And ...
Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
A warm June morning in London in 1923. Clarissa, the eponymous Mrs Dalloway, is walking about the capital, shopping for flowers for one of her famous parties that she is giving that evening.
She muses as she walks; considers her husband and former suitors; contemplates old friends and summer holidays long gone.
Around her, people stop and gaze in awe as a car carrying a notable person – the Queen? The Prince of Wales? The Prime Minister? – passes by.
Nearby, Septimus Warren Smith and his wife walk too, on their way to see an eminent doctor who might be able to help with his increasingly erratic and unstable behaviour, frightening his wife as he threatens to kill himself.
And Peter Walsh has arrived home from India, with the wreckage of his relationships behind him, to find that, 30 years down the line, he is still in love with Clarissa.
In Virginia Woolf's novel, set over the course of the one day and culminating in the party, these characters spin their threads across the capital, sometimes interacting but, at other times, brushing past each other as they make their way toward the evening.
The prose is not instantly easy – it is intended to reflect the internal dialogue and Woolf creates the disjointedness of that superbly. But to read it requires a concentration to find the rhythm – the ebb and flow – of the language.
But what is it 'about'? Well, many things. Primarily, it's about ageing and coming to terms with that, and with one's own impending mortality. Clarissa fears her own post-menopausal decline; dreads her charms, her sexual being, fading and, with it, a part of her married life. She is jealous when she finds that her husband has been invited, without her, to a luncheon with Lady Bruton – even though Lady Bruton is older than she is – and considers it to be the beginning of the end.
For Peter, there are regrets – he feels that he has never recovered from loving Clarissa; that he has never loved again and that it has cast a shadow over his subsequent life.
During the novel, both come to accept the pleasure of maturity, of mature contemplation.
For Septimus, however, the reality is different. A veteran of WWI, he watched as friends were killed, yet proudly managed to become 'manly' and quash any emotional response. Now, five years after the Armistice, he is shell-shocked and seriously ill.
Below these stories there are countless layers. For Woolf, there is the issue of how we treat those with a mental illness. She herself suffered mental problems and eventually drowned herself rather than risk another bout of illness. She's scathing of the doctors who 'treat' Septimus. But she also highlights the continuing, at that time, problem of shell-shocked veterans (Siegfied Sassoon was a friend) and the way in which society as a whole, recovering from the war, tried to ignore it, to brush the issue under the carpet. She sees, it seems, suicide as a completely honourable option – and those who decry it as 'cowardly' are vilified in the novel.
Other characters might muse on the war, but it is in generalised terms, without any concrete understanding of the suffering that that meant. Statues of royal, military and political figures are noted frequently in the first part of the novel – they serve to remind of Britain's imperial might and success, not least to characters musing on such matters. But, as with the people of all classes who ogle at the passing car, doffing their hats, praising whichever figure they believe to be inside and feeling a patriotic glow, they also serve as a public curtain – as symbols of power and of nation and of patriotism that hide the Septimus Warren Smiths of the world from inconvenient view.
Patriotism is shallow – it is the acceptable face of the suffering that war creates. And it is what makes war acceptable.
The book is regarded as a feminist classic, primarily on the basis that Clarissa is read as a symbol of how restricted women were at the time. But Clarissa has chosen her path – and she had alternatives. And as Woolf makes clear many times, Clarissa is a snob. She frittered away what intellectual talents she had in throwing parties for the rich and famous and powerful. Sally, the independent friend of her youth, made different decisions and does not have to have the doubts that Clarissa does – yet those decisions led Sally to a very conventional life.
Reading the book from a certain kind of feminist perspective, was Woolf saying that Sally's existence was negative, in the same way that Clarissa's could be said to be? That seems to be stretching things considerably; there is nothing to indicate that Woolf thinks Sally has made bad choices – in which case, she seems to be saying that choices are crucial. As with suicide, this seems to be about assuming personal responsibility. Don't be conventional for the sake of it; don't live for the sake of it if that means being taken over – in effect, being controlled – by those who think that they know what you must do. These strands are not dissimilar. And they say that, even with restrictions, you still have the power of choice.
Women in the book are restricted – or have been. But Clarissa's daughter, Elizabeth, is told by Doris Kilman, her history teacher and close confidante, that she has many options for how she could spend her life – Kilman was restricted by her times and by her background, but again, also by her own choices, which she fails, as she wallows in her own bile, blaming all around her, to acknowledge.
There have been suggestions by many critics that there are elements of homosexuality in the book. There are hints – Sally kissed Clarissa in their youth and the latter still considers that the happiest moment of her life. But it doesn't see to me to be the dominant issue. Doris Kilman might be a lesbian – her relationship with her pupil is very intense and involves her own extreme religiosity.
But the prime issue in terms of relationships is one of how we relate to those around us. How they influence our lives.
It's a brilliant book. Astonishing both in terms of the prose and the themes. It requires some effort to read, but is incredibly rewarding. Nobody should be afraid of Virginia Woolf.
