Leather bags and broad minds: Thoughts so far on Mrs Dalloway

 

If I were to imagine the narrative of Mrs Dalloway, its long strings stretching through and across the streets of London, I would think of curling ribbon or ivy tendrils, something that could creep and swerve towards the skyline just as easily as it could crawl along the ground.

The reason I think of this novel as clambering upwards as much as reaching across is determined by the nature of Virginia Woolf’s writing. As her writing twirls and flits into one mind or the next, I pictured a London street scene; frozen in the midst of movement, as the author did nothing more than guide us to listen to one mind or the next. Reading stream of consciousness is fascinating whilst demanding of concentration. So far I am reminded of the challenges of Ulysses: How is it possible for me, the reader, to pick up on and understand every nuance in someone else’s mind? Their memories aren’t mine.

Early on in the novel, before Clarissa has even brought the flowers home, this quotation really caught my attention:

Then, while a seedy-looking nondescript man carrying a leather bag stood on the steps of St. Paul’s Cathedral, and hesitated, for within was what balm, how great a welcome, how many tombs with banners waving over them, tokens of victories not over armies, but over, he thought, that plaguy spirit of truth seeking which leaves me at present without a situation, and more than that, the cathedral offers company, he thought, invites you to membership of a society; great men belong to it; martyrs have died for it; why not enter in, he thought, put this leather bag stuffed with pamphlets before an altar, a cross, the symbol of something which has soared beyond seeking and questing and knocking of words together and has become all spirit, disembodied, ghostly – why not enter in? he thought and while he hesitated out flew the aeroplane over Ludgate Circus.

This is why I have been thinking of Mrs Dalloway in terms of a full range of movement. As the story is firmly rooted in the human mind, so the narrative follows us. We all spend a lot of time thinking about day-to-day, mundane, low-level things. Occasionally something happens that makes us think about grander, higher concepts, like philosophy or art or religion. Not just that, these higher concepts are the things that connects one person to another, that forge ideas about what makes us human, or what is important in being human.

A man can be seedy-looking, carrying a leather bag whilst an aeroplane flies overhead and if you were a passer-by then perhaps that is all you would see. The greatness of Mrs Dalloway, in the first thirty pages and my humble opinion, is that Woolf makes the internal external. The seedy-looking man draws his conclusions about the power of religious imagery and we would have been none the wiser.

Christmas Books

Merry Christmas!

Famous for the Wrong Book?

Guardian: Famous for the wrong book: There’s a big difference between an author’s best-known work, and their best

vanityferal:

Another (albeit thoughtful & constructive) quibbling on about books. I tend to agree that the most famous isn’t always the best, but the fact that one book does go on to the be the most widely known and read has to say something for its excellence, yes?

Anyway, it all just made me think of this:

E.M. Forster, in remembering Woolf after her death “pronounced [The Waves] ‘her greatest book’,” but added, ‘though To the Lighthouse is my favorite.’”

Not Your Average Beachy Book

To the Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf

The literary gal’s beach accessories.

I read this to continue the experiment I began with Katherine Mansfield. I had thought I didn’t like her writing, but all it took for me to fall in love was a re-reading five years later. The results of this (possibly continuing) experiment are, to my surprise, that I am now a fan of Virginia Woolf too. To the Lighthouse is an incredible book and very innovative. The whole stream of consciousness thing is also quite readable as long as you spare a little extra effort in concentration! As long as I paid attention, I could follow it. The atmosphere of the novel is vivid, nostalgic, just downright beautiful really.

Virginia Woolf has made me miss the sea… and my childhood.

Virginia and the Seaside

This is the image I have in my head whilst I read To The Lighthouse. The writing is beautiful;

“So she looked over her shoulder, at the town. The lights were rippling and running as if they were drops of silver water held firm in a wind.”

“So with all the lamps put out, the moon sunk, and a thin rain drumming on the roof a downpouring of immense darkness began. Nothing, it seemed, could survive the flood, the profusion of darkness which, creeping in at keyholes and crevices, stole round window blinds, came into bedrooms, swallowed up here a jug and basin, there a bowl of red and yellow dahlias, there the sharp edges and firm bulk of a chest of drawers.”

“The house was left; the house was deserted. It was left like a shell on a sandhill to fill with dry salt grains now that life had left it.”

Photograph by riö scarlett.

The Bloomsbury Set

Uncommon Arrangements, Katie Roiphe

I loved this book right from the very start. It follows seven marriages from 1910 to 1939 in literary london. The marriages are mostly between members of the bloomsbury set and are as follows:

• H. G. & Jane Wells
• Vanessa & Clive Bell
• Ottoline & Philip Morrell
• Radclyffe Hall& Una Troubridge
• Vera Brittain & George Gordon Catlin
• Elizabeth von Arnim & John Francis Russell
• Katherine Mansfield & John Middleton Murray

These marriages all had an element of modernism or the atypical to them – often involving strange love triangles, friendships, affairs and illegitimate children. Katie Roiphe writes in a really easy to read, conversational kind of style and she has done her research (especially considering the selected bibliography at the back).

The period is so interesting with the shift from Victorians to Edwardians and the writers’ marriages reflect these changing attitudes. This book has a real personal feel, almost like you are sitting in the same room as all these fascinating people watching their lives unfold.

Making Paper Cranes with Mrs Dalloway