T A 10 (382)

Eng 382

British Literature 1800-Present

Jordan William Reece

The day began with Professor Foss entering the classroom and remarking that Mrs. Dalloway is one of the greatest novels in English literature. One would think getting to read this gem would be reward enough, but nay, we were rewarded further with a reward quiz. The answers to the quiz ended up being that the car backfired, sky writing was in the sky, Sally Seton is who Clarissa kissed, Peter Walsh is always playing with his knife, and the crime of Septimus is that he can no longer feel. It is not until this quiz is over that we realized that our long line of multiple choice novel quizzes has been broken. We feel cheated, but despite what Professor Foss referred to as our “sass”, class began regardless. Professor Foss tells us that the game plan for class is to break into small groups and do a “Boom, boom, boom” type activity in which we discuss the characters in the play. Professor Foss then notes that many people who read this novel as a beacon of hope in a shatteringly dim vision of the human condition that is espoused by many Modernists. This novel asks the questions, are we isolated? What can we gain from experiences with other human beings? One particular thing that he noted was how everyone seemed to be drawn together with the speculation over whose car it was that broke down across the flower shop, or what it is that the writing in the sky actually said. Everyone had a different sense or idea of what it was but everyone was brought together by a seemingly meaningless and random action. Despite this, at this point in the novel it seems to me that Mrs. Dalloway is yet another disparaging Modernist view of the human condition. We began our small group discussions by talking about Peter. Peter is bitter that his love was rejected by Clarissa for Mr. Dalloway. Peter is also extremely fickle with women as is shown by his love for Clarissa, his marriage upon arrival in India, and his relationship with Daisy. It seemed to us as though he does not really love any of the women that he comes into contact with, he simply uses them as a way to “get back at” Clarissa to a certain extent. He plays almost constantly with his pocket knife. We discuss why exactly that may be, and Camille insists that it is because he is considering killing Clarissa. Other ideas that were suggested were that the knife is meant to represent a phallus. He does not really love anyone else, and as a result he is always just “playing with himself” to a certain extent. In this way Peter goes to show the self-centered nature of humanity. He looks only for his own happiness and is like James Harthouse in this regard. He is only using women for his momentary pleasure. When looking at Clarissa from Peter’s point of view we can come to see that Clarissa is this bastion of happiness that Peter yearns for that he never attains, perhaps suggesting something about the fact that never truly achieve happiness in life. As the “Boom” echoed through the recesses of the class, we then began to work on the minor characters of the novel. At first we simply marveled at the sheer number of “minor characters” that we were expected to make comments on. But then we began our discussion with a quick dissection of Mrs. Killman. Mrs. Killman is a staggeringly bitter woman that hates Clarissa, seemingly by virtue of the fact that she did not have to ever work a day in her life. She is jealous of her beauty, her money, and her bourgeois socialite lifestyle. We thought the ultimate irony in all of this is that Mrs. Killman is a devout Christian, yet still has a seemingly undying hatred for Clarissa. In this way, we found that Woolf could be suggesting the hypocrisy inherent in all of us, in addition to the loss of faith that came as result of World War I. Mrs. Killman is a Christian because it makes her justified in feeling superior to Clarissa, not because of some devout belief in a deity, suggesting the ridiculous nature of Christianity. We then moved onto the wife of Septimus, Rezia. We found little hope in her life. We noted how terrible it is that she is in love with a broken man. We took this to be a critique of marriage and happiness in a certain sense, another idea that plays into the idea of the misery of life. Marriage, a joyous thing that many people aspire to, is something that only brings Rezia sadness and frustration. She feels as though Septimus no longer loves her and no matter what she does to try to fix what seems to be wrong with him, nothing changes. During the middle of our discussion on Rezia, we heard yet another billowing “Boom!” and proceeded to work on Septimus. We took Septimus to be a very dark character, meaning to represent the terrible aftereffects of World War I. Septimus comes back from the war clearly with some sort of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Septimus returns to London a broken man, constantly seeing the vision of his dead comrade (and possible homosexual relation), Evans, in addition to think as though he no longer “feels anything.” We thought this had a lot of overarching possibilities, such as how can we truly feel sympathetic towards mankind and other people when terrible atrocities such as the massacre of millions upon millions of people during The Great War happened, again, playing into the morbid nature of the human condition. And that was only the first time that the world was drawn into a global conflict. Jake pointed out that Septimus was unable to feel anything even when his wife was crying, and she is the person that Septimus is supposed to care for most out of everyone in the world. One of the things that I pointed out as truly tragic, was that numerous times in the novel, Septimus attempts to say something but is never able to bring himself to do it. This was reminiscent to us of Matthew Arnolds’ “The Buried Life” and we thought that that the inability of people to truly ever express or even really know what they truly think or feel is a tragedy in and of itself. We ended the “Boom, Boom, Boom” activity of the day by discussing Clarissa. We found her to be a bit of a shallow person. She clearly cares a lot about the social standing that she has with other people. We thought this because she was extremely distraught when Lady Bruton did not invite her to her lunch party but invited her husband, Richard. In addition to this, she is always throwing parties. She lives her life living from one party to the other, gaining some sort of edification in the process. We took this to show how superficial people inherently are. We are living trying to impress other people with fanciful shows and witty banter, but in the end no one really ever says what they truly think or feel. In this way, Clarissa is a figurehead for the superficiality of the British aristocracy. Professor Foss then proceeded to call us back together in order to have a large group discussion. Despite our rather critical analysis of Clarissa, Foss noted that most people find that Clarissa is a rather likable and relatable character as opposed to Peter. Peter is (according to Professor Foss) a generally much disliked character. Jake then raised his hand and noticed that almost all of the characters really do not get along. Clarissa does not truly love Richard. Peter may “love” Clarissa, but he clearly hates her for so many reasons, the most notable of which being her ultimate rejection of his marriage proposal. Killman hates Clarissa, everyone seems to hate Hugh, in particular Lady Bruton’s maid. Professor Foss then asked what we made of the fact that all the characters seemed to be so isolated. While we are all pondering this, other students note the fact that the only true “passion” that Clarissa feels in her life that kiss she shares with Sally Seton. Another student points out the fact my group discussed in earlier in small group, about how Septimus is never truly ever able to express how he is actually feeling. Professor Foss takes these comments and synthesizes them into the idea that life is always continually interrupted; happiness is never gained because everything is always ruined by something else. Clarissa’s kiss is ruined when Peter walks in on them. Peter is interrupted and does not get Clarissa’s answer when he asks her if she is happy. The implication here goes again to suggest the futility of life. No one is ever truly connected to anyone else, and any happiness is always momentary. It is at this point that the class finally struck 12:15, and the class, extremely perturbed at the conclusion of our favorite class might I add, found itself over. Looking back on the events of the class, it can be said that the novel Mrs. Dalloway is simply another depressing depiction of the disease that we are all cursed with simply by being human.