Chels

Inspired by Vita and Virginia’s literary love story, this week I read Mrs Dalloway. This isn’t my first venture into Virginia Woolf’s work – I started with A Room of One’s Own over a decade ago because Waterstones had a really pretty edition of it, and I have a vague memory of reading To the Lighthouse on the kindle, but I can’t find any evidence of that on any of my reading trackers, so maybe I started and never finished it.

All of this is to say I knew what I was getting into. I don’t find Virginia Woolf’s writing particularly easily digestible, especially compared to her contemporaries, but that doesn’t stop me from really enjoying her works.

It’s hard to describe Mrs Dalloway without giving the generic ‘a day in the life of Clarissa Dalloway’ or detailing every single event that happens. The book is essentially a stream of consciousness narrative, except through multiple perspectives. Woolf transitions between the different perspectives seamlessly – so seamlessly, in fact, that a few times I had to hop back a paragraph or two to work out okay, this is Richard’s perspective now. Despite the confusion, I really loved the way the characters became connected in that way, to me it was more interesting than just detailing their interactions and relationships.

That being said, there were parts I enjoyed more than others. Clarissa, Lucrezia, and Septimus’ sections were most compelling to me, and I found myself less drawn to Peter.

Had not that, after all, been love?

I know the debate regarding if you should apply authors’ personal lives to their works is ongoing, but I’m a big fan of literary biography, and I can’t help but notice Woolf herself in Clarissa Dalloway, and Vita Sackville-West in Sally Seton. Clarissa and Sally were friends and perhaps lovers in their youth, before Clarissa had married Richard Dalloway. Sally was wild, she ran down hallways naked, she kissed Clarissa, but then, in her later years, she retreated to her garden, away from people.

Clarissa shares Virginia’s anxieties and uncertainty. She’s keenly observant, but also introspective – she’s aware of the world around her, but equally aware of her own responses to it, and seems to live simultaneously in the past and the present. I noticed a lot of similarities between Clarissa and Septimus, which leads me to my spoiler-ridden incorrect prediction of the ending.

Septimus Warren Smith, much like Clarissa, deals with a lot of anxiety and inner turmoil. This is a bit of an understatement actually – he’s suffering from PTSD after fighting in the war. He lives in the past, often reliving the moment he saw his close friend die in battle, and feels a lot of distress owing to the fact that he didn’t have an emotional reaction in the moment. His wife, Lucrezia, and his doctor, encourage him to pay more attention to the world around him, rather than his inner thoughts. There are a lot of parallels between Septimus and Clarissa, and they became more apparent the further I read.

Towards the end of the day, just before Clarissa’s party, Septimus commits suicide by throwing himself from his window. Importantly (at least for my theorising), he does this while Lucrezia is playing and dancing with a small child.

Another doctor who had met with Septimus hears of the news, and discusses it at Clarissa’s party. Clarissa hears this, and on the surface, she is cross that death has come to her party; she does not see it as appropriate for the mood. Clarissa agonises over the atmosphere throughout the party – there is no dancing, she worries over who has and hasn’t been invited, whether the conversations are enjoyable. But once death has been brought to the party, it surpasses the other worries. After that, we don’t return to Clarissa’s perspective.

Her absence is noticed by the others – Sally Seton and Peter Walsh, and I couldn’t help but think that perhaps, like Septimus, Clarissa had taken her own life while everyone was distracted by the party. And perhaps she did, because the book doesn’t truly tell us. Mrs Dalloway ends with Peter seeing Clarissa. Not seeing her alive, not seeing her dead, just For there she was. 

Up until the final few lines, I did think that Clarissa had taken her own life. Even though the ending doesn’t contradict my thoughts, for some reason, the ambiguity led me to change my mind. Ultimately, though, we won’t ever know, and while sometimes I find that frustrating, with Mrs Dalloway, I find the ambiguity a satisfying ending.

I still find Woolf’s writing quite challenging to read, but I think it’s worth it. The writing asks to be sat with, to be read and reread and scrutinised, but it reveals beautiful imagery, and passages that sit with you for a long time after. I want to end with one of my favourite snippets from the book, because I loved it so much.

And as if in truth he were sitting there on the terrace he edged a little towards Clarissa; put his hand out; raised it; let it fall. There above them it hung, that moon. She too seemed to be sitting with him on the terrace, in the moonlight.