LITERATURE: Mrs. Dalloway – Finale

I don’t think this will be one of my favorite ever novels, but I admire the work of Woolf and the intricacy with which she’s woven her story.

Overall, I come away with a sadness, hope yet hopelessness, change yet remaining the same.  For Clarissa Dalloway, I don’t believe, will ever change.  She may have come to the point in her life where she realizes that youth has faded, but she trudges on, a bit fearful of growing old, reluctant to break down and be what she would like to be. 

She is still flirtatious and standoffish with her old flame, Peter.  She appears ecstatic to see an old close friend, Sally, crash her party, and yet she sees each of them briefly before flitting off in her hostessly duties which has truly become what she is; trying to please everyone so they’ll think well of her. 

I think each of the three major characters, Clarissa, Peter and the war-beaten young Septimus, are recognizing their loneliness within a crowd of people.  They each have lovers and friends, and yet do not feel comfortable enough to reach out to them.  Peter is still affected by Clarissa.  I think his knife to be more a symbol of self-protective instinct–especially around Clarissa who he knows has the power to deflate him at whim.  For Clarissa, Peter is a reminder of having been so loved and desired that his return is validation, his presence at her party possibly too fragile to risk losing by speaking to him.  Her friend Sally had brought Clarissa fun and excitement in her youth, but may be too dangerous to Clarissa’s current high society self-image now.  So, she too is avoided and like Aunt Helena, these two and many of the guests are just gracing the walls like paintings for others to see.

Septimus will never be understood by Clarissa; his life or his death.  But she uses him too as she envies his decision to commit suicide.  And, while she appears to accept responsibility as a socially conscious citizen for this war-time hero, searches her life briefly and acknowledges that "she was never wholly admirable.  She had wanted success," (p. 185).  She watches the old woman across the street prepare for bed.  She reflects and decides she must find Peter and Sally.  Then, in typical Clarissa manner, she must attend to important guests instead.

It is more the technique and skill in presenting this story that I will remember from Mrs. Dalloway than, I think, the story itself.  That, and the isolation one feels when entering what they refer to as old age–though I beg to differ and prefer to call it middle-age.  Clarissa is taken with the thought–but always, as it applied to her personally.  Peter on the other hand, whose life does happen to be changing with thoughts of remarriage, sees things more clearly, and is kind enough to include his generation in his articulation to Sally:

When one was young, said Peter, one was too much excited to know people.  Now that one was old, fifty-two to be precise (Sally was fifty-five, in body, she said, but her heart was like a girl’s of twenty); now that one was mature then, said Peter, one could watch, one could understand, and one did not lose the power of feeling, he said.  No, that is true, said Sally.  She felt more deeply, more passionately, every year.  It increased, he said, alas, perhaps, but one should be glad of it–it went on increasing in his experience. (p. 193)

And so poor Peter does indeed feel more deeply, likely enhanced by gracious memory and by the unchanging Clarissa and despite his more accurate awareness of the changes in time:

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.