Mrs. Dalloway

After reading Mrs. Dalloway, The Waste Land and Steinberg’s Mrs. Dalloway and T.S. Eliot’s Personal Waste Land, I have really gained an appreciation for each of their works. Steinberg’s inclusion of Virginia Woolf’s diary entries as she wrote what would eventually become Mrs. Dalloway was a great view into her mind. The reasons that I think Mrs. Dalloway is so great (social criticism, the whole workings of sanity versus insanity) is actually what Woolf was consciously trying to convey. The difficulty of writing Septimus’s part had to be extremely difficult for Virginia, as she said, but I wonder if she was basing his insanity on someone she knew or maybe even herself and her own personal demons.

While reading Mrs. Dalloway, I thought that Clarissa and Septimus were foils for one another and after seeing how the relationship progressed between Eliot and Woolf at this time, I would say that it is definite that Woolf used their interactions in the development of her characters. It is hard to believe the correlation between the Eliot and Septimus. From their occupations to their marriages, their lives mimic each other completely. I wonder how Eliot’s estate feels about this glimpse into Eliot’s inner self. Lucrezia’s character is remniscient of Vivienne and just as Woolf did not care for her, that dislike is felt in the story itself. Lucrezia, to me, seems selfish and distant in the novel. While she does love Septimus, she is more concerned with herself and what is happening to her than Septimus’s condition. I actually feel stupid for not seeing all the similarities earlier between the players involved.

Steinberg’s claim that The Waste Land is written for Jean Verdenal seems warranted. An idea I had not thought of previously is that of the hyacinth girl. As we discussed in class, Hyacinth was a man and he was associated with homosexuality. In Eliot’s description of his memory of his friend in Luxembourg Gardens, waving a lilac, I saw Hyacinth. For Eliot, Jean Verdenal was his Hyacinth.

I thought Woolf’s comment that Mrs. Dalloway originally was to kill herself or die at the end of the party was quite interesting. Would the story have the same effect if that end did come to fruition or is it important that Clarissa did not commit suicide? I think the use of Septimus as a foil and his eventual demise allows Clarissa to accept her position in her society. I think Clarissa envies Septimus’s ability to be in control of his life, or in this case death. Steinberg’s idea that Mrs. Dalloway can follow the heroic tale is something that I did not think about, even after our class discussion last week. Steinberg’s claim appears to be very solid, but I think I will need to reread and map out the rest of the story with the corresponding parts of the heroic tale.

I thoroughly enjoyed Steinberg’s arguments regarding the correlation between Septimus and Eliot, as well as the influence of the Eliot-Woolf relationship on Mrs. Dalloway. I would, however, liked to have seen where Virginia herself comes into the characters of Mrs. Dalloway. I know she was overly concerned over writing about herself, but where can glimpses of her own life be seen in the novel. I would hate to think that the entire novel was an exposé on the life of T.S. Eliot.