MRS. DALLOWAY (64 of 66), Read 10 times
Conf:
CLASSICS CORNER
From:
Ann Davey (davey@tconl.com)
Date:
Thursday, April 06, 2000 08:10 PM
Dale, you make me think. When I was in my twenties I took risks.
Nowadays, I almost always choose the safe path. So, why do I
criticize Clarissa for my own faults?
Steve, I think we must grant Miss Kilmer a bit of slack. Hers is a
very difficult life. Woolf writes of:
the infliction of her unlovable body which people could not bear to
see. Do her hair as she might, her forehead remained like an egg,
bald, white. No clothes suited her. She might buy anything. And
for a woman, of course, that meant never meeting the opposite
sex. Never would she come first with any one. Sometimes lately
it had seemed to her that, except for Elizabeth, her food was all
that she lived for; her comforts; her dinner, her tea; her
hot-water bottle at night.
Life is unfair. No wonder her soul is dead.
Kay, does Clarissa appeal to her because you see her as a woman
who put family first? Just wondering.
Ann
Topic:
APRIL 2000 BOOK -- MRS. DALLOWAY (65 of 66), Read 7 times
Conf:
CLASSICS CORNER
From:
Kay Dugan (okaychatt@mindspring.com)
Date:
Thursday, April 06, 2000 08:57 PM
Ann-
I felt a need to defend Clarissa, mainly because I thought the
"dead soul" declarations were unfair and inaccurate. She deserved
more recognition and appreciation than that. I was not
considering her in her role as wife and mother. I saw her as an
individual.
I often find myself living more in my head than in the moment.
When I can catch myself at it, I try to step outside the box, and
look for the Clarissa moments. As a child, I was rewarded for
academic achievements. Emotional highs and lows weren't really
allowed. That may be why I rushed to Clarissa's defense. Those
emotional excursions are important as a counterbalance for purely
intellectual pursuits.
I hadn't thought about why I felt such a strong a need to defend
Clarissa. Good pick up, Ann.
Kay
Topic:
APRIL 2000 BOOK -- MRS. DALLOWAY (66 of 66), Read 5 times
Conf:
CLASSICS CORNER
From:
Steve Warbasse (wk4@uswest.net)
Date:
Thursday, April 06, 2000 10:07 PM
Ann, certainly with regard to the Kilmers of the world, we can
recognize that life has been difficult if not impossible for them. We
can try to imagine. We can sympathize from afar. We can even
cut them some slack, as you say. However, we must keep
ourselves and those we love disentangled from them at all costs.
Write that down. It's important. You can return the favor
sometime.
STEVE
Topic:
APRIL 2000 BOOK -- MRS. DALLOWAY (67 of 71), Read 28 times
Conf:
CLASSICS CORNER
From:
R Bavetta (rbavetta@prodigy.net)
Date:
Friday, April 07, 2000 12:51 AM
Amen, Steve.
Now that I'm over my snit and back into the book, I'll say that
what I'm enjoying most are the descriptions of the day, the
weather, the curtains billowing in the wind, etc. Beautiful visuals.
Ruth, who's beginning to think Clarissa is like Oakland--there's no
there there.
Topic:
APRIL 2000 BOOK -- MRS. DALLOWAY (68 of 71), Read 25 times
Conf:
CLASSICS CORNER
From:
Kay Dugan (okaychatt@mindspring.com)
Date:
Friday, April 07, 2000 04:45 AM
Ruth-
I also delighted in the sense of movement by being able to flow
from one character's mind to the next. It was if they were all
playing "tag."
Kay
Topic:
APRIL 2000 BOOK -- MRS. DALLOWAY (69 of 71), Read 21 times
Conf:
CLASSICS CORNER
From:
Steve Warbasse (wk4@uswest.net)
Date:
Friday, April 07, 2000 08:27 AM
On a slightly different note one of the interesting things about this
novel for me is how much depth the author creates in so short a
work. A portrait of an entire society is rendered so quickly. There
may be as many characters in this as there is in War and Peace.
For example in the Regent's Park scene, we get a quick little
vignette about Maisie Johnson, nineteen and newly arrived from
Edinburgh, who encounters Septimus talking to himself and a
frantic Rezia and becomes horrified by the strangeness of the big
city. Then we move seamlessly to Mrs. Dempster's reaction to the
sight of Maisie, which results in her reflecting on her difficult life
with Percy, who drank. (She mentally asks pity of Maisie for the
loss of roses as she stands by the hyacinth beds, Dan.) The
author captures so much in so few words about these minor
characters.
What the heck was the airplane trying to spell?
STEVE
Topic:
APRIL 2000 BOOK -- MRS. DALLOWAY (70 of 71), Read 7 times
Conf:
CLASSICS CORNER
From:
Ann Davey (davey@tconl.com)
Date:
Friday, April 07, 2000 09:54 AM
Kay,
I posed the question about Clarissa's soul being dead, based on
Peter's comments about the death of her soul. However, I agree
with you that it is too strong an accusation.
I could have done with far less emotion in my own childhood, but
for some reason I am always attracted to emotional and rebellious
characters in novels, where they are safely confined to the pages
of a book. Peter represents adventure to me, and Clarissa the loss
of potential and opportunity. Whether this is what the author
intended or not, I couldn't say.
Differences in opinion are what make these discussions fun, and I
am delighted that you have done such an excellent job of
defending another point of view.
Steve and Ruth, I fully agree with you about Miss Kilmer. What the
heck was Elizabeth doing with her? She seems like the kind of
character a teenager would avoid at all costs.
Ann
Topic:
APRIL 2000 BOOK -- MRS. DALLOWAY (71 of 71), Read 7 times
Conf:
CLASSICS CORNER
From:
Kay Dugan (okaychatt@mindspring.com)
Date:
Friday, April 07, 2000 09:54 AM
Steve-
I wondered the same thing. Could it be that each person saw only
what he was capable of seeing? Each envisioned something
different in the same moment, from the same stimulus. Thus, they
were connected to each other, though living very separate lives.
Just when someone came up with a theory as to what the plane
was spelling, someone else proferred another.
The meaning of life is real, but it teases us, and eludes our
continual search.
What do you make of Rezia's lament that follows the airplane?
"There was nobody. Her words faded. (Like the letters from the
airplane?) So a rocket fades. Its sparks, having grazed their way
into the night, surrender to it, dark descends, pours over the
outlines of houses and towers; bleak hillsides soften and fall in.
But though they are gone, the night is full of them; robbed of
colour, blank of windows, they exist more ponderously, give out
what the frank daylight fails to transmit - the trouble and
suspense of things conglomerated there in the darkness; huddled
together in the darkness; reft of the relief which dawn brings
when, washing the wall white and grey, spotting each
windowpane, lifting the mist from the fields, showing the
red-brown cows peacefully grazing, all is one more decked out to
the eye; exists again."
Kay
"The pleasure of all reading is doubled when one lives with another
who shares the same books." Katherine Mansfield
Topic:
APRIL 2000 BOOK -- MRS. DALLOWAY (72 of 82), Read 23 times
Conf:
CLASSICS CORNER
From:
David Moody (davidmoody@prodigy.net)
Date:
Friday, April 07, 2000 10:15 AM
Kay, I think the differences in people's perceptions is a large part
of the novel. For instance, several times after describing the
interaction between Septimus and Reiza, Woolf will suddenly flash
to someone else's point of view--which will be a completely
different interpretation of what is going on. Or consider the
differing diagnoses of Drs. Holmes and Bradshaw, neither of which
really describes Septimus' problems.
David
Topic:
APRIL 2000 BOOK -- MRS. DALLOWAY (73 of 82), Read 21 times
Conf:
CLASSICS CORNER
From:
Pres Lancaster (plancast@slip.net)
Date:
Friday, April 07, 2000 11:56 AM
I ask this question sincerely:
What do you think the author means when she uses the term
"dead soul" ?
And what do you mean when you use the term ? Would you use it,
have you used it, in your everyday life ?
Pres
Topic:
APRIL 2000 BOOK -- MRS. DALLOWAY (74 of 82), Read 19 times
Conf:
CLASSICS CORNER
From:
Daniel LeBoeuf (dan1066@yahoo.com)
Date:
Friday, April 07, 2000 01:46 PM
Fascinating ongoing discussion about that airplane and its
mysterious writing. I concur that it had something to do with
different people's views and opinions. Perhaps--and I'm thinking
this off the top of my head--the plane represents life's story
written in such a manner as to preclude a definite interpretation.
The people watching the airplane cannot even decipher the word
the plane was attempting to spell, much less any connotations of
that word.
Like people and their perceptions of Septimus in the park. They all
see the same concrete fact, but they all tend to see it differently,
filtered by their own prejudices and perspectives. A similar
occurrence is the mysterious black car which parades down the
street leaving a wash of people guessing and demanding to know
who is the famous person within.
Looking at my paragraphs above, this cements Woolf's use of
peripheral characters like Maisie and Dempster: To fully appreciate
the multiple facets of the lives of Septimus, Clarissa, and Peter,
one must also step into the mind of a complete stranger. Sure the
stranger may be wrong--Peter assumes Septimus and his wife are
having a lover's quarrel--but their errors can be very enlightening.
Pres: I hate to dive into this, but when I use the term "dead soul"
I mean a person whose creativity, inspiration, and spontaneity
have dried up or withered. Such a person lives life on a rail to the
grave. Granted, now a definitive answer, but one nonetheless.
Dan
Topic:
APRIL 2000 BOOK -- MRS. DALLOWAY (75 of 82), Read 20 times
Conf:
CLASSICS CORNER
From:
Kay Dugan (okaychatt@mindspring.com)
Date:
Friday, April 07, 2000 01:57 PM
Pres-
I'm going to hedge a bit here. The first time Woolf uses the
phrase, "death of the soul," is right after Clarissa declares she will
never again be able to speak to the couple who had the baby
before marriage.
Peter is so outraged at her manner that he labels it "timid; hard;
something arrogant; unimaginative; prudish. 'The death of the
soul.' He had said that instinctively, ticketing the moment as he
used to do - the death of her soul."
From that, I think Woolf meant that any kind of unexplored
conventional life is unacceptable. Anyone that lives by the rules,
without serious examination of those rules, is living with a dead
soul. Hugh is a good example.
I have not used the term, "dead soul." If I did, I would mean
someone living without a clue to others' feelings, motivations, and
perspective. "Dead soul" would include those that accept life
without questioning. I would also use "dead soul" to describe those
that seem to have chosen Evil as their traveling companion. The
above conditions would not have to co-exist for a person to be
labeled such.
Perhaps this is why I have defended Clarissa. My definition of
"dead soul" differs from Woolf's.
Kay
"The pleasure of all reading is doubled when one lives with another
who shares the same books." Katherine Mansfield
Topic:
APRIL 2000 BOOK -- MRS. DALLOWAY (76 of 82), Read 18 times
Conf:
CLASSICS CORNER
From:
Kay Dugan (okaychatt@mindspring.com)
Date:
Friday, April 07, 2000 02:02 PM
Dan-
What tickled me about the car scene was that, as intrigued as
they all were with who it was, as soon as the sky writing started,
they were distracted, and completely missed the car entering the
gates. We are easily distracted and often miss the opportunity to
nail down a fact.
Kay
"The pleasure of all reading is doubled when one lives with another
who shares the same books." Katherine Mansfield
Topic:
APRIL 2000 BOOK -- MRS. DALLOWAY (77 of 82), Read 17 times
Conf:
CLASSICS CORNER
From:
Dale Short (dshort5005@aol.com)
Date:
Friday, April 07, 2000 02:51 PM
Another thing that might be at work in the Peter/Clarissa equation,
it occurs to me, is "the one that got away" syndrome. His
memories of the person Clarissa is are just those: memories. And
they're completely unsullied by the day-to-day business of living
with her. Hard for a flesh-and-blood figure to measure up.
>>Dale in Ala.
Topic:
APRIL 2000 BOOK -- MRS. DALLOWAY (78 of 82), Read 18 times
Conf:
CLASSICS CORNER
From:
Dale Short (dshort5005@aol.com)
Date:
Friday, April 07, 2000 04:16 PM
Of the countless gorgeous passages in MRS. DALLOWAY, this is
one that really stays with me:
"I had meant to have dancing," said Clarissa.
For the young people could not talk. And why should they? Shout,
embrace, swing, be up at dawn; carry sugar to ponies; kiss and
caress the snouts of adorable chows; and then all tingling and
streaming, plunge and swim.
But the enormous resources of the English language, the power it
bestows, after all, of communicating feelings (at their age, she
and Peter would have been arguing all the evening), was not for
them. They would solidify young. They would be good beyond
measure to the people on the estate, but alone, perhaps, rather
dull.
"What a pity!" she said. "I had hoped to have dancing."
***
Question: to what extent, if at all, do you guys think Clarissa was
self-aware of the degree to which she herself had "solidified
young"?
>>Dale in Ala.
Topic:
APRIL 2000 BOOK -- MRS. DALLOWAY (79 of 82), Read 14 times
Conf:
CLASSICS CORNER
From:
Kay Dugan (okaychatt@mindspring.com)
Date:
Friday, April 07, 2000 07:59 PM
Dale-
I think Clarissa is aware that others see her as having solidified
young. She questions her own life decisions, and still comes down
on the side of living with her heart over her head. "What she liked
was simply life." "But suppose Peter said to her, 'Yes,yes, but your
parties-what's the sense of your parties?' all she could say was
(and nobody could be expected to understand): They're an
offering; ...."
She knows it is possible to go deeper in life. "But not for her; not
yet anyhow."
After introducing the Prime Minister, she thinks, ".......for, though
she loved it and felt it tingle and sting, still these semblances,
these triumphs (dear old Peter, for example, thinking her so
brilliant), had a hollowness; at arm's length they were, not in the
heart; and it might be that she was growing old but they satisfied
her no longer as they used......"
Clarissa recognizes her early solidification, but is still pleased with
her life as a whole.
When she hears the news of Septimus' death, she is at first angry
and frightened that he would take his life. Then she realizes
"...she did not pity him, with all this going on.......Fear no more
the heat of the sun. ....She felt somehow very like him-the young
man who had killed himself. She felt glad that he had done it;
thrown it away....He made her feel the beauty; made her feel the
fun."
Was Clarissa aware others saw her as solidified young? Yes. Did
she care? No. Will she change? Probably not. But she will die
having loved her life.
For all their talk of not being dead souls, what have Sally and
Peter accomplished in life? Sally has both her mental curiosity and
seems quite happy with her five boys. I think that though she
bemoans Clarissa's lack of intellectual curiosity, she understands
why Clarissa made the choices she has.
Peter, however, hasn't made any kind of lasting mark in the world.
All he can do is mourn his loss of Clarissa. That loss will continue
to haunt him and color any relationships he will have. He is lonely
and living in the past. I think Clarissa was right. When you're down
and out, it's the people that love you and the beauty of the world
that make the difference. Intellectual pursuits keep life interesting,
but take second place to affairs of the heart.
Kay, who is trying hard not to be a Pollyanna.
Topic:
APRIL 2000 BOOK -- MRS. DALLOWAY (80 of 82), Read 3 times
Conf:
CLASSICS CORNER
From:
R Bavetta (rbavetta@prodigy.net)
Date:
Friday, April 07, 2000 09:12 PM
Dead soul is not a term I would ever use. But I construe it as
meaning someone who cannot extend beyond the immediate, who
doesn't examine the given, who can only live their own life (and
that not fully) and has no hope of experiencing life through any
kind of vicarious or empathetic viewpoint. Clarissa fits the bill. And
it's what I meant when I said she was like Oakland, no there
there. She is all surface. Yes, she enjoys the present, the now,
the look of things, but that's as far as it goes.
Ruth
Topic:
APRIL 2000 BOOK -- MRS. DALLOWAY (81 of 82), Read 8 times
Conf:
CLASSICS CORNER
From:
Steve Warbasse (wk4@uswest.net)
Date:
Friday, April 07, 2000 09:24 PM
Kay, as to your question to me concerning that passage
quoted in yours of 9:54 AM:
Perhaps like the airplanes letters, but explicitly like a rocket fading.
I made this passage to be a very poetic description of the falling
night of Rezia's loneliness as Septimus departs into complete
madness. Just before this passage she was thinking of her own
place and her own people in Italy, "not half alive like people here"
in London.
Far be it from me to criticize Virginia, but I wish she had left out
the phrase that begins "reft. . . ." She wanted to contrast daytime
with the "trouble and suspense of things conglomerated" in the
night. It seems to me to just muddle up the metaphor. Actually,
the rest of that same paragraph that you did not quote is
fantastic.
Now, as to yours of 7:59 PM:
I was right with you up to this point:
"I think Clarissa was right. When you're down and out, it's the
people that love you and the beauty of the world that make the
difference. Intellectual pursuits keep life interesting, but take
second place to affairs of the heart."
While I would go along with you on the point that Clarissa has an
appreciation for the beauty of the world, you lost me on the rest
of this. Isn't the whole point here that Clarissa has nobody who
loves her except Peter. Furthermore, this doesn't bother her
overly. She clearly cares nothing for intellectual pursuits at all, but
I don't think she cares a whit about "affairs of the heart" either.
She will however brood incessantly about not having been invited
to lunch by Millicent Bruton, whose lunch parties are said to be
amusing.
I also must point out--because it seems to be my role to point out
such things--that Clarissa is hopelessly frigid "with a virginity
preserved through childbirth which clung to her like a sheet." She
had "failed" Richard on some river in England and in Constantinople
(and all points in between presumably).
Occasionally, when some young woman is confessing something to
her, "she did undoubtedly then feel what men felt," but that's it.
She has only been in love once in her life. That was with Sally
Seton when they were young. Sally kissed her on the lips by some
urn with flowers in it, and Clarissa was ultra-pissed off when Peter
interrupted all this.
Isn't Peter the one who believes in the overwhelming importance
of affairs of the heart?
STEVE
Topic:
APRIL 2000 BOOK -- MRS. DALLOWAY (82 of 82), Read 3 times
Conf:
CLASSICS CORNER
From:
Steve Warbasse (wk4@uswest.net)
Date:
Friday, April 07, 2000 10:01 PM
On the soul discussion:
In the process of portraying the London of the time, Virginia Woolf
is also advancing the proposition that in order to enter the highest
levels of society and power, it was absolutely necessary to stifle
one's soul or have the advantage of a congenital lack of one.
This is the reason that Peter has not been a success (or
"suck-cess" as Bob Dylan is wont to pronounce it). This is the
reason that although she is now filthy rich with new money, Sally
Seton is debarred from this elite circle. Certainly, Septimus is mad
because he possessed far too much soul to endure what he had
been required to. The lowly people on the street have more soul
than Hugh, Lady Bruton, Richard (the detester of Shakespeare),
Sir William Bradshaw, et al. Others here have alluded to this same
thing with the references to following "the rules."
If you insist that I define how I am using the word "soul," I have
six great Ray Charles albums I would be happy to lend you.
STEVE
Topic:
APRIL 2000 BOOK -- MRS. DALLOWAY (83 of 103), Read 35 times
Conf:
CLASSICS CORNER
From:
Kay Dugan (okaychatt@mindspring.com)
Date:
Saturday, April 08, 2000 07:38 AM
I think my last post is lost in that great computer in the sky.
Basically, I agree that Clarissa hasn't much upstairs. I agree that
her definition of success is narrow. I disagree that no one loves
her except Peter. All the major characters are drawn to Clarissa.
Why would they be so arrogantly concerned about her lost soul if
they weren't?
Would I want to spend much time with Clarissa? No. Could I
depend on her? No. Do I like anything about her? You bet - her
appreciation of life, selfish though it may be.
Kay, who doesn't like to write any one off without checking for
some redeeming qualities first.
Topic:
APRIL 2000 BOOK -- MRS. DALLOWAY (84 of 103), Read 37 times
Conf:
CLASSICS CORNER
From:
Sherry Keller (shkell@earthlink.net)
Date:
Saturday, April 08, 2000 08:30 AM
This is a fascinating discussion. I read MD a couple of weeks ago
and I know that in order for me to enter into this discussion with
any depth, I will probably have to reread the book. I've forgotten
so much; I don't even remember who Hugh is. But even with my
limitations I want to say how Clarissa seemed to me. I think she is
not a dead soul, but a dampened one. All this talk about loving
what she has at the moment, in the present, seems to me to be a
kind of sorrow. I hear her trying to convince herself that she made
the right choices. I sense that she doesn't want to face up to the
opportunities she may have missed. Don't we all have regrets?
Aren't we all victims of the time we grew up in? Clarissa seems an
excellent example of the frightened soul who chooses her mate
based on safety, on societal comforts. And because she is this
kind of flawed being, I like her all the more.
Sherry
Topic:
APRIL 2000 BOOK -- MRS. DALLOWAY (85 of 103), Read 38 times
Conf:
CLASSICS CORNER
From:
Steve Warbasse (wk4@uswest.net)
Date:
Saturday, April 08, 2000 09:28 AM
You are correct in your assessment of her, Sherry. Her thoughts
are this after hearing of the suicide at the party:
Then (she had felt it only this morning) there was the terror; the
overwhelming incapacity, one's parents giving it into one's hands,
this life, to be lived to the end, to be walked with serenely; there
was in the depths of her heart an awful fear. Even now, quite
often if Richard had not been there reading the 'Times,' so that
she could crouch like a bird and gradually revive, send roaring up
that immeasurable delight, rubbing stick to stick, one thing with
another, she must have perished. . . .
The passage carries on in this vein, and I believe constitutes the
answer to Sally Seton's question, ". . .to be frank then, how could
she have done it?--married Richard Dalloway? a sportsman, a man
who cared only for dogs. Literally, when he come into the room he
smelt of the stables. And then all this? She waved her hand."
STEVE
Topic:
APRIL 2000 BOOK -- MRS. DALLOWAY (86 of 103), Read 35 times
Conf:
CLASSICS CORNER
From:
Steve Warbasse (wk4@uswest.net)
Date:
Saturday, April 08, 2000 09:57 AM
Ann, I certainly did not ignore your earlier question concerning
that statement in your introduction that Virginia Woolf intended
Septimus to be the double of Mrs. Dalloway. Let us assume she did
say that and furthermore, that she meant it. What is the
connection?
I have been pondering that ever since reading your earlier note on
this subject. In addition to what I have written about Clarissa
above, we should also note that her bed has gotten "narrower and
narrower," an allusion to the coffin in my opinion. I have now
concluded that in the face of the complex difficulty of life, both
Septimus and Clarissa committed suicide, each in their own
fashion.
STEVE
Topic:
APRIL 2000 BOOK -- MRS. DALLOWAY (87 of 103), Read 37 times
Conf:
CLASSICS CORNER
From:
Ann Davey (davey@tconl.com)
Date:
Saturday, April 08, 2000 11:18 AM
Sherry wrote: "I hear her trying to convince herself that she made
the right choices."
Excellent, observation, Sherry. Clarissa has recently suffered a
severe illness, some type of heart disease which presumably
threatens her future as well. Such an experience often leads
people to re-evaluate their life choices. The appearance of Peter,
the rejected suitor, obviously encourages this.
Few people can bear to admit that they have taken the wrong
path in life. Clarissa thinks she should be happy, and she tells
herself that she is. She is not always convincing.
Steve, I think it is too strong to say that Clarissa committed some
kind of spiritual suicide, although that may be what Woolf
intended. Why else would she refer to Clarissa as Septimus'
double?
I do find a similarity in that both characters are haunted by death.
Clarissa has a real "horror of death", perhaps stemming from her
recent illness, perhaps originating much earlier.
To deal with it she had developed a transcendental theory which,
with her horror of death, allowed her to believe, or say that she
believed (for all her skepticism), that since our apparitions, the
part of us which appears, are so momentary compared with the
other, the unseen part of us, which spreads wide, the unseen
might survive, recovered somehow attached to this person or
that, or even haunting certain places after
death…perhaps-perhaps.
There is obviously more to her than the superficially charming
society hostess others see. At times, she feels she is already
dead, as in this reference to her "virginal" bed:
It was all over for her. The sheet was stretched and the bed
narrow. She had gone up into the tower alone and left them
blackberrying in the sun. The door had shut....
I don't think we should be too hard on Clarissa. She is a lot like
many of us, attempting to derive what enjoyment she can out of
everyday life, but occasionally haunted by its more difficult truths.
If her soul is dead, so are most of ours.
Topic:
APRIL 2000 BOOK -- MRS. DALLOWAY (88 of 103), Read 44 times
Conf:
CLASSICS CORNER
From:
R Bavetta (rbavetta@prodigy.net)
Date:
Saturday, April 08, 2000 11:28 AM
Steve, funny, I woke this morning and lay in bed, staring out at
the wisteria in bloom and pondering the very question of the
Septimus/Clarissa connection Ann mentioned.
One of the ideas that rolled around in my head was that I don't
think Clarissa could feel very much. Yes, I know she went around
thinking how lovely things were, but that seemed (like Sherry
suggested)as if she were trying to convince herself she was
feeling.
So on the one hand we have Clarissa, moving almost like a
sleepwalker, barely touching the surface of feeling. And on the
other, we have Septimus, nothing but one great raw, quivering
nerve.
Septimus dies, body horribly mangled. And Clarissa's soul is dead.
Same difference?
Ruth
Topic:
APRIL 2000 BOOK -- MRS. DALLOWAY (89 of 103), Read 39 times
Conf:
CLASSICS CORNER
From:
Kay Dugan (okaychatt@mindspring.com)
Date:
Saturday, April 08, 2000 12:05 PM
Several CR's see Clarissa as a total write off. Others see her as
not all bad.
I'd like to ask everyone why s/he thinks Sally and Peter love her.
Did Woolf like her as a character? What guidelines are proposed for
living a worthwhile life?
Kay
Topic:
APRIL 2000 BOOK -- MRS. DALLOWAY (90 of 103), Read 36 times
Conf:
CLASSICS CORNER
From:
Pres Lancaster (plancast@slip.net)
Date:
Saturday, April 08, 2000 12:08 PM
What about the idea that a soul is dead when its owner doesn't
accept or rejects life - closes the door, as it were, in order to
have an (illusionary) safe coziness ?
Pres
Topic:
APRIL 2000 BOOK -- MRS. DALLOWAY (91 of 103), Read 37 times
Conf:
CLASSICS CORNER
From:
Daniel LeBoeuf (dan1066@yahoo.com)
Date:
Saturday, April 08, 2000 12:24 PM
Kudos to Sherry for articulating my very thought: Mrs. Dalloway is
truly not as happy as her thoughts would have us believe. As
readers, we can hone in on the passages where she seems to be
having an epiphany or we can note the multiple times she is
despondent over a situation or a past decision (she sleeps alone,
her daughter is being influenced by an ugly Christian (and
remember folks: Steve says don't truck with no ugly Christian
folk--you can sympathize with 'em, but don't hang with 'em), she
hates most of the people she greets at her party, she cannot
attend to her 'friends' Peter and Sally because of social
obligations).
Steve brought up my current thought: What of Clarissa's love for
Sally Seton? Could Woolf be using Peter Walsh as a red herring,
luring the unsuspecting reader to believe that turning him down
was her mistake when, in actuality, it was not pursuing her
genuine affection for Sally that "deadened" her soul? Is Clarissa
really the person she should be during the present tense of this
novel?
I realize I'm out on a limb here, but bear with me a moment: The
most intense feelings Clarissa ever mentions having is the feeling
of holding the hot water bottle and saying to herself over and
over, "She's under my roof." This feeling is consummated with the
kiss by the urn, a kiss Clarissa is outraged that Peter interrupts
(just think of the implications of his very name in this context).
Now Clarissa is everything society deems successful--husband,
daughter, social gatherings. But she sleeps alone, her sex life is on
the skids and she even feels "virginal" after giving birth to a
daughter. Enter Sally, the "Lady Rosseton" is it? The feeling for her
is gone and replaced by jealousy--Sally has robust sons now and
life in the country.
I acknowledge this is tenuous, but thinking of this story in terms
of repressed sexuality brings up some interesting interpretations as
to the action.
Dan
Topic:
APRIL 2000 BOOK -- MRS. DALLOWAY (92 of 103), Read 41 times
Conf:
CLASSICS CORNER
From:
R Bavetta (rbavetta@prodigy.net)
Date:
Saturday, April 08, 2000 12:37 PM
I'd thought of this, too, Dan. That incident with Sally Seton is too
strong to be ignored. (Altho I confess I hadn't thought of the
implications of Peter's name.) I know its a good idea take a novel
on its own merits, but I couldn't help thinking about VW's own
inclinations in this department.
Ruth
Topic:
APRIL 2000 BOOK -- MRS. DALLOWAY (93 of 103), Read 38 times
Conf:
CLASSICS CORNER
From:
Daniel LeBoeuf (dan1066@yahoo.com)
Date:
Saturday, April 08, 2000 12:53 PM
Could someone give us, as Ruth professes, "VW's own inclinations
in this department," the department being her sexual preferences?
I promise I in no wise intend to inflict an authorial phallacy,
but--GOOD GOD! A Freudian pun of monumental proportions! I'll
leave it here and quietly go away for a good long time.
Dan
Topic:
APRIL 2000 BOOK -- MRS. DALLOWAY (94 of 103), Read 41 times
Conf:
CLASSICS CORNER
From:
R Bavetta (rbavetta@prodigy.net)
Date:
Saturday, April 08, 2000 01:03 PM
Phallacy, my word. We are on our toes this morning, aren't we,
Dan.
VW's sex life was conflicted. Bad experiences with an older
step-brother. She's been called asexual, homosexual, bisexual.
Married to Leonard Woolf, but had an intense affair with Vita
Sackville-West.
And we won't even start on Vannessa Bell's (Virginia's sister)
household arrangements.
Ruth, who loves nothing better than a good pun
Topic:
APRIL 2000 BOOK -- MRS. DALLOWAY (95 of 103), Read 49 times
Conf:
CLASSICS CORNER
From:
Steve Warbasse (wk4@uswest.net)
Date:
Saturday, April 08, 2000 01:21 PM
On a lighter note I thought you might all like to see a picture of
the benches where Peter encountered Septimus and Rezia and
dozed off:
This would be on the Broad Walk near the Chester Gate to
Regent's Park. I believe the fountain to which Rezia walked,
leaving Septimus alone for a time, is over in the Inner Circle.
Am I getting obsessed or what?
STEVE
Topic:
APRIL 2000 BOOK -- MRS. DALLOWAY (96 of 103), Read 40 times
Conf:
CLASSICS CORNER
From:
R Bavetta (rbavetta@prodigy.net)
Date:
Saturday, April 08, 2000 01:31 PM
Steve, why not continue your obsession with the Collected Letters
of VW, and the Diaries of VW. The Diaries are comprised of about
5 volumes, of which I can find only vols 4 and 5. In some ways,
these were more interesting to me than VW's novels.
About 15 years ago, I was obsessed with the whole Bloomsbury
scene. I just made a cursory tour of my bookshelves and came up
empty, but I read books by and about VW, Vita Sackville-West,
Vita's fascinating mother (who wasn't so fascinating that I
remember her name!), Nigel Nicholson, and others. What
interesting people.
Ruth, forming Resolution No. 534---organize those damn
bookcases
Topic:
APRIL 2000 BOOK -- MRS. DALLOWAY (97 of 103), Read 26 times
Conf:
CLASSICS CORNER
From:
Jean Keating (jbkeating@home.com)
Date:
Saturday, April 08, 2000 05:48 PM
An interesting book which deals with this crowd is Portrait of a
Marriage about Vita Sackville West and her husband by their son
Nigel(I think) Nicolson. Vita was bisexual as was her husband yet
they had a long happy marriage.
PBS showed a rather steamy movie several years ago that dealt
with the Vita/Virginia affair. Forgot the name of it.
Topic:
APRIL 2000 BOOK -- MRS. DALLOWAY (98 of 103), Read 21 times
Conf:
CLASSICS CORNER
From:
R Bavetta (rbavetta@prodigy.net)
Date:
Saturday, April 08, 2000 07:13 PM
Jean, P of a M, that's one of the Bloomsbury books I own. And
there was another about Vita S-W's mother, who, if I remember
correctly was a Spanish dancer in Paris before she married, and
was quite a character. This was such a fascinating group of
people. I can't decide which I'd like to join when I'm reincarnated,
the Bloomsbury Group or the group around Gertrude Stein.
Ruth
Topic:
APRIL 2000 BOOK -- MRS. DALLOWAY (99 of 103), Read 18 times
Conf:
CLASSICS CORNER
From:
Pres Lancaster (plancast@slip.net)
Date:
Saturday, April 08, 2000 08:07 PM
I believe the book you are talking about is Lady Sackville by
Susan Mary Alsop.
Vita Sackville-West, who was the daughter of the 3rd Baron
Sackville, was the grand-daughter of Pepita, a Spanish dancer.
Vita wrote a book about her called, oddly enough, Pepita. And all
those garden books, too.
God knows what Mrs. Nicolson ever wrote.
And as for Ruth, if she doesn't stop prompting me to these serious
memory churnings and excavatings, I'll start hoping she's
reincarnated in Rudyard Kipling's circle.
Pres, (I should sugar and preserve my days like fruit !)
Topic:
APRIL 2000 BOOK -- MRS. DALLOWAY (100 of 103), Read 16
times
Conf:
CLASSICS CORNER
From:
R Bavetta (rbavetta@prodigy.net)
Date:
Saturday, April 08, 2000 08:29 PM
I think I own both those books, Pres, and also V S-W's A Joy of
Gardening. And now excavate your memory again---did you read
the one by Quentin Bell's son? Only Bloomsbury book I've actively
disliked.
Now back to MRS. DALLOWAY...
Ruth,
Topic:
APRIL 2000 BOOK -- MRS. DALLOWAY (101 of 103), Read 14
times
Conf:
CLASSICS CORNER
From:
Daniel LeBoeuf (dan1066@yahoo.com)
Date:
Saturday, April 08, 2000 08:42 PM
Though I have often been fascinated by literary circles, I'm afraid
I have never heard of the Bloomsbury group until reading this
novel. And aside from Woolf and Forster, I never heard of the
others in the group.
Looking over my marginalia in my now very tattered copy of Mrs.
Dalloway, I came across this passage:
But she [Dalloway] could remember going cold with excitement,
and doing her hair in a kind of ecstasy (now the old feeling began
to come back to her, as she took out her hairpins, laid them on
the dressing table, began to do her hair), with the rooks flaunting
up and down in the pink evening light, and dressing, and going
downstairs, and feeling as she crossed the hall "if it were now to
die 'twere now to be most happy." That was her feeling--Othello's
feeling, and she felt it, she was convinced, as strongly as
Sheakespeare meant Othello to feel it, all because she was
coming down to dinner in a white frock to meet Sally
Seton!...Then came the most exquisite moment of her whole life
passing a stone urn with flowers in it. Sally stopped; picked a
flower; kissed her on the lips. The whole world might have turned
upside down! The others disappeared; there she was alone with
Sally.
Sorry to quote at length, but this passage confirms in part my
earlier argument--even in the present tense of this novel, Clarissa
defines Sally's kiss as "the most exquisite moment of her whole
life," a life which later includes Richard, Elizabeth, and Social
Gatherings.
Also note in the passage the idea of death with the line from
Othello. I believe this is a strong hint that after this point, Clarissa
loses something--but she had the opportunity to truly die happy.
Clarissa's feelings of the past are given strong literary treatment
at the end of the novel:
They [Sally and Peter] would discuss the past. With the two of
them (more even than with Richard) she shared her past; the
garden; the trees; old Joseph Breitkopf singing Brahms without
any voice; the drawing-room wallpaper; the smell of the mats. A
part of Sally must always be; Peter must always be. But she must
leave them. There were the Bradshaws, whom she disliked.
Clarrisa realizes that Peter and Sally are touchstones of a sort for
her past experiences, experiences which were more passionate,
more powerful, than any 'feelings' she now possesses. Notice how
Woolf uses a bit of wry humor to end this passage: Clarissa must
turn her back on the very people who mean so much to her
because there are people she "dislikes" present.
Also, notice that it is the Bradshaws, the one whose callous
comments of a recent suicide stop Clarissa cold. And Clarissa
reveals that she has thought of suicide often, enough to visualize
Septimus' deed easily:
Always her body went through it first, when she was told,
suddenly, of an accident; her dress flamed, her body burnt. He
had thrown himself from a window. Up had flashed the ground;
through him, blundering, bruising, went the rusty spikes. There he
lay with a thud, thud, thud in his brain, and then a suffocation of
blackness. So she saw it...She felt somehow very like him--the
young man who had killed himself. She felt glad that he had done
it; thrown it away...He made her feel the beauty; made her feel
the fun.
Without definite proof, I believe that Clarissa has thought of
suicide often enough and that the final statements is a sort of
thank you for Septimus for illustrating physically what she has
rehearsed in her mind mentally often enough--death, to just die.
But there is beauty, there is fun, even if the "most exquisite"
moment is long past. To quote Faulkner, Mrs. Dalloway chooses to
"endure."
Dan
Topic:
APRIL 2000 BOOK -- MRS. DALLOWAY (102 of 103), Read 4 times
Conf:
CLASSICS CORNER
From:
R Bavetta (rbavetta@prodigy.net)
Date:
Saturday, April 08, 2000 11:33 PM
Dan, Virginia Woolf and her husband, Leonard Woolf ran Hogarth
press. Others of the group included the art critics Roger Fry and
Clive Bell, John Maynard Keynes, Lytton Strachey, E. M. Forster;
and the painters Vanessa Bell (Virginia's sister) and Duncan Grant.
Vita Sackville-West wrote novels and gardening books. They all
hung out and/or lived in the Bloomsbury district of London, hence
the name. T. S. Eliot made a few appearances, too. I’ve found a
web site that explains some of their tangled relations.
http://www.walrus.com/~gibralto/acorn/germ/sisters.html
The Bloomsbury Group reacted against the stuffy formality of the
Victorian era, both in literature and art. Vanessa Bell’s home at
Charleston is a place I’ve wanted to visit for years. Pasted in one
of my many daybooks are photos of the interior, with folky-looking
handpainted doors, walls, screens, fireplaces.
Ruth
Topic:
APRIL 2000 BOOK -- MRS. DALLOWAY (103 of 103), Read 2 times
Conf:
CLASSICS CORNER
From:
Ann Davey (davey@tconl.com)
Date:
Saturday, April 08, 2000 11:43 PM
Those are interesting observations about the sexuality angle. The
way I understand it, Woolf was physically frigid with both men and
women. She complained that the sexual abuse she suffered left
her unable to enjoy her body. She was clearly attracted to
women, however. It seems clear that Clarissa's inclinations lay in
the same direction. I'm not so sure Sally would have been a viable
option. She did kiss Clarissa on the lips, but she also ended up the
happily married mother of 5 sons.
Ruth, I agree that Septimus seemed like one raw nerve. However,
he repeatedly complains that he is unable to feel. What do you
make of this?
Ann
Topic:
APRIL 2000 BOOK -- MRS. DALLOWAY (104 of 129), Read 64
times
Conf:
CLASSICS CORNER
From:
Dottie Randall (randallj@ix.netcom.com)
Date:
Sunday, April 09, 2000 01:53 AM
Another note of interest is that Hogarth Press -- that is, Leonard
and Virginia were the first publishers of Freud and some of his
earliest ideas. I think Hermione Lee's biography is an interesting
and thought provoking presentation of this group and of Woolf
(the topic subject).
And are we thinking about Clarissa in the appropriate time-frame?
This is a scant few years after WWI -- I think the societal setting
seems so removed that it is difficult to grasp that it was the major
portion of women's lives in that time and the period previous to be
"at home" or "paying calls" or "doing good works" out in society but
for certain levels of people, that never meant going into anything
too disturbing or into anyplace too "beneath" them -- this was
society and these people lived within that accepted setting.
Dottie
ID is an oxymoron!
Topic:
APRIL 2000 BOOK -- MRS. DALLOWAY (105 of 129), Read 65
times
Conf:
CLASSICS CORNER
From:
Sherry Keller (shkell@earthlink.net)
Date:
Sunday, April 09, 2000 07:37 AM
Ruth,
Thanks for posting that website about the Bloomsbury group. I
just finished The Hours and Cunningham used a lot of the
Bloomsbury history as fodder for his novel. I would have never
known.
Sherry
Topic:
APRIL 2000 BOOK -- MRS. DALLOWAY (106 of 129), Read 65
times
Conf:
CLASSICS CORNER
From:
Susan Pardue (ezrabird@aol.com)
Date:
Sunday, April 09, 2000 08:43 AM
Clarissa and Richard both appear in VW's first novel THE VOYAGE
OUT. Stranded in Lisbon, the Dalloways (who are touring Europe
"with a view to broadening Mr. Dalloway's mind" during a session in
which he's failed to be elected to Parliament) use their
connections to secure passage to the next port on a steamer
ultimately bound for South America. The naive young protagonist
finds the Dalloways glamorous and intriguing (Richard, by the way,
grabs her and kisses her just two chapters after Clarissa has
mused over how morally superior her husband happens to be-ha!).
But the protagonist's aunt sums up the Dalloways after they've
left ship like this:
"She was quite nice, but a thimble-pated creature. I never heard
such nonsense! Chitter-chatter-chitter-chatter-fish and the Greek
alphabet-never listened to a word anyone said - chock-full of
idiotic theories about the way to bring up children- I'd far rather
talk to him any day. He was pompous, but he did at least
understand what was said to him."
Clarissa and Richard term the people on board (most scholars) as
cranks-"It's what I've always said about literary people- they're
far the hardest of any to get on with," Clarissa writes in a letter.
VW seems to have a great time with Clarissa, having her dress for
dinner ("It matters ever so much more than the soup"), reverse
and contradict herself in a matter of moments in order to keep a
conversation alive that no one else had any interest in in the first
place. Really, I mourned when the Dalloways went ashore.
In spite of the ridicule heaped on Clarissa in THE VOYAGE OUT, I
don't believe VW revived her and placed her dead center in a
later, overwhelmingly better, novel to mock her again, and to
present her as a dead soul. She and Septimus may have been
intended as twins, but Clarissa pivots away from death while
Septimus throws himself upon it. She's in her twilight years, the
clock is tolling, her options and roles in life have honed down to
almost exclusively that of a hostess, but she has her memories
and she's still experiencing moments that reverberate with the
beauty and fun of life. And, maybe despite herself, she's managed
to keep Sally and Peter as friends.
In CAT'S EYE, Margaret Atwood's character's main regret in life is
that she doesn't have her childhood friend to share things with
now that she's old. Clarissa lacks something, as Sally says, but
after her contemplation of Septimus' death and her own less than
admirable way of getting through life ("she had schemed; she had
pilfered"), she determines to go find Sally and Peter. I find that a
positive thing, a turning from the conventional, a liberation of
sorts. I think she's going to bloom again.
Topic:
APRIL 2000 BOOK -- MRS. DALLOWAY (107 of 129), Read 67
times
Conf:
CLASSICS CORNER
From:
Christina Devitt (cdevitt@packer.edu)
Date:
Sunday, April 09, 2000 09:22 AM
This discussion is so rich and has really brought the novel alive for
me -- thanks. I want so much to contribute but I'm afraid my
thoughts are still swirling. However, thinking out loud might be
apropos in this case...
I continue to feel this odd mix of admiration and pity for Clarissa,
the former because she seems to know her limitations and the
latter because she seems to accept them. Early on, she reflects,
"Much rather would she have been one of those people like Richard
who did things for themselves..." (an interesting commentary on
Richard , too) ..."whereas, she thought, waiting to cross, half the
time she did things not simply, not for themselves; but to make
people think this or that;" and "Oh if she could have had her life
over again! she thought, stepping onto the pavement, could have
looked even different!"
The "half of the time" seems important to me here. Throughout the
novel, I felt like half the time there was a "natural" order to life
and the other half expectations, limitations, and order were
imposed externally and internally. The curtains against the wind.
Also, while I agree that there is this "everything is connected"
message in the novel, I also feel an equally strong "we are all so
disconnected" message and that moments of connection between
people are rare and glorious; too much to expect but a gift to be
received and treasured.
Christina
Topic:
APRIL 2000 BOOK -- MRS. DALLOWAY (108 of 129), Read 62
times
Conf:
CLASSICS CORNER
From:
Janet Mego (vsjego@cs.com)
Date:
Sunday, April 09, 2000 10:56 AM
Christina,
Well, I wasn't going to participate in this discussion because I
haven't read MD (what with crises at work and in other aspects of
life, reading for pleasure is alas difficult because of lack of time
and/or difficulty in focusing), but I have been reading some of the
comments here. I am so envious of those of you who have MADE
time to read this book that my excuses above seem somewhat
pathetic.
Back to Christina and why I'm posting: I found your last comment
very moving, and it awakened a memory that I think has inspired
me to read this book even if I have to do it sometime after this
discussion has ended. I loved TTL when I read it in grad school,
and remember vividly a similar sense of the "rare and glorious
moments of connection" you've referenced. I was so impressed
with Woolf and her "moments" that I wrote my research paper on
TTL, and again, have regrets that I missed the discussion on that
one because I didn't know about CR then.
It's been strange but compelling reading all of the comments
without reading MD. But that's typical of Woolf's overall "aura" (?):
a strange but compelling woman and writer.
Janet, feeling a little sorry for herself, like she's missed the boat
more than once, and hoping some of you might be willing to
continue this thread at some point in the future.
Topic:
APRIL 2000 BOOK -- MRS. DALLOWAY (109 of 129), Read 65
times
Conf:
CLASSICS CORNER
From:
R Bavetta (rbavetta@prodigy.net)
Date:
Sunday, April 09, 2000 10:59 AM
Hi Christina, you're new, aren't you? Welcome to Constant Reader,
and thanks for your insightful note. Glad you decided to join the
conversation.
Ruth
Topic:
APRIL 2000 BOOK -- MRS. DALLOWAY (110 of 129), Read 65
times
Conf:
CLASSICS CORNER
From:
Steve Warbasse (wk4@uswest.net)
Date:
Sunday, April 09, 2000 11:24 AM
Welcome, Christina. It has been an interesting thread, hasn't it? I
am so glad that you contributed the quotation that you have for it
fits in perfectly with our groping toward an understanding of the
nature of Clarissa.
Pres, I neglected to compliment you on your posting the question
of what is meant by "the death of the soul." It was a perfect
question, perfectly timed. That is not because anyone here
habitually uses the phrase, but simply because phrases such as
"death of the soul" and "stifle the soul" are used by Peter and Sally
in this novel repeatedly.
Dan, if you ever threaten again to leave here and be quiet for a
long time, I am going to brain you. Excellent, excellent
observations, and I say that not simply because I agree with you.
Very well written and documented. (Perhaps the "Peter Pun" was a
little "out there" for me, but it was fun to contemplate
nonetheless.)
I have not derived so much enjoyment from a novel in a long time,
Dan. You and everyone here has contributed to that. What a
great one this is! The larger part of my enjoyment is undoubtedly
for the reason that I mentioned very early in this thread--my easy
understanding of Peter Walsh. We are precisely the same age with
precisely the same experience. This was reinforced with the
description of the party. I myself would have been off to the side
with Sally Seton (or Barb Moors) laughing, reminiscing, and
commenting on the scene before us, too.
The only slight difference is that Peter is more eloquent than I. He
thinks, "Villains there must be, and God knows the rascals who get
hanged for battering the brains of a girl out in a train do less harm
on the whole than Hugh Whitbread and his kindness." Whereas, I
would have thought, "That fuckin' idiot is dangerous!"
STEVE
Topic:
APRIL 2000 BOOK -- MRS. DALLOWAY (111 of 129), Read 55
times
Conf:
CLASSICS CORNER
From:
Sara Sauers (stsauers@att.net)
Date:
Sunday, April 09, 2000 02:00 PM
What an amazing book this is! A simultaneously exhausting and
exhilarating read. I finished it early this morning and have just
finished reading all your notes. You've created a thread that, in
how it reads, is not unlike moving through MRS. DALLOWAY, with
its individual impressions/responses to the same event.
I think Dan & Steve are on to THE most significant turning point in
Clarissa's life -- Clarissa's realization of her love for Sally and "this
question of love, this falling in love with women," and her early
move in life away from pursuing such strong sexual feelings.
As I understand the following, Clarissa appears to know just
enough about herself to see this:
"She could see what she lacked. It was not beauty; it was not
mind. It was something central which permeated; something
warm which broke up surfaces and rippled the cold contact of
man and woman, or of women together. For THAT she could
dimly perceive. She resented it, had a scruple picked up Heaven
knows where..."
Therefore, because she "resented" this, we have the asexual
marriage to Richard. And isn't that part of why she had to stay
away from Peter? He wasn't going to hang around while his wife
moved her bed up into the attic!
The following passage (in addition to being an absolutely amazing
piece of writing) seems a good example of the kind of feeling
Clarissa has decided to shut out:
"It was a sudden revelation, a tinge like a blush which one tried to
check and then, as it spread, one yielded to its expansion, and
rushed to the farthest verge and there quivered and felt the
world come closer, swollen with some astonishing significance,
some pressure of rapture, which split its thin skin and gushed and
poured with an extraordinary alleviation over the cracks and
sores. Then, for that moment, she had seen an illumination; a
match burning in a crocus; an inner meaning almost expressed.
But the close withdrew; the hard softened. It was over -- the
moment."
She can only take this level of intensity in small doses, and then,
apparently much relieved, she moves on to something much safer.
Like planning a party.
AND (excuse the poor segue here), because Septimus and Clarissa
are supposedly "doubles," the "crocus" passage also strikes me as
similar in depth and intensity to the thoughts that Septimus
couldn't figure out a way to escape from.
That's too much already, but I'm overwhelmed!
Sara
Topic:
APRIL 2000 BOOK -- MRS. DALLOWAY (112 of 129), Read 45
times
Conf:
CLASSICS CORNER
From:
Kay Dugan (okaychatt@mindspring.com)
Date:
Sunday, April 09, 2000 02:42 PM
Sara-
I'm utterly exhausted after Mrs. Dalloway and The Hours. They are
mesmerizing, compulsive reads, and my brain is hurting.
Kay, who is desperate need of the Monty Python special on A and
E tonight.
Topic:
APRIL 2000 BOOK -- MRS. DALLOWAY (113 of 129), Read 43
times
Conf:
CLASSICS CORNER
From:
Dottie Randall (randallj@ix.netcom.com)
Date:
Sunday, April 09, 2000 04:04 PM
All I can say is this thread will be going for awhile because once
we start on The Hours there will be more to say about Mrs. D. and
then Pres went over there and set up the overflow thread under
Bloomsbury Group or some such -- this is looking like the J.B. and
Job (the double Classics Corner read which sprouted about five
threads over there on Prodigy including the additional reading of
When Bad Things Happen To Good People and The Gnostic Gospels
as well as a couple general religion/philosophy threads).
Dottie -- who has stopped commenting until she gets through Mrs.
D. again using The Hours as a reference during the reread! But I
WILL be back! It feels like I haven't read this book at all yet.
ID is an oxymoron!
Topic:
APRIL 2000 BOOK -- MRS. DALLOWAY (114 of 129), Read 37
times
Conf:
CLASSICS CORNER
From:
Daniel LeBoeuf (dan1066@yahoo.com)
Date:
Sunday, April 09, 2000 05:18 PM
I hate to back up again, but I found some interesting "evidence"
that supports my theory that Clarissa, throughout Mrs. Dalloway,
is actually skirting the quintessential issue of "to be or not to be."
In The Hours, Cunningham has Virginia Woolf mulling over the text
of Mrs. Dalloway and expressing that, if anything, "Dalloway must
die in the end."
While I lack the textual evidence to prove this beyond a doubt,
there seems an aura about Clarissa that she is deciding between
continuing her limited existence with its transitory, ephemeral
beauty and just dying, accepting the finality and final
communication. While I hate to "guess" authorial intentions, I'm
willing to believe that Cunningham culled this early draft idea from
Woolf's letters, diary, or even early drafts. And, in the end,
perhaps Woolf decided to have Clarissa endure, survive by having
another character--poor shell-shocked Septimus--commit the
actual deed and have word of it ripple through Dalloway's party at
just the right moment so that Clarissa can clarify her thoughts and
focus on the important issues.
And then we have this hopeful ending--which no one has really
commented on: Elizabeth and her father are coming together,
Sally sees merit in getting to know Richard, and Peter...
"I will come," said Peter, but he sat on for a moment. What is this
terror? what is this ecstasy? he thought to himself. What is it
that fills me with extraordinary excitement?
It is Clarissa, he said.
For there she was.
Clarissa still stands, still endures as the novel closes. Woolf may
have felt having her die was too harsh for her character. Think
what a different novel this would have been if Clarissa had
committed suicide. We would still be here arguing, only this time
we would be arguing "why?" instead of "why not?"
Dan
Topic:
APRIL 2000 BOOK -- MRS. DALLOWAY (115 of 129), Read 40
times
Conf:
CLASSICS CORNER
From:
Ann Davey (davey@tconl.com)
Date:
Sunday, April 09, 2000 05:23 PM
Great notes everyone. You've left me a lot to think about.
Christina, welcome to Classics Corner. Judging from the excellent
note you wrote, you obviously belong here. Would you mind telling
us a little about yourself and what you like to read?
Susan, in the earlier book about the Dalloways, does it say how
Clarissa failed Richard in Constantinople? This failure is mentioned
twice in Mrs. D., and I am very curious about what she meant.
There are also two references to throwing a shilling into the
Serpentine (?) which mystified me.
Dan, I agree with you that Clarissa thinks about death a lot, but I
don't find any evidence in the novel itself that she is
contemplating suicide. I think her recent heart trouble has made
death seem much closer.
Ann
Topic:
APRIL 2000 BOOK -- MRS. DALLOWAY (116 of 129), Read 35
times
Conf:
CLASSICS CORNER
From:
Daniel LeBoeuf (dan1066@yahoo.com)
Date:
Sunday, April 09, 2000 05:41 PM
Ann: Perhaps you are right and I am using extreme language.
Clarissa contemplates death and this novel pivots on the fact that
she is searching for a reason to continue living. Maybe she doesn't
have it in her to take her own life, but her author certainly did.
What are we to make of that moment just after hearing of
Septimus' death that Clarissa looks out the window and sees the
elderly lady across the way preparing for bed? The elderly lady
functions as a sort of doppelganger for Clarissa. When the charm
has died away, when the flowers are all faded, it will be quiet
nights and not parties. And, in a strange way, this doesn't deter
Dalloway in the slightest--it is while looking at the effects of age
that she decides she enjoys her life and that Septimus made a
mistake.
Damn this book is just full of potential meanings, n'est-ce pas?
Dan
Topic:
APRIL 2000 BOOK -- MRS. DALLOWAY (117 of 129), Read 32
times
Conf:
CLASSICS CORNER
From:
Steve Warbasse (wk4@uswest.net)
Date:
Sunday, April 09, 2000 05:47 PM
Dale, I am having an episode of deja vu with regard to that
stunning phrase "match in a crocus" from the passage that Sara
quoted above. I know we have discussed that or something very
like that here before, perhaps in the midst of my first run at Mrs.
Dalloway. Maria comes to mind in connection with this, too. Do
you have any recollection of our referring to this passage in
Constant Reader long ago? Or is there some very similar image
from some other work that we spoke of?
STEVE
Topic:
APRIL 2000 BOOK -- MRS. DALLOWAY (118 of 129), Read 25
times
Conf:
CLASSICS CORNER
From:
Steve Warbasse (wk4@uswest.net)
Date:
Sunday, April 09, 2000 05:55 PM
Well, Dan, the passage you quoted just last night wherein Clarissa
contemplates the "fun" of Septimus's suicide certainly lends some
credence to your "to be or not to be" theory.
Also, to hear her tell it, Clarissa would have "perished" were it not
for Richard. I don't think one could interpret that as meaning that
she would have simply spontaneously withered up and blown
away.
STEVE
Topic:
APRIL 2000 BOOK -- MRS. DALLOWAY (119 of 129), Read 28
times
Conf:
CLASSICS CORNER
From:
R Bavetta (rbavetta@prodigy.net)
Date:
Sunday, April 09, 2000 06:15 PM
Ann, I've been thinking about that question you asked a while
back: "Ruth, I agree that Septimus seemed like one raw nerve.
However, he repeatedly complains that he is unable to feel. What
do you make of this?"
And my answer is, I don't know what to make of it. I wrote my
characterization of Septimus as "one raw nerve" without referring
back to the text. It was just the way he seemed to me. I'd
completely forgotten how he kept referring to his inability to feel.
This appears to throw my hypothesis into the circular file.
Ruth
Topic:
APRIL 2000 BOOK -- MRS. DALLOWAY (120 of 129), Read 28
times
Conf:
CLASSICS CORNER
From:
Ann Davey (davey@tconl.com)
Date:
Sunday, April 09, 2000 06:28 PM
Yeah, I don't know Dan. For me, death permeates this book and
you could be right about the suicide. I just don't see Clarissa as
strong or desperate enough to do it, but then I could be wrong.
Like you, I was very interested to see Woolf in the HOURS book
deciding at the outset that Clarissa will die.
Steve, when someone dies, it can wake you up and make you
appreciate living more. Suddenly your own problems don't seem
quite so earth shattering any more. That is how I interpreted
Clarissa's comments: "He made her feel the beauty; made her feel
the fun."
Ruth, no, no, I think you are absolutely right. It seems to me that
Septimus has so many horrible feelings buried just below the
surface that he has to repeatedly tell himself that he cannot feel.
If he allows himself to acknowledge these feelings he will
completely fall apart. And lets face it. He doesn't have far to go.
Ann
Topic:
APRIL 2000 BOOK -- MRS. DALLOWAY (121 of 129), Read 33
times
Conf:
CLASSICS CORNER
From:
Steve Warbasse (wk4@uswest.net)
Date:
Sunday, April 09, 2000 06:46 PM
Doggone it, Ann. You may very well be right there. I had not
thought of that interpretation.
Oh and Ann, I did note and share you chagrin at our ages, yours
and mine, being characterized as "elderly" in this novel. I wonder if
you might assure me that for us it is not all over but the
shouting--that there is something of life left for us other than the
clean-up? It would make me feel so much better.
STEVE
Topic:
APRIL 2000 BOOK -- MRS. DALLOWAY (122 of 129), Read 33
times
Conf:
CLASSICS CORNER
From:
Christina Devitt (cdevitt@packer.edu)
Date:
Sunday, April 09, 2000 06:52 PM
Ann and everyone,
Thank you for letting me barge in and making me feel so welcome.
Finding this site was truly fortuitous for me. I had just purchased
(and downloaded to my eBook) The Hours and began reading it
when I decided I should get to know Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway first
(which I bought in paperback). Once I started MD, I found myself
missing my alma mater, St. John's College, where every classic we
read was mined by many minds. In the meantime, I discovered
that a friend and colleague of mine, a high school English teacher
at the school where I am currently a computer science teacher,
was reading the same books and she suggested that we have
some informal discussions about MD and TH, which we have yet to
do but we will. Nevertheless, I still wanted to find a discussion
group and here you are -- better than I could have imagined! And
you're reading the same books!
My reading interests are varied -- I'm currently reading Guns,
Germs and Steel and The Age of Spiritual Machines along w/ MD
and TH. Some of my all time favorite authors are Proust, Joyce
and Dostoyevsky. OK -- enough of that, but you asked!
More important, I've been thinking more about Clarissa's attitudes
about death and found a passage that interested me: "It [referring
to Clarrisa's theory about dissatisfaction] ended in a
transcendental theory which, with her horror of death, allowed her
to believe, or say that she believed (for all her scepticism), that
since our apparitions, the part of us which appears, are so
momentary compared with the other, the unseen part of us, which
spreads wide, the unseen might survive, be recovered somehow
attached to this person or that, or even haunting certain places
after death...perhaps-perhaps."
This fits with the Dan's doppelganger-dame-next-door idea too, I
think. Also strikes me as very Proustian. Ann, in one of those
paragraphs about the shilling into the Serpentine, when Clarissa
learns about the suicide at her party, she thinks about her own life
obscuring a thing that mattered, whereas Septimus preserved
it...not sure what to make of that paragraph but I'm loving
revisiting the text with wonder.
So how do I find out more about the others in this group w/out
disrupting the thread?
Christina (glad I took the plunge)
Topic:
APRIL 2000 BOOK -- MRS. DALLOWAY (123 of 129), Read 23
times
Conf:
CLASSICS CORNER
From:
Steve Warbasse (wk4@uswest.net)
Date:
Sunday, April 09, 2000 07:26 PM
Christina, I am familiar with the approach of St. John's College to a
liberal arts education, particularly with regard to reading the
classics. The place has taken that approach for a long time, as
you well know. I simply wished to tell you how envious I am of you
for being an alumnus.
STEVE
Topic:
APRIL 2000 BOOK -- MRS. DALLOWAY (124 of 129), Read 26
times
Conf:
CLASSICS CORNER
From:
Barbara Moors (bar647@aol.com)
Date:
Sunday, April 09, 2000 07:12 PM
Wow, this thread has got to be among the top 10 ever posted on
Classics Corner. Each thought that was lurking around in my brain
as I read and then finished this book has been addressed and
there have been many more that hadn't occurred to me. In all, it
has deepened the whole experience immeasurably.
This is definitely not a book that can be read a few pages a night
before going to sleep. I gave up on that approach and only read it
during longer quiet periods on the week-ends.
This is only the third book I've read by Virginia Woolf and it's been,
by far, my favorite. Does anyone know what the general critical
view is? Which ones are seen as her best?
And, Steve, I'd love to be off to the side of the party with you
observing and commenting. In fact, Sally was definitely the
character I felt the most personal connection to in the book.
Barb
Topic:
APRIL 2000 BOOK -- MRS. DALLOWAY (125 of 129), Read 18
times
Conf:
CLASSICS CORNER
From:
Steve Warbasse (wk4@uswest.net)
Date:
Sunday, April 09, 2000 07:29 PM
Surely it occurred to you did it not, Barb, that Sally Seton was
just another 'elderly' hippie?
STEVE
Topic:
APRIL 2000 BOOK -- MRS. DALLOWAY (126 of 129), Read 20
times
Conf:
CLASSICS CORNER
From:
Susan Pardue (ezrabird@aol.com)
Date:
Sunday, April 09, 2000 07:35 PM
Welcome, Christina. We're going to be discussing GUNS, GERMS
AND STEEL later this year, so you've certainly come to the right
place.
Ann,
I guess Clarissa's failure at Constantinople is just another string
cheese incident--there isn't a mention of it in THE VOYAGE OUT.
Teheran is mentioned as a place they'd intended to go to, but
disease kept them in Europe. Mention is made of the Dalloways
going through manufacturing centers in France, riding mules in
Spain to understand how the peasants live. In Lisbon, while
Richard met with ministers, Clarissa inspected the royal stables,
took snapshots of broken windows, photographed Fielding's grave,
and let a caged bird go free. They were on their way to Africa for
Richard to inspect guns when they entered the story. Their tour
was called "thoroughly unconventional, and followed no meditated
plan"-they just went where the Times foreign correspondents told
'em to go. . .
Susan
Topic:
APRIL 2000 BOOK -- MRS. DALLOWAY (127 of 129), Read 18
times
Conf:
CLASSICS CORNER
From:
Pres Lancaster (plancast@slip.net)
Date:
Sunday, April 09, 2000 08:08 PM
Christina
You asked: So how do I find out more about the others in this
group w/out disrupting the thread?
This is going to be a thread disrupter because it is the easiest way
of putting the answer to your question where you are most apt to
find it. The alternate (for me) would be to start a new topic in
CRSalon entitled something like "Yoo Hoo Christina."
To find out about a poster, use the link with her/his name at the
head of the message. If you are interested in an off topic chat
with someone, consider e-mailing them.
Question for you: Which St. Johns College ? There are several -
NYC, Annapolis, etc.
Further on the subject of thread interrupters: we deplore them
and distribute them generously. Those of us whose tidy souls are
offended practice "going with the flow" and never remark that it is
the perfect way to lose all standards.
May you find Constant Reader the wonderful roller coaster ride it is
for most of us.
Pres, (I should sugar and preserve my days like fruit !)
Topic:
APRIL 2000 BOOK -- MRS. DALLOWAY (128 of 129), Read 22
times
Conf:
CLASSICS CORNER
From:
Pres Lancaster (plancast@slip.net)
Date:
Sunday, April 09, 2000 08:21 PM
I am struck by the great involvement and intensity of this
discussion. I think that just saying "great writing" doesn't account
for the way in which the book has entered into its readers' lives.
One thought is that the writing does not furnish settled facts but,
rather, ongoing webs. This is awkward because my thoughts are
jumbled.
Response ?
Pres, (I should sugar and preserve my days like fruit !)
Topic:
APRIL 2000 BOOK -- MRS. DALLOWAY (129 of 129), Read 7 times
Conf:
CLASSICS CORNER
From:
Ann Davey (davey@tconl.com)
Date:
Sunday, April 09, 2000 10:08 PM
Steve,
Speaking for myself, I'm not quite ready to kick the bucket yet.
This is the second book (Howard's End being the first) we've read
on CC this year that refers to someone over 50 as "elderly", and
this is starting to effect my self-esteem. According to the baby
boomer definition, 50 is just the start of middle age, isn't it?
Christina, it is obvious that fate sent you here. Perhaps your
teacher friend would like to join us as well. I liked that section you
quoted about Clarissa hoping that some part of her will survive
after death. I think that she is an atheist and is looking for some
kind of comfort as she confronts her own mortality.
Susan, thanks so much for the information about the Dalloways in
the previous book. They sound quite different from the characters
in Mrs. Dalloway. Did you feel like they were really the same
people you had encountered earlier?
Pres, I like your phrase "ongoing webs." This is a difficult book and
one I am sure I never would have read on my own. The very loose
ends and obscure connections that used to frustrate me before I
found Constant Reader and Classics Corner are the very thing that
make this book interesting for a group discussion, aren't they?
Ann
Topic:
APRIL 2000 BOOK -- MRS. DALLOWAY (130 of 137), Read 28
times
Conf:
CLASSICS CORNER
From:
Kay Dugan (okaychatt@mindspring.com)
Date:
Monday, April 10, 2000 07:54 AM
I think Clarissa and Peter are contemplating the lost passions and
expectations of youth, and are mourning that loss. They have not
found a definitive reason for life, and are frightened there may not
actually be one. They fear that they are entirely alone, and
though they are still a part of the thread of life, they are
wondering if any thing they have said or done will matter in the
long run. Their suspicion is that their having lived will not matter
one whit long term. And so, all that is left is to grab the moment.
Several characters talk about the self deception of youth. The
older lady in the park thinks that the girl has a lot to learn.
Clarissa looks back on her youthful friendship with Sally and Peter
with a smile, yet understands that that time is frozen, never to be
repeated. Peter also experiences an "older but wiser now" moment
as he is walking towards Clarissa's party. The tone of these
remembrances is of tolerance and acceptance that things will
never be the same, and that's ok, if a little frightening. What other
choice do they have if they don't want to give up the all too rare
moments when life overwhelms and just being is all there is?
Kay
Topic:
APRIL 2000 BOOK -- MRS. DALLOWAY (131 of 137), Read 30
times
Conf:
CLASSICS CORNER
From:
Dottie Randall (randallj@ix.netcom.com)
Date:
Monday, April 10, 2000 09:34 AM
Kay -- This hits a nerve relative to VW and her writing of Mrs. D
-- this was her book that would be THE book which would be her
mark.
The other thing is that perhaps this is mid-life angst we are
witnessing here on the part of many of these people -- or perhaps
the angst of realization that in the society of that time they are
all "old" or considered to be old by many if not most of the people
in that society. They are having a crisis here -- each in their own
way.
BUT even more in support of this -- VW herself was in a bit of that
same spot -- she is writing at about 40 years of age here -- she is
entering the time when the decision to have children is made
irrevocably due to her age -- actually they had been told they
should not have children but I am not certain if that was before
this book was written -- will have to double check that.
I just see so many parallels between this book and the characters
thoughts and attitudes and those of VW and her own circle that I
can't get things separated. BUT I continue to reread this -- will
still be back.
Dottie
ID is an oxymoron!
Topic:
APRIL 2000 BOOK -- MRS. DALLOWAY (132 of 137), Read 26
times
Conf:
CLASSICS CORNER
From:
Pres Lancaster (plancast@slip.net)
Date:
Monday, April 10, 2000 10:15 AM
In message #126 on 4/9 Susan said:
"I guess Clarissa's failure at Constantinople is just another string
cheese incident--there isn't a mention of it in THE VOYAGE OUT.
Teheran is mentioned as a place they'd intended to go to, but
disease kept them in Europe. Mention is made of the Dalloways
going through manufacturing centers in France, riding mules in
Spain to understand how the peasants live. In Lisbon, while
Richard met with ministers, Clarissa inspected the royal stables,
took snapshots of broken windows, photographed Fielding's grave,
and let a caged bird go free. They were on their way to Africa for
Richard to inspect guns when they entered the story. Their tour
was called "thoroughly unconventional, and followed no meditated
plan"-they just went where the Times foreign correspondents told
'em to go. . ."
This rang these bells: VW had a very close relationship
(euphemism!) with Vita Sackville-West who was married to Harold
Nicolson. Nicolson was an English diplomat and in the early years
of his marriage to VS-W he was posted to Teheran and Vita was
there with him. I do not know if the timing is right, but it looks to
me if VW borrowed some of her friend's background to flesh out
Clarissa. Nicolson, by the way, had been part of England's
delegation at negotiations at Versailles at the end of WWI. It
seems likely also that the diplomats in the book are drawn from
VS-W's life and associations though Vita wanted no part of that
world.
Pres, (I should sugar and preserve my days like fruit !)
Topic:
APRIL 2000 BOOK -- MRS. DALLOWAY (133 of 137), Read 24
times
Conf:
CLASSICS CORNER
From:
Dale Short (dshort5005@aol.com)
Date:
Monday, April 10, 2000 12:54 PM
Steve & All: Great thread, indeed. The stunning "match within the
crocus" image rang a bell with me too, but I'm blanking out on
where else it comes from. The only thing that comes to mind is
Dylan Thomas's poem, "The force that through the green fuse
drives the flower..." but I don't think that's it. (But the poem is
apropros to our mortality topic, I think, so I'll post it below.)
I also want to second Ruth's recommendation of Woolf's letters
and (especially) diary. The version I read was called Virginia
Woolf: A Writer's Diary, I think.
In general, diaries and letters and biography are not my favorite
reading material, but I've never felt such an eerie, overpowering
sense of having known someone who died before I was born as
when I read her diary. I went through an obsessive binge, about
this time last year, of reading everything by and about VW I could
get my hands on. I still recall the diary as supernaturally beautiful
and alive.
Oh, the poem...
THE FORCE THAT THROUGH THE GREEN FUSE DRIVES THE FLOWER
By Dylan Thomas
The force that through the green fuse drives the flower
Drives my green age; that blasts the roots of trees
Is my destroyer.
And I am dumb to tell the crooked rose
My youth is bent by the same wintry fever.
The force that drives the water through the rocks
Drives my red blood; that dries the mouthing streams
Turns mine to wax.
And I am dumb to mouth unto my veins
How at the mountain spring the same mouth sucks.
The hand that whirls the water in the pool
Stirs the quicksand; that ropes the blowing wind
Hauls my shroud sail.
And I am dumb to tell the hanging man
How of my clay is made the hangman's lime.
The lips of time leech to the fountain head;
Love drips and gathers, but the fallen blood
Shall calm her sores.
And I am dumb to tell a weather's wind
How time has ticked a heaven round the stars.
And I am dumb to tell the lover's tomb
How at my sheet goes the same crooked worm.
*****
>>Dale in Ala.
Topic:
APRIL 2000 BOOK -- MRS. DALLOWAY (134 of 137), Read 23
times
Conf:
CLASSICS CORNER
From:
Barbara Moors (bar647@aol.com)
Date:
Monday, April 10, 2000 05:06 PM
Ah yes, Steve, I recognized all of the individual traits, but didn't
group them under aging hippie. Actually, these attributes are
common to a lot of groups over time, aren't they? The names of
the groups just change.
Dan, did you ever finish rereading Mrs. Dalloway? I never reread
books because I have so much left unread. However, I'm certainly
tempted to do this one again after I finish The Hours. So much
seems affected by my thought process after finishing it. I want to
go back and see what I missed. If you did reread it, are you glad
you did?
I know there are a myriad of themes in this book. In one of my old
literature classes, we would have listed them. However, the main
one that I return to again and again is Clarissa Dalloway's reaction
to her youth. She sounds so bright and vibrant in her late teens,
open to experiences, flirting with a lesbian relationship. At some
point, whether it was her relationship with Sally or with Dennis or
everything in combination, she becomes afraid of all of her
possibilities, of it all churning out of control, and chooses a safe
life with Richard. It's a pretty common human situation, but Woolf
spins it out showing all the shades of the results of her choice.
And, on from there, she looks out the results of other choices:
Dennis', Sally's, Hugh's, even Septimus'. And, it doesn't seem to
me that she totally condemns or applauds any of them. In the
other book about the Dalloways that Susan described, it sounds
as if Woolf is making a lot of judgements. I didn't get that feeling
here. Though Clarissa Dalloway's life seemed terribly circumscribed,
it didn't seem empty.
So, do you all think I'm totally off-base about the main theme
here? It seems like a number of them have been discussed. Maybe
that's another sign of a great book.
Barb
Topic:
APRIL 2000 BOOK -- MRS. DALLOWAY (135 of 137), Read 18
times
Conf:
CLASSICS CORNER
From:
Kay Dugan (okaychatt@mindspring.com)
Date:
Monday, April 10, 2000 05:28 PM
Barbara-
You're right. The puzzle in Mrs. Dalloway is figuring what Woolf is
trying to tell her reader about life. I think she used Mrs. Dalloway
to sort through what matters most in life.
Depending on whose mind I'm sharing in any given sentence, I
would give a different answer to the question of a philosophy of
life. Clarissa thinks one thing, and Peter and Sally another. I had
trouble labeling any one voice as representing Woolf.
I think their outlooks have to be read as parts of a whole.
However, I do think Woolf ultimately favors Clarissa over the
others.
CR's - What would you say the lesson is? What do you take with
you from this novel, besides an intriguing read? An inquiring CR
wants to know.
Kay
Topic:
APRIL 2000 BOOK -- MRS. DALLOWAY (136 of 137), Read 5 times
Conf:
CLASSICS CORNER
From:
Daniel LeBoeuf (dan1066@yahoo.com)
Date:
Monday, April 10, 2000 09:32 PM
Barb: Yes, I have finished my second reading and highly
recommend it. As someone said earlier, you get a better sense of
the novel when you are able to grasp the names from the very
beginning. I noticed little nuances like Clarissa mentioning Peter
before her husband and such.
I want to return for a moment to Chris' posted quote concerning
Dalloway's sense of a external entity which permeates life. A lot of
the characters in this novel feel threads connecting them to
others. For Dalloway, it is a fine spider's web connecting. But
notice this when Elizabeth leaves Ms. Kilman at the cafe:
One had to pay at the desk, Elizabeth said, and went off, drawing
out, so Miss Kilman felt, the very entrails in her body, stretching
them as she crossed the room, and then, with a final twist,
bowing her head very politely, she went.
She had gone...Mrs. Dalloway had triumphed. Elizabeth had gone.
Beauty had gone, youth had gone.
Kilman is the only character within the novel with religion, and she
herself is another version of a Mrs. Dalloway: both have a sense of
being connected to others (though Kilman is more visceral) and
both want to know why do I have to suffer.
Mrs. Dalloway muses about suffering early in the novel and Peter
offers the suggestion that Clarissa, as a huge fan of Huxley and
others, believes that the only way to get back at a hateful God is
to be prim, proper, and apathetic. Kilman also wonders why she
suffers, but she turns it into a spiritual flagellation. In a sense, are
not Kilman and Clarissa two sides of the same coin? How does one
answer the question--to please the mind, the soul, and the
flesh--of why we suffer? Clarissa through social gatherings; Kilman
through fervent prayer and self-abnegation.
Dan
Topic:
APRIL 2000 BOOK -- MRS. DALLOWAY (137 of 137), Read 2 times
Conf:
CLASSICS CORNER
From:
Ernest Belden (drernest@juno.com)
Date:
Monday, April 10, 2000 10:48 PM
Barb, you are right this book produced one of the longest threads
I recall. This is to both my advantage and disadvantage. I got an
enormous amount out of reading about half of it and then had to
stop. Time was up! I finished the book a few days ago and will
once more attempt to sum up my impressions. It has an enormous
complexity and at the same time it lacks a plot. The book ex cells
in the description of personalities as well as their actions and
pathologies. As some of you have noted there is a proximity of
death that comes to the fore now and then. In an earlier note I
stated I was anxious to learn the ins and outs of the psychiatrist.
Well I did and what I learned I did not like. Some people act that
way to protect themselves, others are practical and insensitive.
By practical I mean they want to make a buck, or should I say a
pound any old way.
Obviously the book reflects much of VW's life and feeling and
especially her ambivalence. Ambivalence and ambiguity are two
key terms that came to my mind. These were the reasons that
made me think of impressionism. But I may have been very
wrong.There is an interconnection between people and their
actions. Well the book reflects the turmoil of VW's inner self. And
she herself can be found in the portrayal of many of the
characters that fill the pages.
Well, it's not a book one would read for pleasure as there is a
tragic undertone of her writing. What interested me as an ex-
military psychologist (Korean conflict) was the dissociation of the
ex soldier. (Whose name just now escapes me). The terror of his
experiences made him repress feelings. This must have followed
seeing his friend Evan getting killed. But he could not live not
being whole and eventually chose suicide.
After saying all these things I still got more out of this book than
of another of Woolf's book (To The Light House). But perhaps I
should read the latter over again and see what I get out of it next
time.
Today got The Hours by Cunningham and am dying of curiosity.
Ernie
Topic:
APRIL 2000 BOOK -- MRS. DALLOWAY (138 of 138), Read 67 times
Conf:
CLASSICS CORNER
From:
Dottie Randall (randallj@ix.netcom.com)
Date:
Tuesday, April 11, 2000 02:05 AM
Ernie -- Impressionism as a term was used in relation to some writing
of the same or a related time-frame and I think it is apt in regard to
Mrs. D -- each mind that we slide through is a point, a stroke , a
little bit of the puzzle of life.
Dan -- you said ... "How does one answer the question--to please
the mind, the soul, and the flesh--of why we suffer?" and that ties
right in with the comments of several CRs about the length and
depth of this thread -- when this key issue comes to the fore of the
discussion the discussion lengthens and deepens and branches. It is
humanity under the lens and VW had been working on this study for
a few years when she produced Mrs. D.
Ernie -- you are so right that VW and her own thoughts and life
experiences are permanently interwoven with this character in this
book.
But in thinking of the psychologists and psychiatrists and what they
did or didn't do -- try to keep in mind the relative newness of the
field at that point -- early physicians who were quite ethical and
intelligent used leeches and bled patients well into the time when
newer and better and wiser methods were available -- and this
psychiatrist was winding down -- he had settled in and did his
"known" thing -- he got results -- and in all honesty -- it was only
the delay which led to the death. If they had been more urgent in
taking Septimus to the hospital then perhaps the doctor would have
had another success story.
I had another thought but have lost it out the gray sieve!
Dottie
ID is an oxymoron!
Topic:
APRIL 2000 BOOK -- MRS. DALLOWAY (139 of 141), Read 12 times
Conf:
CLASSICS CORNER
From:
Steve Warbasse (wk4@uswest.net)
Date:
Wednesday, April 12, 2000 03:04 PM
Ernie, I think Dottie has a point about Bradshaw. One is hard
pressed to point to any particular behavior on his part that was
probably not within the realm of good practice at the time. Maybe
we should give him the benefit of the doubt whether the characters
did or not.
I take it that based on your experience, Virginia Woolf did a fairly
decent job of portraying symptoms in Septimus that one might
expect in a case of severe combat fatigue or shell shock or
whatever the proper name for the condition is? (I do not have my
DSM-IV handy.) Severe post-traumatic stress disorder maybe?
STEVE
Topic:
APRIL 2000 BOOK -- MRS. DALLOWAY (140 of 141), Read 14 times
Conf:
CLASSICS CORNER
From:
R Bavetta (rbavetta@prodigy.net)
Date:
Wednesday, April 12, 2000 03:50 PM
I agree. It seemed to me that Bradshaw was acting within what is
called "acceptable medical protocols" for his time and place. Perhaps
that's why VW's diatribe against him struck me as an authorial
intrusion. As if it had more to do with her personal grievances than
with the book she was writing.
Ruth
Topic:
APRIL 2000 BOOK -- MRS. DALLOWAY (141 of 141), Read 13 times
Conf:
CLASSICS CORNER
From:
Daniel LeBoeuf (dan1066@yahoo.com)
Date:
Wednesday, April 12, 2000 05:14 PM
I must be missing something here, Steve and Ruth: Bradshaw was a
self-assured, pompous ass with a "holier than thou" approach to the
cases which came before him. As Clarissa notes--she wouldn't want
to betray any human frailty before such a man. He is sterile, clinical
and in effect lacks a soul.
Maybe Woolf did not like the psychiatrists at the time, but I am not
convinced by the text that Dalloway's hatred of his mannerisms is
"authorial intrusion." Dalloway just has the same feelings that Rezia
had after encountering him. Remember Dalloway has visited
Bradshaw's practice with a friend just as Rezia has with her
husband. Both are not impressed with Bradshaw's bedside manner.
Besides, I feel like that about Zack's pediatrician--I trust his
judgements, appreciate his diagnosis, but I absolutely detest the
man and would never, ever want him over for dinner. I can see
where Dalloway would have similar loathing over Bradshaw.
Dan
Topic:
APRIL 2000 BOOK -- MRS. DALLOWAY (142 of 145), Read 12 times
Conf:
CLASSICS CORNER
From:
Dottie Randall (randallj@ix.netcom.com)
Date:
Thursday, April 13, 2000 12:31 PM
The way I see this is that it is the 20's and Mrs.D. is a society lady
-- at that stage there was still a LOT of stigma about seeking
psychiatric help and seeing the doctor in action just showed her
what the patients who WERE seeking help were really revealing and
what was actually happening with the treatment of mental illness. It
wasn't that she was decrying his methodology so much as she was
thinking that she was certainly never going to go talk of such things
to anyone in the guise of patient/doctor -- and this stems directly
from VW and her own feeling about such revelatory exchanges
between patient and doctor.
ALSO Clarissa has no one to compare him to -- she has only seen
what she saw in his office -- and I don't recall but I think it was not
very real or definitive of the doctor's real ability -- she doesn't know
anything else of the profession as far as I can tell.
And the holier than thou pompous ass thing -- well -- maybe he
developed that through being famous -- lots of famous folks fall into
that trap -- but from where I was reading it sounded like even if he
was pompous he sounded like he had some sort of plan for dealing
with Septimus -- but it wouldn't wait another day -- so!
Dottie -- who had a long battle to get this posted so hope it
actually winds up in the right spot!
ID is an oxymoron!
Topic:
APRIL 2000 BOOK -- MRS. DALLOWAY (143 of 145), Read 15 times
Conf:
CLASSICS CORNER
From:
Dale Short (dshort5005@aol.com)
Date:
Thursday, April 13, 2000 01:07 PM
Dottie: Your interpretation of the psychiatrist deal in MRS.
DALLOWAY makes a lot of sense to me.
Especially in view of the fact that I was struck down by my first
acute clinical depression in 1989 B.P. (before Prozac) and
desperately spent half an hour spilling my guts (figuratively) to my
assigned mental-health professional, i.e. how terrified I was of
psychoactive drugs and of psychiatry in general because my father
was both codeine-addicted and underwent "shock therapy" in its
infancy (1960?) after which time he was a much kinder and gentler
dad but a large segment of his brain cells seemed to be gone.
This doctor's response, to my extended gut-pouring? "Hey," he
shrugged. "Medicine isn't pretty."
The Amitryptaline he prescribed most likely saved my life, but until
this day, in my dreams, (apologies to Coach Bobby Knight), I still
want to get my hands around that SOB's neck.
>>Dale in Ala.
Topic:
APRIL 2000 BOOK -- MRS. DALLOWAY (144 of 145), Read 13 times
Conf:
CLASSICS CORNER
From:
Kay Dugan (okaychatt@mindspring.com)
Date:
Thursday, April 13, 2000 04:53 PM
Dale-
Some psychiatrists seem more caught up in treating the chemical
side of mental illness and depression. They prefer treating the
symptoms rather than the cause of the distress.
I think Dr. Bradshaw was a symptom treater, and did not have any
guidelines or inclination to connect emotionally with Septimus.
Emotions are messy. It's cleaner to just throw some meds at a
patient, and wait for results. Of course, a combination of the two is
most often what is called for.
Sounds as if you had the bad luck of crashing into a symptom
treater.
Kay
Topic:
APRIL 2000 BOOK -- MRS. DALLOWAY (145 of 145), Read 11 times
Conf:
CLASSICS CORNER
From:
Steve Warbasse (wk4@uswest.net)
Date:
Thursday, April 13, 2000 05:14 PM
Dale, I knew something of your travails in connection with seeking
psychiatric help. I have never sought treatment from a psychiatrist,
thank goodness, but I did go to a few sessions with a clinical
psychologist for a time not too long ago in an attempt to sort out
the causes of my chronic difficulties with women. For her part she
made a valiant and sensitive attempt at this, but I did not derive
too much benefit from her efforts. During my sessions with her I was
continually distracted from the subject at hand trying to look up her
skirt.
STEVE
Topic:
APRIL 2000 BOOK -- MRS. DALLOWAY (146 of 156), Read 31 times
Conf:
CLASSICS CORNER
From:
Ann Davey (davey@tconl.com)
Date:
Thursday, April 13, 2000 09:58 PM
Dale,
My mother was treated by electric shock therapy in an even earlier
day when it was a really terrifying experience for the patients
because they hadn't figured out how to sedate them first.
I have nothing against talk therapy, but I think that it is difficult for
people who have no first hand experience with mood disorders to
realize how much of the problem is based in biology. The meds aren't
just an easy way out. They rectify a chemical imbalance--as you
and I both know.
The author obviously despised Bradshaw and the other doctor. I
didn't think he did anything that objectionable in the text. Sure he
was smug and he made a lot of money off his practice because he
understood how to deal with the families of the patients. However,
the real problem was that he had nothing to offer his patients
because medical science hadn't advanced far enough.
Incidentally, I just read today that Zoloft, a modern
anti-depressant, has been approved for post traumatic stress
syndrome. If only Septimus had lived in another age.
Ann
Topic:
APRIL 2000 BOOK -- MRS. DALLOWAY (147 of 156), Read 32 times
Conf:
CLASSICS CORNER
From:
Kay Dugan (okaychatt@mindspring.com)
Date:
Thursday, April 13, 2000 10:32 PM
Ann-
You are right about chemical imbalance being a large part of mood
disorders. I did not mean to disparage that as a *part* of a
treatment program.
I do think that some psychiatrists, like Bradshaw, are more intrigued
with the scientific chemical imbalance than dealing with the
emotional cause of a disorder. When/if the meds don't do the trick
by themselves, and the psychiatrists don't wish to work one to one
with the patient, they tend to lose interest. The good ones refer
that patient on to someone with the patience to deal with the
emotions.
Bradshaw was working in a new field, with little to no scientific
research to back him up. However, even if he had had access to
today's meds and treatments, I do not think he would have had the
interest or patience to deal with Septimus' raging emotional life.
Kay
Topic:
APRIL 2000 BOOK -- MRS. DALLOWAY (148 of 156), Read 26 times
Conf:
CLASSICS CORNER
From:
Dottie Randall (randallj@ix.netcom.com)
Date:
Friday, April 14, 2000 02:07 AM
On 4/13/00 10:32:12 PM, Kay Dugan wrote>
>...Bradshaw was working in a new
>field, with little to no
>scientific research to back
>him up. However, even if he
>had had access to today's meds
>and treatments, I do not think
>he would have had the interest
>or patience to deal with
>Septimus' raging emotional
>life.
>
>Kay
>
This is my sticking point on this -- the facts are that things were
definitely different in this field at the time. But we cannot know
everything about how this man became so acclaimed and cannot
judge from what we have presented to us that he might not have at
a different moment have seen that delay was wrong -- perhaps
even would have acted entirely differently to pursue the
hospitalization of Septimus more aggressively. I think his very
willingness to get into his patient's raging emotional lives was what
made Clarissa shrink from the idea of ever needing to talk to such a
man and was the KEY to his very acclaim in the field.
Dottie
ID is an oxymoron!
Topic:
APRIL 2000 BOOK -- MRS. DALLOWAY (149 of 156), Read 25 times
Conf:
CLASSICS CORNER
From:
Kay Dugan (okaychatt@mindspring.com)
Date:
Friday, April 14, 2000 04:43 AM
Dottie-
Could be, but I think Bradshaw's acclaim was due to not much more
than simply being one of the first to specialize in the field of mental
health. He and his idiot wife used Septimus' death as an entreé to a
conversation at a party, and seemed to relish its shock value. I did
not get the sense that he was overly distraught, though he did say
he wished he could have helped him. I think he would have
recovered nicely by the end of the party.
I've sent my copy of Mrs. Dalloway back, but didn't Woolf say
something about Bradshaw wanting to keep his wife happy by
attending the right parties? I got the impression he was more
interested in his seat in Parliament than his practice.
I think what really set my teeth on edge was his condescending
conversation with Rezia. Good gravy Marie! All Septimus had been
doing was resting, and it wasn't helping him one iota. An expensive
stay at Bradshaw's retreat wouldn't have helped anything except his
pocket book.
Kay
Topic:
APRIL 2000 BOOK -- MRS. DALLOWAY (150 of 156), Read 26 times
Conf:
CLASSICS CORNER
From:
Dottie Randall (randallj@ix.netcom.com)
Date:
Friday, April 14, 2000 04:56 AM
Kay -- I will have to check out the conversations -- they are
already faded into the overall aura of the book -- life is interrupting
my re-reading of Mrs. D.-- sheesh! -- so I may just start searching
out specifics and re-reading those!
Dottie
ID is an oxymoron!
Topic:
APRIL 2000 BOOK -- MRS. DALLOWAY (151 of 156), Read 22 times
Conf:
CLASSICS CORNER
From:
Dale Short (dshort5005@aol.com)
Date:
Friday, April 14, 2000 08:08 AM
Ann & All: Despite the dramatic changes in the field of psychiatry,
I'm continually amazed by the arrogance and insensitivity with which
otherwise reasonable people approach the subject of mental illness.
I've had people tell me that they "don't believe in drugs," and that
medicine was "just a way of avoiding the problem." And I've had
people tell me that if I "got closer to the Lord and prayed more" I'd
soon find medication unnecessary.
I know biology is rarely 100% of a problem, but I've seen so many
modern-day versions of Septimus who could have been saved by
medication that I can't help being an evangelist for the stuff.
>>Dale in Ala.
Topic:
APRIL 2000 BOOK -- MRS. DALLOWAY (152 of 156), Read 27 times
Conf:
CLASSICS CORNER
From:
Sara Brennan (se_brennan@hotmail.com)
Date:
Friday, April 14, 2000 08:16 AM
Amen, brother!
Topic:
APRIL 2000 BOOK -- MRS. DALLOWAY (153 of 156), Read 20 times
Conf:
CLASSICS CORNER
From:
Ann Davey (davey@tconl.com)
Date:
Friday, April 14, 2000 08:35 AM
Dale,
I agree with you 100%. Your comments about prayer and mental
illness recalled a radio program I heard recently on NPR. It was a
story about fundamental Christian religions featured on This
American Life. The journalist meets an obviously clinically depressed
young woman, who can find no reason in her life to explain her
feelings of worthlessness and despair. She is very religious and
concludes that her illness is caused by the devil. The solution is to
pray even harder.
Ann
Topic:
MRS. DALLOWAY, PART II, 4-14-2000 (1 of 5), Read 23 times
Conf:
CLASSICS CORNER
From:
Ann Davey (davey@tconl.com)
Date:
Friday, April 14, 2000 08:41 AM
Septimus heard voices, had grandiose ideas, suffered from
disordered thought patterns, and had recurrent suicidal impulses.
This story takes place in the 1920's, and the First World War ended
in 1918, so Septimus had obviously been ill for a long time. What's
more, his illness had reached a very serious stage.
At least Bradshaw recognized the reality of his illness, unlike Dr.
Holmes, who kept telling Rezia nothing was wrong with her husband.
Hospitalization (the equivalent of Bradshaw's "rest" home) was
indicated. Kay could definitely be right that Bradshaw was motivated
more by money than concern for Septimus. His rest homes were
financially rewarding because he treated people from wealthy
families, although Septimus himself was an ordinary working man.
Would the suicide have been prevented if Septimus had gone
immediately to one of these homes? Possibly. Would that have been
a good thing? I'm not so sure. For me, Septimus' life was more tragic
than his death.
I liked his wife Rezia very much, and I thought she was one of the
best drawn characters in the book. Woolf did an excellent job of
entering her mind and giving the reader a picture of her
contradictory and ever changing feelings.
Rezia's lot was a very difficult one. She was only 24 years old, living
in a foreign country with a 30 year old mentally disturbed husband
whom no one could help. Her loneliness and fear were palpable. If
she seemed harsh at the beginning of the novel, even wishing him
dead at times, that made her real.
Woolf was careful to show that there was also another side to her.
She obviously loved her husband. This was evidenced by her
distress at Bradshaw's plan to separate them and her joy when
Septimus momentarily retreated from his own private world to help
her decorate the hat.
At the end of the hat incident, Woolf writes:
He had become himself then, he had laughed then. They had been
alone together.
I find that last line very poignant.
All and all, Rezia's problems make Clarissa's look pretty pale in
comparison, don't you think? Rezia was trying to cope with a
seriously ill husband. Clarissa was worried about orchestrating a
successful party.
Topic:
MRS. DALLOWAY, PART II, 4-14-2000 (2 of 5), Read 22 times
Conf:
CLASSICS CORNER
From:
Ann Davey (davey@tconl.com)
Date:
Friday, April 14, 2000 08:50 AM
Note from Mary Anne Papale, copied from first Mrs. Dalloway thread
This is my first time here on Classics Corner, but since I love VW,
and I love Mrs. D, I just had to plunge in here. I viewed Dr.
Bradshaw as the "psychiatrist for the rich and famous". I spend too
much time around doctors not to be cynical, but I can say that
there are many practioners who develop that air of arrogance,
because they have everyone convinced that they are the best. I
can certainly imagine VW herself going to "the best" physicians, but
running
headlong into that arrogance, setting her teeth on edge.
As I mentioned, VW's writing does something to me like no other
author. I am enveloped. I fully understand what it means to live in
the present. I feel like a voyeur into inner thoughts.
MAP
Topic:
MRS. DALLOWAY, PART II, 4-14-2000 (3 of 5), Read 21 times
Conf:
CLASSICS CORNER
From:
Ann Davey (davey@tconl.com)
Date:
Friday, April 14, 2000 08:56 AM
Mary Anne,
Glad to see that we have finally lured you here to Classics Corner! I
think many doctors suffer from the "God thing," as the pompous
doctor on the old Maude TV show used to phrase it.
Ann
Topic:
MRS. DALLOWAY, PART II, 4-14-2000 (4 of 5), Read 18 times
Conf:
CLASSICS CORNER
From:
Dale Short (dshort5005@aol.com)
Date:
Friday, April 14, 2000 09:11 AM
Ann: There's also the old joke...
Q: What's the difference between doctors and God?
A: God never thinks he's a doctor.
>>Dale in Ala.
Topic:
MRS. DALLOWAY, PART II, 4-14-2000 (5 of 5), Read 17 times
Conf:
CLASSICS CORNER
From:
R Bavetta (rbavetta@prodigy.net)
Date:
Friday, April 14, 2000 10:46 AM
You mean all these years I've been asking God to empty the
dishwasher?
Ruth
Topic:
MRS. DALLOWAY, PART II, 4-14-2000 (6 of 6), Read 32 times
Conf:
CLASSICS CORNER
From:
Dottie Randall (randallj@ix.netcom.com)
Date:
Friday, April 14, 2000 04:57 PM
Ruth -- possibly!
Ah, but Ann -- Clarissa is dealing with far more than a party -- she
has been ill and is adapting to life with heart problems resulting from
the illness, she is dealing with menopausal, mid-life, impending
empty-nest and loss (again) of her first love and is also thinking
that her husband is being wooed and wined and dined without her
included (the scheming lunch about helping Peter to which Clarissa
was not invited) -- all as she prepares for an important social event
as it turns out -- since the Prime Minister turns up!
Rezia seemed to have torn feelings -- about being independent and
staying put no matter what and returning home and living with what
everyone there would say and think of her return and the reason for
that return IF it were to be known. I agree she is one of the better
drawn characters and I thought she was definitely a strong woman
in comparison to the society women depicted. VW had some close
experience with the working class folk -- through teaching some
classes for them.
Dottie
ID is an oxymoron!
Topic:
MRS. DALLOWAY, PART II, 4-14-2000 (7 of 13), Read 23 times
Conf:
CLASSICS CORNER
From:
Christina Devitt (cdevitt@packer.edu)
Date:
Saturday, April 22, 2000 11:19 AM
During a recent conversation about MRS. DALLOWAY and THE
HOURS, my friend the English teacher (I've given her the URL) asked
a question that kept us talking for awhile, one which I am still
pondering and thought I'd pose here. The question: Aside from the
obvious time/place differences, how was TH the same as/different
from MD? We both admired TH, but felt it never approached the
quality of character development in MD. I felt TH was more of an
intellectual exercise, a puzzle. For me, TH was less melancholy,
more cynical in tone in comparison to MD.
Topic:
MRS. DALLOWAY, PART II, 4-14-2000 (8 of 13), Read 23 times
Conf:
CLASSICS CORNER
From:
Kay Dugan (okaychatt@mindspring.com)
Date:
Saturday, April 22, 2000 12:47 PM
Christina-
I had similar experiences reading MD and TH. In TH, I was so
intrigued by Cunningham's attempt to emulate and expound on the
themes of MD. For me, I experienced TH from an onlooker's point of
view.
On the other hand, while I was reading MD, I found myself reading
from the inside of the characters. MD was both an intellectual and
an emotional reading experience for me.
On the whole, I am drawn more to Woolf than Cunningham. MD will
stay on my bookshelf, whereas TH is waiting to be traded at our
used book store. I am eager to read more Virginia Woolf, but find I
can wait to read another Cunningham work.
Kay
Topic:
MRS. DALLOWAY, PART II, 4-14-2000 (9 of 13), Read 17 times
Conf:
CLASSICS CORNER
From:
Dottie Randall (randallj@ix.netcom.com)
Date:
Saturday, April 22, 2000 05:02 PM
Christina and Kay -- I think the 'less melancholy/more cynical'
statement concerning The Hours could very well hold -- but I think
it also would reflect the difference in time periods -- The Hours is
set in a later time -- the only related period is the VW section which
is the same time as the setting of Mrs Dalloway -- but the fact that
one is a fiction of the period and the VW sections are biographically
based may blur the similarities enough to nullify this.
Interesting, Kay, that you are throwing The Hours into the trade pile
-- I will keep it on the shelf next to Mrs. D because I need to let
both rest for a long while and then tackle them the other way
around from what I did this time. I want to also do some more
comparisons -- so both need to hang around a while.
Dottie
ID is an oxymoron!
Topic:
MRS. DALLOWAY, PART II, 4-14-2000 (10 of 13), Read 15 times
Conf:
CLASSICS CORNER
From:
R Bavetta (rbavetta@prodigy.net)
Date:
Saturday, April 22, 2000 05:45 PM
Funny, I felt much closer to the characters in TH than MD. I find
Woolf's writing much more conscious, much more mannered, so that
all the time I'm reading I'm aware of the writer writing. In TH, I was
just sucked into the story and the characters.
Ruth, always out of step
Topic:
MRS. DALLOWAY, PART II, 4-14-2000 (11 of 13), Read 15 times
Conf:
CLASSICS CORNER
From:
Sherry Keller (shkell@earthlink.net)
Date:
Saturday, April 22, 2000 05:58 PM
And then I liked them both, but for different reasons. I wasn't
consciously comparing TH to MD; I tried to let it just wash over me,
as if I hadn't read MD. When the connections were obvious, they
felt very right and unforced. I didn't think the book was morbid at
all. Just goes to show how differently we can interpret these things.
And that's just wonderful. How boring if we all experienced
everything the same.
Sherry
Topic:
MRS. DALLOWAY, PART II, 4-14-2000 (12 of 13), Read 9 times
Conf:
CLASSICS CORNER
From:
Ann Davey (davey@tconl.com)
Date:
Saturday, April 22, 2000 09:20 PM
Christina,
Very interesting observations. Could you elaborate a little on the
statement that THE HOURS was more "cynical"? I wouldn't have
applied that word to it, but you must have seen something I didn't.
Ann
Topic:
MRS. DALLOWAY, PART II, 4-14-2000 (13 of 13), Read 2 times
Conf:
CLASSICS CORNER
From:
Tonya Presley (tpresley@swbell.net)
Date:
Sunday, April 23, 2000 01:59 AM
I didn't read Mrs. Dalloway, but I got some sort of look at all the
messages, scanning some and reading more as I copied and pasted
them to their web page. And so when I read The Hours, there were
a ton of things I'd already seen mentioned in this topic which
seemed familiar.
There were flowers everywhere. There was a party in the
preparation stage. There was the kiss from MD echoed in the VW
section (with her sister) and in the middle section (with the
neighbor). There was, of course, a suicide. And a lot more.
But, I feel your question is in regard to the bigger picture, and as to
that I can only say that The Hours had a dreamy quality that I
sensed was also there in Mrs. Dalloway.
Tonya
Topic:
MRS. DALLOWAY, PART II, 4-14-2000 (14 of 15), Read 29 times
Conf:
CLASSICS CORNER
From:
Christina Devitt (cdevitt@packer.edu)
Date:
Sunday, April 23, 2000 07:55 PM
Ann, I feel torn between this thread and the CR one about TH, but I
decided to post more about TH in CR, probably because to me it
seems impossible to read TH without reading MD, but reading MD
and not TH seems more plausible so I don't want to tangle this
thread. Newbie learning protocol - Christina
Topic:
MRS. DALLOWAY, PART II, 4-14-2000 (15 of 15), Read 28 times
Conf:
CLASSICS CORNER
From:
Steve Warbasse (wk4@uswest.net)
Date:
Monday, April 24, 2000 06:50 AM
Christina, I think you can be assured that in much less than ten
years Michael Cunningham will be the answer to a literary trivia
question. (Who won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1999?) Virginia
Woolf, who has already endured for a long time, will have a large
following for many decades to come.
STEVE
Topic:
MRS. DALLOWAY, PART II, 4-14-2000 (16 of 17), Read 13 times
Conf:
CLASSICS CORNER
From:
Edd Houghton (eddh@pacbell.net)
Date:
Thursday, April 27, 2000 04:13 PM
I find it interesting that Peter doesn't seem to fit into the cast of
characters that Mrs Woolf presents us. He isn't just a little
different, he seems to me to be socially unacceptable. Why do
they tolerate him? He doesn't seem to have any social standing;
no titles. And someone who plays with a knife at social
gatherings; why tolerate it? And the next little excerpt shows
Peter wandering the streets of London, following young women.
This man has a very, very dark and incipient evil side. Of course
the events take place, in one day, so we don't know what
happens on day two. I would bet that Peter does some woman in.
"… But she's extraordinarily attractive, he thought, as,
walking across Trafalgar Square in the direction of the
Haymarket, came a young woman who, as she passed
Gordon's statue, seemed, Peter Walsh thought (susceptible
as he was), to shed veil after veil, until she became the very
woman he had always had in mind; young, but stately;
merry, but discreet; black, but enchanting.
Straightening himself and stealthily fingering his
pocket-knife he started after her to follow this woman, this
excitement, which seemed even with its back turned to shed
on him a light which connected them, which singled him out,
as if the random uproar of the traffic had whispered through
hollowed hands his name, not Peter, but his private name
which he called himself in his own thoughts. "You," she said,
only "you," saying it with her white gloves and her
shoulders. Then
Then the thin long cloak which the wind stirred as she walked
past Dent's shop in Cockspur Street blew out with an
enveloping kindness, a mournful tenderness, as of arms that
would open and take the tired-
But she's not married; she's young; quite young, thought
Peter, the red carnation he had seen her wear as she came
across Trafalgar Square burning again in his eyes and
making her lips red. But she waited at the kerbstone. There
was a dignity about her. She was not worldly, like Clarissa;
not rich, like Clarissa. Was she, he wondered as she moved,
respectable? Witty, with a lizard's flickering tongue, he
thought (for one must invent, must allow oneself a little
diversion), a cool waiting wit, a darting wit; not noisey.
She moved; she crossed; he followed her. To embarrass her
was the last thing he wished. Still if she stopped he would
say "Come and have an ice," he would say, and she would
answer, perfectly simply, "Oh yes."
But other people got between them in the street,
obstructing him, blotting her out. He pursued; she changed.
There was colour in her cheeks; mockery in her eyes; he was
an adventurer, reckless,, he thought, swift, daring, indeed
(damned as he was last night from India) a romantic
buccaneer, careless of all these damned proprieties, yellow
dressing-gowns, pipes, fishing-rods, in the shop windows;
and respectability and evening parties and spruce old men
wearing white slips beneath their waistcoats. He was a
buccaneer. On and on she went, across Piccadilly, and up
Regent Street, ahead of him, her cloak, her gloves, her
shoulders combining with the fringes and the laces and the
finery and whimsy which dwindled out of the shops on to the
pavement, as the light of a lamp goes wavering at the night
over hedges and darkness.
Laughing and delightful, she had crossed Oxford Street and
Great Portland Street and turned down one of the little
streets, and now, the great moment was approaching, for
now she slackened, opened her bag, and with one look in his
direction, but not at him, one look that bade farewell,
summed up the whole situation and dismissed it
triumphantly, for ever, had fitted her key, opened the door,
and gone! Remember my party, sang in his ears. The house
was one of those flat red houses with hanging
flower-baskets of vague impropriety. It was over.
Well, I've had my fun…… "
This sure doesn't sound like Mr Nice Guy roaming the London
streets. And old Peter, you can be sure has his hand on his knife
all the time. Nobody recognizes this guy as dangerous? Why not?
Peter is the most incongruous character in the book, to me. Even
Septimus is part of the London scene. Peter is a dark, dark
character. I would love to get hold of the London Times for the
next day, and find out what women had their throats slit. And
now that Peter has seen Elizabeth, is she safe? Or is it only
Indian (black) women that Peter goes after. The Ripper is back
and all that.
Another book written about the same time (I think) is DEATH OF
A NOBODY. Where Jule Romain shows how a funeral procession
affects the various people on its path. It's been so long since I
read this that I can only remember the concept is similar.
EDD
Topic:
MRS. DALLOWAY, PART II, 4-14-2000 (17 of 17), Read 5 times
Conf:
CLASSICS CORNER
From:
R Bavetta (rbavetta@prodigy.net)
Date:
Thursday, April 27, 2000 10:09 PM
Isn't that funny, Edd. The way you present him, Peter does
indeed sound rather sinister. But when I was reading the book, he
was the only character I warmed up to.
Ruth, wondering if she should be admitting this
Topic:
MRS. DALLOWAY, PART II, 4-14-2000 (18 of 21), Read 19 times
Conf:
CLASSICS CORNER
From:
Dottie Randall (randallj@ix.netcom.com)
Date:
Friday, April 28, 2000 03:07 AM
Too funny -- he does sound sinister in this selected portion and
the ongoing knife thing -- but I took the knife thing to be an
uneasiness with the situation -- social or sexual or whatever in
which Peter found himself -- unsure of his place within the
society of which he definitely WAS a part as he referred to his
falling into his family's connections in India against all his
inclinations and feelings about the overall Brit-India scene in
those times. That penknife seems to me to be somewhat a phallic
symbol here and there in this novel.
But -- Ruth -- I agree with your assessment -- I, too, found
Peter to be the more accessible and human character in Mrs.D --
interesting.
Dottie -- typing one-handed basically due to her first experience
of a wonderfully efficient emergency room system in Hasselt after
slicing my left thumb open an inch and a half long and about1/8
or so deep at a slight angle. NOT fun but nice to see this system
in action.
ID is an oxymoron!
Topic:
MRS. DALLOWAY, PART II, 4-14-2000 (19 of 21), Read 22 times
Conf:
CLASSICS CORNER
From:
Sherry Keller (shkell@earthlink.net)
Date:
Friday, April 28, 2000 08:14 AM
Edd,
I admit to liking Peter, too, but because he was Peter Pan, a little
boy type, who never really grew up. I think the passage you
quoted could be thought of as sinister, but I looked at it as Peter
dreaming again. His head was turned by a pretty face; he was
impetuous and romantically hopeful. I think the knife fondling was
a nervous habit. He just didn't know what to do with hands.
Sherry
Topic:
MRS. DALLOWAY, PART II, 4-14-2000 (20 of 21), Read 22 times
Conf:
CLASSICS CORNER
From:
Steve Warbasse (wk4@uswest.net)
Date:
Friday, April 28, 2000 08:29 AM
And it was a very tiny knife after all.
STEVE
Topic:
MRS. DALLOWAY, PART II, 4-14-2000 (21 of 21), Read 22 times
Conf:
CLASSICS CORNER
From:
Anonymous ()
Date:
Friday, April 28, 2000 08:51 AM
Who said so?
Topic:
MRS. DALLOWAY, PART II, 4-14-2000 (22 of 24), Read 18 times
Conf:
CLASSICS CORNER
From:
Steve Warbasse (wk4@uswest.net)
Date:
Saturday, April 29, 2000 08:35 AM
I have pondered your note for a couple days, Edd. While it is an
interesting interpretation of Peter, I cannot go along with it.
Perhaps it is because I so strongly identify with Peter Walsh, as I
have said a couple times before. He is precisely my age, and
more importantly, for me slipping into his thoughts is like slipping
into a fitted glove.
I am still convinced that Peter Walsh is a harmless man deep into
the second half of his life. (The half-time intermission was over
long ago. In fact they're almost ready to cut off the beer sales.)
He is relatively bright but has never triumphed vocationally
because his head was in the clouds too often. He reads too
much. He has a long history of difficulties with women. The little
pen knife is just a nervous habit.
While admittedly this passage could very well appear in a book
about a psycho, in context it is simply the thoughts of an old
goof fantasizing about a beautiful and very young woman he
happens upon in the street. Take my word for it. I know whereof
I speak.
STEVE
Topic:
MRS. DALLOWAY, PART II, 4-14-2000 (23 of 24), Read 17 times
Conf:
CLASSICS CORNER
From:
Dottie Randall (randallj@ix.netcom.com)
Date:
Saturday, April 29, 2000 11:45 AM
An old goof who is momentarily suspended between his youth and
that gaping hole in the fourth quarter maybe? He was all set to
be aloof with Clarissa and fell in love all over again as he always
does when he sees her/thinks of her -- he is in love with love but
doesn't want anyone since he can't have his dream love. so he
goes on dreaming!
Dottie -- and men still play with pen knives -- even in social
situations -- I have a pen knife story of my own from October --
it isn't a lost bit of culture at all -- i countered by pulling out my
replica Barlow(e)!
ID is an oxymoron!
Topic:
MRS. DALLOWAY, PART II, 4-14-2000 (24 of 24), Read 6 times
Conf:
CLASSICS CORNER
From:
Daniel LeBoeuf (dan1066@yahoo.com)
Date:
Sunday, April 30, 2000 09:36 PM
And while we're on the subject of stalkers, did anyone notice
that Elizabeth, Mrs. Dalloway's daughter, is "stalked" by a "pirate"
during her romp on the train? I would write the passage, but I
wife is presently reading the book. If I recall correctly, Elizabeth
is pleased to get such attention.
Shiver me timbers, indeed.
Dan
Topic:
MRS. DALLOWAY, PART II, 4-14-2000 (26 of 28), Read 20 times
Conf:
CLASSICS CORNER
From:
Edd Houghton (eddh@pacbell.net)
Date:
Sunday, May 07, 2000 07:50 PM
DAN wrote:
"And while we're on the subject of stalkers, did anyone
notice that Elizabeth, Mrs.Dalloway's daughter, is "stalked"
by a "pirate" during her romp on the train?"
It's all the more interesting because Peter refers to himself as a
"buccaneer". Either Peter is getting around a whole lot or there's
something we're missing. Is it possible that "buccaneer" and
"pirate" are slang terms that go right over our heads? The
trouble is that most slang has a very short shelf life, and is out
of usage before someone thinks to write it down. If that's the
case, then I'd vote for these terms to be interchangeable with
our "stud" or "hunk".
EDD possibly beating a dead rhinoceros, but Peter is scary.
Topic:
MRS. DALLOWAY, PART II, 4-14-2000 (27 of 28), Read 9 times
Conf:
CLASSICS CORNER
From:
Dottie Randall (randallj@ix.netcom.com)
Date:
Monday, May 08, 2000 02:28 AM
EDD, EDD -- I'm telling you Peter is harmless enough -- he's just
a romantic -- and he's been out of the "real" world out there in
India for a LONG time -- and he's dreaming about that girl he's
come to get things straightened out to marry but isn't sure he
wants to marry. And -- think about that penknife some more.
Dottie -- thinking about this once more
ID is an oxymoron!
Topic:
MRS. DALLOWAY, PART II, 4-14-2000 (28 of 28), Read 6 times
Conf:
CLASSICS CORNER
From:
Sherry Keller (shkell@earthlink.net)
Date:
Monday, May 08, 2000 07:27 AM
Edd, you read too many mysteries (G). Always looking at the
details and trying to figure out who the bad guy will be. If this
were a thriller, then I'm sure Peter would be the one who done
it.
Sherry
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Virginia Woolf
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