thisnewday | Finished

Well, I did it. I've just finished Mrs. Dalloway. And found it quite extraordinary. Intricate, complex, moving. Above all, moving. Especially at the end, where Peter Walsh is talking with Sally Seton and has not yet had his promised, after-party talk with Clarissa.

Sally, becoming anxious to leave, gets up to talk to Clarissa's husband Richard and Peter says that he will join them.

"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.

What an ending!

And so I think that now, with a couple of days remaining before the LPL book club meets, I'm going to re-read these last few pages, because so much is shared in them between Peter and Sally.

And because what remains unspoken, as it moves across the page in their respective steams of consciousness, is so heartfelt and moving and because I did rush through it with such uncontrolled fervor, such irresistable momentum.

That first time through, I think, was for a basic understanding of events; the second time will be for a fuller and more complete engagement of the heart.

For as Sally says to Peter, as she's getting up to say goodnight to Richard, "What does the brain matter... compared with the heart?"

LPK
Dreamwidth
9.25.2017

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

rosegardenfae

Indeed "Mrs. Dalloway" is all you say, ".... "extraordinary, intricate, complex, moving." It's wonderful, special even, that your reading of the book pulled that kind of thrilling response from you.

Some passages, I admit, made my eyes wet while others held me spellbound as my mind danced to the rhthym pounded out by the words.Reading Woolf is like dancing. Sometimes I stumble. Sometimes I rock it out.

I felt at home among the pages, saw myself reflected in characters repeatedly. But never more so than when Sally, in her existential musing reveals, "Despairing of human relationships (people were so difficult), she often went into her garden and got from her flowers a peace which men and women never gave her."

I'm with Peter all the way, for surely what matters most is the heart.

From:

thisnewday

Great comment and I loved your summation that "Reading Woolf is like dancing." Certainly experienced both the stumble and the rockin' out in my reading of it as well.

And I love that you found in Sally a character that you relate to, especially in her later life. But personally, I see you as the younger Sally as well, just being her spontaneous, outrageous self to the delight of some and the dismay of others, lol...

From:

rosegardenfae

That you can still find that tempestuous free spirit I used to be means more than I can say. Truly, she seems lost to me and I miss her every day.

"Put on your red shoes." Let's dance. ;-)

From:

thisnewday

"Put on your red shoes." You mean my sparkly red ones, lol? I'm afraid they're stuffed wayyy back in my closet somewhere, never really having seen the light of day. Because I've always been just too boringly conventional. Fortunately, I never had to wear glasses when I was a kid or I'd have been THE perfect nerd. Although, hahaha, I DID play the trumpet in marching band, lol. But in some ways that wistful reflection on the past reminds me of our friend Clarissa. Sorry, MY friend Clasrissa. The thing is, she doesn't really have such an outrageously spontaneous past to look back on. And Sally Seton, who does, I don't think looks back with any sense of loss. Which may redouble the tragedy of her loss because she's so totally succumbed to her supporting role in the male-centric culture of the day. "I have five boys," is how she describes both her contribution and her place in that society. I guess, in a sense, her tragedy and Clarissa's are the same, both having lost their individual identities in accepting their prescribed roles as women. But Sally's is by far the most egregious loss because of what she was and what she has become, a disparity which I think Woolf very purposefully draws to make this point. OMG, another lecture, sorry. As for that "tempestuous free spirit" she definitely still lives but, c'mon, none of us is really up to those cross-country rides on that hard-tail Harley anymore, lol...

From:

rosegardenfae

Those would be the ones, sparkly even better. Seems to me that though you chose a conventional lifestyle, your imagination, intellect, and writing abilities make you anything but conventional. But what do I know?

I've wanted to respond to this since I read it, but waited until hopefully I could at least appear to have my wits about me.

While Woolfe may well have intended to use both Clarissa and Sally to illustrate the results of being subsumed by the male patriarchy, Neither of them seem to feel a great loss. Both of them appear happy. Clarissa finds joy in the simple act of rearranging books on the shelves and Sally delights in her 5 sons. Is not happiness the mark of a life well lived?

Certainly women of the book's era were much more under the yoke of patriarchy than we are today. And just as certainly I believe in and have rallied for women's rights. Yet, I have moments of thinking we've gone too far. When I see my girls come home after 12 hr shifts with meals still to cook, laundry waiting and needing time for their children, and themselves, I'm unsure of the validity of the current paradigm.

Or maybe I just have a need to validate my own life, no career but wife and mother?

From:

thisnewday

Now see, this is exactly why we needed you at the meeting! You know, to discuss the substance of the book, lol. Because one of the points that I tried to make was that success vs. failure was one of the persistent, if obvious, themes of Woolf's book. And everyone just nodded their heads, maybe said, "Oh yeah," and then went back to whining about how hard it was and let's never, never do anything like this again.

But my example to them was Peter Walsh and how, each time he appeared in another character's stream of consciousness, the next word after his name was "failure." And then I mentioned how he had internalized society's view of him and only briefly, but I think significantly, questioned whether there might not be another standard.

Which brings us to your point which is that there are, in fact, two standards by which the lives of all of Woolf's characters could be measured, and internal one and an external one. And that, by their internal standards, both Clarissa and Sally Seton are happy and therefore successful in life.

Which, I agree, is true at one level. But then, I think you've gotta consider why it is that they're happy and Peter is not. And I think it's because the two women have internalized, and managed to live their lives in compliance with, the male-centric standards of their society.

And Peter has not, neither for himself nor for Clarissa. For the entire novel, Peter stands as the outlier, the one who never quite finds his place, at least not a stable one, in the society of the Dalloways or in the society and politics of Britain, either at home or abroad.

And so he speaks from a unique place, as Clarissa is uncomfortably aware, as he criticizes her for, essentially, surrendering her identity as a person and as a woman to her role as, what did be call it, which so insulted her that she went to her room and cried, the perfect hostess?

In Sally's case, the loss of her unique identity is all the more egregious because while Clarissa was more or less born into that role, by virtue of her family background and upbringing, Sally was, if anything, much more of an outlier than Peter. Sally was, to borrow from The Boss, lol, "Born to be wild."

And she gave that up to bear five boys which I think would have to be viewed as the ultimate contribution that anyone, man or woman, could make to the perpetuation of a male-dominated culture. And, because she has finally reconciled herself to the externally-imposed values of society, she sees herself as successful if not completely happy.

Anyway, that's my take on it. I'm submitting this next week as the proposal for my master's thesis and I'm too exhausted now to even apologize for posting it here, lol...

From:

thisnewday

PS--There's much, much more to this but there are some "guy things" that I've really gotta do in my basement workshop, lol...

Edited Date: 2017-10-01 02:01 pm (UTC)

From:

rosegardenfae

While you are doing your "guy things" I am studying what you wrote above. When I respond I want to be prepared, ya know, like maybe I still got some smarts somewhere in this old brain. Because I don't feel Peter's unhappiness. He's lost maybe, confused maybe,immature, sure. But is he unhappy? I'm not convinced. As with all of us who don't fit the current societal definition of what being is, he's uncomfortable and unfulfilled, but not defeated yet.

Egads, I may have to reread it, just to reassure myself. hah

One thing I just learned is that Springsteen actually did sing "Born to Be Wild." I had always associated it with Steppenwolf lol

Edited Date: 2017-10-01 10:16 pm (UTC)