What is the Ms. Dalloway going to be about? Is Ms. Dalloway happy?
I think a pretty core question to the beginning of Ms. Dalloway is whether Clarissa Dalloway herself is happy. And not only happy but also content; does she have a lot of regret in her life? A lot of people, including myself, I’ve listened to discussing the beginning of Ms. Dalloway in class seem to endorse the idea that Ms. Dalloway is happy, or at least overall content. I see Ms. Dalloway as a strong female character, confident in herself. And Woolf shares this confidence in Ms. Dalloway. She chooses to have the story focus on Ms. Dalloway despite the fact that her husband, Richard is an M.P. Most traditional English Literature stories would not only focus on the men in general but would be even more likely to focus on men who have an “important” role in the British government. So Woolf is clearly trying to make a point by making Richard and M.P. and then declining to focus on him whatsoever.
But is Ms. Dalloway truly content? To answer this question, I think we have to begin by unpacking her fixation with Peter, the man she declined to marry many years ago for Richard. She is clearly worried she gave up a life of passion, through Peter, for a life of security, through Richard. Richard is rich (lol), important, and certainly provides everything that English girls were pushed to look for through the 19th-Century by their parents. Traditionally, Richard is the “better” option. In our modern world, it’s considered less wholesome and impure to chose wealth over love, and although in the time this book was written it was probably beginning to shift, Richard was still what society would have considered a better option back then.
Ms. Dalloway’s fixation on Peter is apparent on the first page of the novel. The first character mentioned is Clarissa Dalloway herself, and by the bottom of that first mini-page, she is already focusing on Peter. Woolf tells us about how Peter lives rent-free in Ms. Dalloway’s head, how she remembers his smile, thinks about his letters, et cetera. In what normal story does a woman think about a man she rejected 20 years ago who lives 5,000 miles away before her own husband and M.P? This isn’t a normal story and I think it’s pretty incorrect to call Ms. Dalloway happy when we see this fixation with Peter still exists today. I think this book is looking to critique “classic” ideals on love and marriage, and begin a debate on society about what people should truly favor when making decisions. This book is reminding me already of “A Room with a View,” another early 20th-Century novel that touches on the same issues between passion, status, and security in women choosing partners. Connecting this to some other history trends from the post-WW1 Western World, I think there is a connection here between Mrs. Dalloway and the female liberation movement and flappers in the US in the 1920s. What do you think the message of this book is going to be?
I 100% agree - she is not happy. I do think its important to note that she is a contemplative person- she thinks about a lot of people and a lot of events, but she is still definitely unsatisfied, she rarely thinks of her husband and oft regrets a lot of the life decisions she made leading up
ReplyDeleteI feel like she has the sense that she should be happy, that she did what society said was the right choice, picking Richard over Peter, and raised a child, which society tells her is the role of a woman, but she has questions and doubts in her mind. She also just recovered from the flu, which probably is leading to her thinking a lot more about life and death and her past and her future. So I would say that Mrs. Dalloway at the moment is not content, although she has moments of happiness, there is an overhanging doubt as she goes about her day.
ReplyDeleteGreat post. I think that because Clarissa is not content with her current life and marriage, there is always a constant skepticism of the choices she made throughout her life. Peter is a perfect symbol of this, as he represents "what could have been", and makes Clarissa constantly wonder if she could be truly happy if she had married him.
ReplyDeleteHappiness is not as black and white as it can sometimes seem. Is she unhappy? Maybe not. She seems to enjoy her role as upper-middle class hostess. However, has she achieved nirvana, not quite. I think a lot remains to be seen about her true feelings on thee life she has chosen to live, and the way she chooses to participate in society.
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