Mrs Dalloway 3

1
Mrs Dalloway (3)

• 4 May 2009

2

• As Peter returns to the clamour of city life,
  Clarissa's parting words reverberate in his mind
  "Remember my party." Although he does not blame
  her, he cannot understand why she gives these
  parties.
• English Society Although Peter critiques the
  governing class for a number of reasons,
  including their emotional stoicism, we see here
  that he still feels ashamed of his own emotional
  displays. This is our first glimpse of Peter as a
  compromised rebel.Peter's thoughts drift, and
  he is struck suddenly by an image of Clarissa
  falling where she stands. "No! No! he cried. She
  is not dead! I am not old" (65). He assures
  himself that he "cares not a straw" what the
  Dalloways, the Whitbreads, and their set say
  about him. English Society Repulsion and
  admiration.
• Peter as the Anglo-Indian. Peter is reassuring
  himself that the passion and radicalism of his
  youth are not dead.

3
Anti-Militarism (Rigidity vs life)

• cant keep up with them, Peter Walsh thought, as
  they marched up Whitehall, and sure enough, on
  they marched, past him, past every one, in their
  steady way, as if one will worked legs and arms
  uniformly, and life, with its varieties, its
  irreticences, had been laid under a pavement of
  monuments and wreaths and drugged into a stiff
  yet staring corpse by discipline.

4

• As Peter continues, he spots a pretty, young
  girl, whom he follows until she disappears into a
  house. He fantasizes about a life with her. The
  moment she is gone, he feels empty and
  isolated.And it was smashed to atoms - his fun,
  for it was half made up, as he knew very well
  invented, this escapade with the girl made up as
  one makes up the better part of life, he thought
  - making oneself up making her up creating an
  exquisite amusement, and something more. But odd
  it was, and quite true all this one could never
  share - it smashed to atoms (70). Independence
  of the Soul Peter is left alone with his
  fantasy. Fantasies and dreams cannot be shared,
  as they are the privacy of the soul. In this
  passage, we also see the process of creation as
  the essence of life.

5
Anglo-Indian identity

• Peter notices details of the city as he walks.
  However, unlike Clarissa or Septimus, he does not
  observe moments of beauty, but rather the
  "splendid achievement" of London, of civilization
  (71).
• The colonial margin

6

• Peter sees Regent's Park and remembers it fondly
  from his childhood. He decides to find a nice
  shady spot, next to a "grey nurse," to sit and
  smoke (73). He falls into reverie. He has a
  vision of a solitary traveller greeted by a
  nurturing, compassionate female force.(Feminine
  force as something for which Peter longs, lacking
  it himself.)

7

• Peter awakens from his dream saying to himself,
  "The death of the soul" (76), words which remind
  him of Bourton. He recalls the day Clarissa met
  Richard and the awful moment of rejection, a
  moment that felt to him like the death of his
  soul.
• Come along, she said. Theyre waiting. He had
  never felt so happy in the whole of his life!
  Without a word they made it up. They walked down
  to the lake. He had twenty minutes of perfect
  happiness. (81)

8
Marriage

• While Peter sits on one park bench, Septimus sits
  on another, talking to himself. Rezia wanders
  away from her husband wondering, "Why should I
  suffer?" (84). Echoing Peters It was awful
  Rezia accepts that everyone gives up something in
  marriage. She has given up her home in Italy. But
  now, her husband is acting stranger and stranger
  seeing things talking out loud to no one, or no
  one living making her write things down
  claiming he knows the meaning of the world and
  threatening to kill himself.
• Marriage is presented as a form of compromise, a
  theme that recurs in other marriages throughout
  the novel

9

• Septimus insists on continuing to talk to his
  dead friend, Evans, who was his closest companion
  at the battlefront and was killed just before the
  war ended. Septimus sees Evans in the shrubbery
  and in the curtains, addressing him directly. Yet
  Dr. Holmes insists there is nothing wrong with
  Septimus. Rezia's thoughts drift as she notices
  her finger has grown too thin for her wedding
  ring. She takes it off and slips it into her bag
  to keep from losing it. When she returns to
  Septimus sitting on the bench, he thinks to
  himself that she has left him their marriage is
  over."Since his wife had thrown away her
  wedding ring," Septimus concludes he has been
  freed (87). He was now alone to "hear the truth,
  to learn the meaning, which now at last, after
  all the toils of civilization - Greeks, Romans,
  Shakespeare, Darwin, and now himself - was to be
  given whole to . . . 'to whom?' he asked out
  loud. 'To the Prime Minister,' the voices which
  rustled above his head replied" (102).

10
pp. 87-92 (Focus on Septimus)

• P. 90 rising and falling
• P. 90 (Time)
• Sanity and Insanity Septimus, like Clarissa,
  experiences life as a succession of piercingly
  beautiful moments. However, for Septimus, the
  distinction between external reality and his
  personal response to the outside world is
  blurred. The sound of a motor car is like that of
  music bouncing between rocks, and the old man
  playing the penny whistle is a shepherd boy's
  piping. In Septimus' mind, his response to
  reality merges with reality itself.Much like
  Clarissa's sewing was interrupted by Peter
  ringing the doorbell, Septimus's visions of
  beauty as truth are interrupted by Rezia saying,
  "It is time" (90).As Peter Walsh passes the
  young couple in the park, the clock strikes a
  quarter to twelve. He has no idea he has been
  mistaken for a dead man named Evans. Instead, he
  thinks about the significance of the five years
  he has been gone.He thinks of his argument with
  Clarissa, p. 92

11
p. 93-- (Peter)

• Reflecting on the people who figured largely in
  his past, Peter Walsh notes Hugh Whitbread
  embodies all that is detestable about the British
  middle class (95) Hugh, who plays no meaningful
  role in the governing body, nevertheless defines
  himself and his respectability by his "little job
  at court" (7). In their youth, Sally, like Peter,
  despised Hugh for he "read nothing, thought
  nothing, felt nothing" (95). Peter despises Hugh
  for all that he represents. He hates the
  governing-class mentality, yet as he leaves the
  park, railing against high society, he thinks
  about how he can get Hugh or Richard to help him
  find work.
• And India(p. 93)
• P. 98 Richard and Shakespeare

12

• P. 102 Clarissa and life
• Peter passes an old woman singing as he leaves
  the park. This woman is significant, insofar as
  she is a nurturing female image, like the nurse
  in Peter's park reverie. The song she sings is
  Strauss's Allerseden. Allerseden is the day on
  which a collective resurrection of spirits
  occurs. In the song, a bereaved woman hopes her
  beloved will return from the grave.
• This passage, much like the ravings and visions
  of Septimus, is written in a style that bears a
  greater resemblance to verse than prose

13

• London has swallowed up many millions of young
  men called Smith thought nothing of fantastic
  Christian names like Septimus with which their
  parents have thought to distinguish them. (p.110)

14

• Septimus, we learn, is a self-educated man, who
  left home as a boy to pursue writing in London.
  He found he was anxious to improve himself and
  fell in love with Miss Isabel Pole. She inspired
  him to write and "lit in him such a fire as burns
  only once a lifetime" (111).

15

• He volunteered early for the war so as to defend
  an England which, for him, consisted primarily of
  Shakespeare's plays and Miss Isabel Pool. There
  in the trenches, Septimus developed an important
  friendship with his officer, Evans. After Evans
  died, however, shortly before the end of the war,
  Septimus felt nothing. He found himself in Milan
  and married the young girl who made hats with
  "little artist's fingers . He married her not
  because he loved her, but because he was panicked
  by his lack of emotion (113). He could reason but
  he could not feel.

16
Septimus / Literature

• Septimus's obsession with Shakespeare and his
  former literary ambitions mark him as an artistic
  outsider - a status that is reinforced by his
  marriage to a foreign hat-maker. The ruling class
  in this novel shuts out not only the lower
  classes and immigrants, but artists as well. The
  position of the power elite depends upon
  conservatism and complacency, and because artists
  threaten such conformity, the governing set has a
  deep distrust of writers Richard claims "no
  decent man ought to read Shakespeare's sonnets
  because it was like listening at keyholes Lady
  Bruton has "never read a word of poetry herself
  and Dr. Bradshaw "never had time for reading .

17

• Here he opened Shakespeare once more. That boys
  business of the intoxication of languageAntony
  and Cleopatrahad shrivelled utterly. How
  Shakespeare loathed humanitythe putting on of
  clothes, the getting of children, the sordidity
  of the mouth and the belly! This was now revealed
  to Septimus the message hidden in the beauty of
  words. The secret signal which one generation
  passes, under disguise, to the next is loathing,
  hatred, despair. Dante the same. Aeschylus
  (translated) the same. There Rezia sat at the
  table trimming hats. (115)

18

• Love between man and woman was repulsive to
  Shakespeare. The business of copulation was filth
  to him before the end. But, Rezia said, she must
  have children. They had been married five years.
  (116)
• One cannot bring children into a world like this.
  One cannot perpetuate suffering, or increase the
  breed of these lustful animals, who have no
  lasting emotions, but only whims and vanities,
  eddying them now this way, now that.

19
Communication (122)

• Once you stumble, Septimus wrote on the back of a
  postcard, human nature is on you. Holmes is on
  you. Their only chance was to escape, without
  letting Holmes know to Italy anywhere,
  anywhere, away from Dr. Holmes.(120)
• Dr Holmes putting aside Antony and Cleopatra
  Holmes had won of course the brute with the red
  nostrils had won (121)