The only thing I remember from my first encounter with this book, which was back in my sophomore year of college, I think, is the quote from Cymbeline. My English professor harped on this for quite a while. I don't remember why. And I haven't read Cymbeline so I have absolutely nothing to contribute on that front. Other than that, like most of college, it's all kind of a blur. I remember more about the wood-paneling of the seminar room than I do about Mrs. Dalloway.
"We are all just a slip or a car accident away from being a different person." Where was this quote from? Was it Thinks...? Damasio? Carter? Anyway, whatever the source, it seems apropos to me here because it brings to attention the fragility of our conception of ourselves, of who we believe ourselves to be. Except for Woolf, we're all just a social miscue or an unintentional memory of unrequited love away from a complete mental breakdown.
When I think about some of what goes on in my head during an average day, it really is amazing that I haven't cracked. Perhaps there's something uplifting there, a testament to my resiliency to persevere through doubt and to go on. Or, perhaps its a testament to inertia. In any event, I think this is why I love this novel so much. I think it's such an honest portrayal of the doubt that plagues nearly every decision we make throughout the course of the day, ranging in amplitude from whether or not to buy flowers to the question of one's very sanity. And all of these little decisions, when we add them up, can sometimes seem to amount to a decision as monumental as whether or not to leave our spouses, or whether or not to pull up stakes and move to another country and start our lives over, or whether or not to fling ourselves from a window.
I think what impresses me so much about the book is that Woolf doesn't seem to judge her characters, even those characters for whom she clearly has no sympathy, like Sir William Bradshaw. They may hide who they are from each other, but Woolf doesn't hide them. They exist, warts and all, as real, fallible human beings who, like the rest of us, are neurotic, doubting, hateful, kind, confused, desperate, and all the rest of it. Richard is boring and he can't figure out how to tell his wife he loves her, but he's a decent, good man whose set for life. Peter's more interesting but he's unstable and, if anything, he "loves too much." Septimus, well, he's certifiably insane, but how sorry do we feel for Rezia when we catch that glimmer of happiness she has with her husband right before he kills himself? And how bad to we feel for Ellie Henderson, the littlest of characters, but whose pathos is magnified to a level of tragic heroine because no one will talk to her at Clarissa's party? Even hateful, spiteful little Doris Killman occupies a warm space in my heart.
I think that, as writers, there's a lot to be learned here. If we're going to touch our audience, we need to be able to humanize all of our characters, even those for whom we have little or no sympathy. If we are forced to see ourselves in both the best and the worst characters, how much more do we admire the power of the writer, and how much more does a work haunt our imaginations and force a reckoning with ourselves? Everyone in Mrs. Dalloway is at war with themselves, trying desperately to maintain a pleasant surface though their depths are roiling about with "the heat o' the sun" and the "furious winter's rages." And what, after all, is more human a task than the work we set ourselves of separating our emotions from our consciousnesses for the sake of seeming calm and well-adjusted?
This is why I love love love Peter Walsh, because he says to hell with it all and cries in front of Clarissa, the woman he's always loved, and who probably loves him right back, because in that moment he does what no one else in the novel can bring themselves to do: he confronts his emotions and he knows they are too much for him and he lets it out. In that moment, I think, he is the only character who is completely honest with someone else, the only character who forges a real connection between his inner life and his expression of that inner life.
Comments (3)
Ah, the car crash or slip quotation is from neurobiologist Paul Broks, on Radio Lab.
I agree with you about Woolf's empathy for her characters. I think Jane Austen, George Eliot, and Henry James (to a lesser extent) are her predecessors in non-judgment. The point, these writers seem to suggest, is to examine these characters in context and suggest how and why they are what they are and behave the way they behave, not to scold them for it.
Woolf goes further than those predecessors, though, finding language and syntax (and punctuation) to represent the rhythms of thought, not for their own sake, but to show how much these rhythms both fall outside social expectations and shape who we are, who we think we are, and how we act in the world.
In an essay about Woolf E. M. Forster (her friend) makes a point related to yours, about Woolf as an writer from whom other writers might learn: " . . . the problem before her-- the problem that she has set herself, and that certainly would inaugurate a new literature if solved-- is to retain her own wonderful new method and form, and yet allow her readers to inhabit each character with Victorian thoroughness."
It's debatable whether inhabiting a character with Victorian thoroughness means what you mean when you say we can learn from Woolf that we need to humanize characters, regardless of our sympathy for them. But I think there's a connection. Finally, it's interesting to note that history seems to indicate that Woolf is successful in this regard -- more successful than Forster! Maybe readers changed. Maybe it's not "Victorian thoroughness" we need to inhabit a character. Maybe what we need now is airy Woolfian flight, "falling from branch to branch" (the phrase Septimus uses to describe Rezia's mind).
Posted by Jason Tougaw | October 9, 2007 5:08 PM
Posted on October 9, 2007 17:08
I agree about how we learn from Woolf, especially when you look at the context from which she came and who else she had contact with.
When I was a undergrad(not an English major) I took a Brit Modern class and spent alot of time reading Lyntton Strachey a Bloomsbury pal. In some of his books, there is a sense of Woolf's project even though he is writing about real historical figures, he creates this creative non-fiction treatment of them. Stratchey writes about Florence Nightingale and others in Eminent Victorians and takes great liberties in what they may have been thinking and feeling as he describes these well to dos and important figures. This book, published in 1918, sets Woolf's stage in some ways. Also if my memory serves, Walter Pater was her tutor as a child or young adult. Reading some of his treatments of Mona Lisa and others in the "mixed genre" of "Imaginary Portraits" also does this. But in both these examples, there is a bit more of a sense of judgment , which you correctly point out Woolf avoids
Either way, I with you on Peter Walsh.
JRCurrie
Posted by john | October 11, 2007 3:37 PM
Posted on October 11, 2007 15:37
This was a beautifully written post, and I think you raise some very great points about the novel, and about writing in general.
Successful writers will always make sure that they have characters that are multi dimensional. There is no such thing as all bad, or all good, or all honest, etc.
I wrote about how much I did not like this reading. I like it in theory. I liked her ideas, and the structure was genius, but I just didn't enjoy reading it.
As I said in my earlier post. The more I read reviews and classmate responses...I WANT to like the book. Have you read it several times? Maybe it takes a couple of attempts to really appreciate it.
Posted by Jessica | October 14, 2007 10:41 AM
Posted on October 14, 2007 10:41