#clarissa dalloway sucks at relationships

[dawningfairytale]

hi i'm hsc posting again

the flowers in mrs dalloway are a symbol of desire

"mrs dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself" is the first line of the book, and one of the only ones i know. here is what prompts her to have the existential crisis of being "mrs richard dalloway". her decision to buy the flowers herself is representative of how she is not being satisfied through her relationship with her husband and must instead find pleasure through the little independence she has (something something sapphic). additionally, the way sally picks a flower before they kiss, back when they were 18, illustrates how sally was the only romantic relationship she had that pleased her. the note in her memory (because the whole novel is the characters' perceptions of the past and present) that she did so is because she is unfulfilled in her marriage and is idealising that past. you would think this means that she can't find happiness with richard because she's a lesbian but through the textual conversation with the hours, in which clarissa vaughn is in a dried up relationship with her partner, sally, it just shows that clarissa sucks at relationships and idealises the past.

#modern #thank you for coming to my ted talk #virginia woolf #mrs dalloway #the hours #clarissa dalloway sucks at relationships #i hesitate to queer-tag this because i don't like the representation that much #like... virginia woolf maybe gets a pass but the fact that the component i'm studying was written 20 years ago?? #bullshit #do better nesa #hsc #hsc student #i dont know if anyone doing the hsc has a tumblr #english advanced #mod a #if there are any hsc students on here: that first poem was pretty neat right? #love the spices

[katesilverman-blog]

Process 3

I have had enough confusion for one book. I gave up and just looked up a character chart on SparkNotes ( https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/dalloway/characters/ ). I had a very hard time following the plot of the book because the author uses characters’ names and writes about them as if the reader already knows who they are (and clearly I don’t). This chart somewhat helped me understand who everyone is, however it did not explain the connections to the main character, Clarissa Dalloway, if there even is a connection. So far, the only connection seems to be that these people pass each other throughout their days.

Besides my frustrations with the characters, I have some other thoughts. My first being that love sucks! Everyone in this book who supposedly “loves” each other seems to be more tortured by their relationship than anything else. Here are some examples: 

1) Clarissa’s husband, Mr. Dalloway, hasn’t even been in the book so far, he is just a presence (or lack there of). The few times he has been mentioned hasn’t been very positive either, such as the fact that he is meeting with another woman for lunch. 

2) Rezia’s husband, Septimus, is suffering from what seems to PTSD from WWI. However, no one can diagnose it as PTSD because it wasn’t discovered until the 80s. She takes him from doctor to doctor, trying to find out what is wrong and why he is talking about killing himself. Although she loves him and wants to help him, Rezia is unbelievably unhappy, and she doesn’t know anyone else so she is all alone and has no one to talk to about it. Also, she wants kids before she gets too old and Septimus is not in a place to have kids, so some of her dreams are being postponed or destroyed if he does not find proper help. 

3) Peter Walsh just seems tortured. He was rejected by Clarissa, who is married to another man. Now, he loves Daisy from India, who is also married to another man. He is either stuck on the past and mourns about Clarisaa, or he is setting himself up for an unhappy future, falling in love with a married woman. 

Another thought I have is about death. Throughout the book, several characters think about whether or not life is meaningful, if they are worth something, or if anything is worthwhile. On page nine, Clarissa contemplates if she is okay with the fact that everything in the world will go on when she dies. Will it matter if she ceases completely? Woolf uses the quote “Fear no more the heat o’ the sun/ Nor the furious winters’ rage.” It is  song by Shakespeare. I wonder if these allusions to death and afterlife foreshadow a death in the book. But, I am only halfway through and the party (Mrs. Dalloway’s party) hasn’t even begun! Stay tuned for more information. 

#aplit19readingthework