Tag: connections

Woolf, “Mrs. Dalloway.” Topic: Connections

“Mr. Fletcher, retired, of the Treasury, Mrs. Gorham, widow of the famous K.C., approached Him simply, and having done their praying, leant back, enjoyed the music (the organ pealed sweetly), and saw Miss Kilman at the end of the row, praying, praying, and, being still on the threshold of their underworld, thought of her sympathetically as a soul haunting the same territory; a soul cut out of immaterial substance; not a woman, a soul” (Woolf 130-1).

Woolf, Virginia. Mrs. Dalloway. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 2005.

Connection between church-goers, physically in the same space, spiritually in two separate spaces (with Him, threshold of underworld), relationship is viewed similarly between different parties

Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway: Connections

“Ah dear, she remembered — it was Wednesday in Brook Street. Those kind good fellows, Richard Dalloway, Hugh Whitbread, had gone this hot day through the streets whose growl came up to her lying on the sofa. Power was hers, position, income. She had lived in the forefront of her time. She had had good friends; known the ablest men of her day.

[…]

And they went further and further from her, being attached to her by a thin thread (since they had lunched with her) which would stretch and stretch, get thinner and thinner as they walked across London; as if one’s friends were attached to one’s body, after lunching with them, by a thin thread, which (as she dozed there) became hazy with the sound of bells, striking the hour or ringing to service, as a single spider’s thread is blotted with rain- drops, and, burdened, sags down. So she slept.” (Woolf, 91)

Woolf, Virginia. Mrs. Dalloway. Benediction Classics, Oxford, 2017, pp.91.

Clarissa is reflecting on the connections she has in London. Though it is presented in the third party point of view, readers can tell that Clarissa is considering the end of her relationships with her friends and lovers. She reflects on a a beautiful metaphor of the withering connections.

Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf

“Indeed, his own life was a miracle; let him make no mistake about it; here he was, in the prime of life, walking to his house in Westminster to tell Clarissa that he loved her. Happiness is this, he thought” (Woolf 61).

Woolf, Virginia. Mrs. Dalloway. Benediction Classics, Oxford, 2017, pp. 61.

Woolf, “Mrs. Dalloway”, A Moment of Connection to Literature

“She could not even get an echo of her old emotion. But she could remember going cold with excitement, and doing her hair in a kind of ecstasy (now the old feeling began to come back to her, as she took out her hairpins, laid them on the dressing-table, began to do her hair), with the rooks flaunting up and down in the pink evening light, and dressing, and going downstairs, and feeling as she crossed the hall “if it were now to die ’twere now to be most happy.” That was her feeling–Othello’s feeling, and she felt it, she was convinced, as strongly as Shakespeare meant Othello to feel it, all because she was coming down to dinner in a white frock to meet Sally Seton!” (Woolf 38).

Woolf, Virginia, and Bonnie Kime Scott. Mrs. Dalloway. A Harvest Book, Harcourt, Inc., 2005.

Clarissa recalls her past affection and feelings for Sally Seton, connecting their strength to Shakespeare’s Othello. She insinuates that her love for Sally was as deep and passionate as Othello’s for Desdemona (at the start of the play), furthering the reader’s understanding of the nature of their relationship.