vswpaper's Diaryland Diary

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Nearly derailed by Peter Walsh in Mrs Dalloway

Finished Mrs Dalloway last night, after a worrisome discovery the night before of Peter Walsh having several "moments" full of sensibility in experiencing London, things that I'd been convinced were the province of female characters, and the entire substance of "Street Haunting," and extremely personal and central to VW's whole enterprise, and consequently very significant when they formed such a large part of Bernard's final territory in The Waves.

But then last night I found a possible explanation or way round this, with him ascribing his "undoing" or some such in India to his susceptibility (which in his earlier walk had basically been him dressing up his interest in pretty girls), as Septimus's unmanliness (he's told at least twice to go play sports) seems related to his mental defect--although the mental defect seems in some ways traceable to an overrelliance on manly unfeelingness, maybe this is a kind of overcompensation that undoes him--and perhaps opens the way to Clarissa's metaphysical connection with him. Still I'm not quite satisfied. I don't want to be trumping this up with excuses that hinge on extreme niceties of distinction and observation. The point is, Bernard's different and ample in a way that the previous male characters aren't (vivid and authentic as they may be) and if the "feminine" quality isn't the explanation I'd like to find one.

On the whole, having the point of view from my read of The Waves helped me with Mrs Dalloway, as it did with Jabob's Room. One thing that's amazing in Mrs Dalloway is a mention of waves "saying" exactly what the last wave does in The Waves. I can hardly wait to work that in. I wonder if anyone's noted it before, and quickly assume that they must have. It's pretty noticeable if you've read both books. But I don't know of much written about The Waves, and so wonder if much attention's been paid to it. It's hard to say much about, beyond describing its oddness and maybe saying that it's a pinnacle of VW's development. There's a lot more to catch hold of in Mrs. Dalloway and To the Lighthouse. What I want with this paper is to write something new, a goal that was always daunting as a student because of all the people that have mined a particular shaft before you--what could you as a 20-year-old possibly bring to the table? I'd like to think I'll give Elizabeth Abel a new perspective on maybe a tiny corner of Woolf's ouevre. Of course, then rushes in the fear that exactly this (or a better version, or in fact a different view that amounts to a repudiation) has already been published somewhere, and she'll think I'm plagiarizing. Aaaarrghhhgh.

One thing to note before I go: There were some scenes near the end that felt completely new to me. They're between Miss Kilman and Elizabeth's tea at the Army and Navy Stores and the party. Elizabeth goes wandering a little outside of her circumscribed upper-class world on an omnibus. Peter goes back to his hotel for dinner and walks to the party. I didn't recall either of them at all, and it's interesting in light of the surrounding scenes. The tea I recalled, and much of the rapidly shifting viewpoints at the party, but not the in-between time, the time of day when you feel a bit lagged, fooling around and wasting time, getting ready for your planned evening, which you may need to delay arrival for so you're not too early. Strange to be in a book you think you know, like hearing a passage in a favorite piece of music that seems interpolated since you last heard it. It fits, but you don't remember the music moving through that part between the passages you identify as part of that piece.

Today I read a bit of the biography as a break, up to To the Lighthouse being published and VW conceiving Orlando. And I realized a few days ago that my off-task reading could be the Hermione Lee biography, which I started. She's beating about the bush, rather, at the beginning. Sort of like VW's thoughts about a particular form, which seem like a warm-up to me to the actual piece--I noticed it sharply in the autobiographical fragments earlier this year.

11:50 p.m. - 2006-11-07

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