vswpaper's Diaryland Diary

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Clarissa and Peter's duel

I stopped for a moment at the beginning of the scene where Peter Walsh intrudes on Clarissa at home, thinking it's important for finding the male/female distinctions I'm after. But two days later, I think not so much. Instead, I'm reminded of the adversarial nature of their encounter (which is typical of how Clarissa considers their relationship when she adverts to it during the day) and the weapons they draw at the outset. Notably (or I think it's notable anyway) they both have weapons, and they both have a cerebral, critical view of the other; each is involved in another primary sexual (more or less) relationship where they presumably connect better, although there's not firsthand evidence of that in the book.

How they're different is in the evidence of connection to others--Clarissa has it, and Peter Walsh does not. (This is something I have to look out for as I go through Mrs D.) For Clarissa, there's her passionate youthful attachment to Sally Seton, the metaphysical connection to Septimus, and some wanderings of her consciousness (I think). The attachment in her marriage appears to be all on Richard's side, and as I discovered years ago in some other context, it isn't ultimately real; he's yearning toward her, but while they communicate in a way, they don't really touch. Then Peter's mostly bragging about his affair, and that seems much more about his ego than about a real bond with his mistress.

I think that's a key feminine attribute in Woolf, that ability to connect. I'm thinking that I have to state that Woolf's male and female characters share more things than they have different, which is why they seem so lively despite her progressive detachment from the conventional notations of character. The men and women are only different in a few ways, and the paper has to be explicitly about the few characteristics reserved to each sex and to get past superficial business such as minor characters' conventional attitudes and circumstantial differences such as the different spheres in which Woolf saw the sexes operating. This last is the apparent difference (Clarissa at home; Peter traveling the globe) versus the shared attribute (each has a weapon). And in this scene they are tumbling together, more like than not, and their fundamental differences show up elsewhere.

If I enumerate the exclusively (or almost) feminine things (I'm going to have to dig up some more synonyms for "characteristic" and "attribute") right now, they are:
1) Initiating and sustaining connection, with an aspect of permeability by both people
2) Generative ability for social gatherings, stories, moments of emotional significance--experiences I need to find a way to characterize better
3) Sensibility, specifically that demonstrated in "Street Haunting"
Number 3 is how to sum up the significance of Bernard's fundamental character in relation to Woolf's personal experience, and her gift really.

The other thing to get together here is the masculine characteristics. This is harder because I think the women take those on in the earlier books, which makes the characteristics seem arguably not exclusively masculine. I think I'm going to be relying heavily on Room of One's Own and Orlando for statements about that.

8:30 a.m. - 2006-11-05

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