What makes Clarissa retire to her bedroom in the middle of the day is the shock (22) of not being invited to Lady Brutons lunch party with Richard. Also Clarissas vulgar jealousy (23) of time, but not of Lady Bruton, contributes. Clarissa is hurt by Richard insomuch that he accepted the invitation from a woman, whom she sees as having lost the beauty of youthful years (23). More than that, Clarissas pride is hurt and the dwindling of life, cut in impassive stone (23) upon Lady Brutons face only adds to Clarissas chagrin. Clarissa is the perfect hostess (6) and the lunch party is a slap in the face on the morning of her own party.
The Dalloways marriage in this passage shows the growing alienation between the pair and Richards acceptance of the invitation is indicative of that. Clarissa retires to the attic and to a bed that grows narrower and narrower as time passes, at Richards insistence because the house of commons sits for so long (23). The bed in which Richard insists she sleeps alone in after her illness, according to Claire Tomalin only adds to her melancholy feelings about her celibate state(xxiii). In the attic Clarissa reads from Marbots Memoirs and it symbolises the distance that she feels in the marriage. It is as if his job as a politician reflects the retreat from Moscow of the memoir, a distant place; a distant vocation. With her husbands job, Clarissa is able to have an independence that she enjoys, which is seen in her earlier statement that between two people living together day in day out in the same house there must be independence(6). That independence helps to allow Clarissa to host her party and to arrange it as well. Continuing the disruption of the Dalloways marriage is the momentary inversion of roles played by men and women when Clarissa feels what men felt (24). Clarissa recognises briefly the force that has men controlling women; that force is seen as the physical act of love, which the passage alludes to in:
One yielded to its expansion and rushed to the farthest verge and there quivered and felt the world come closer, swollen with some astonishing significance, some pressure of rapture, which splits its thin skin and gushed and poured with an extraordinary alleviation over the cracks and sores (24).
Clarissa resents that control that men have over women, yet she could not resist sometimes yielding to the charm of a woman(24).
The floral imagery in the passage is juxtaposed with the state of Dalloways marriage. Clarissa is excited by the possibilities of what the message may bring and she calls such moments, buds on the tree of life and flowers of darkness (22). When Clarissa uses words like buds and darkness there is something unknown which attaches itself to them; something exciting. It shows the state of their marriage by Clarissas response to receiving a message. She knows what to expect of her marriage at that point and her choice of floral imagery contrasts those expectations. A match burning in a crocus (24) is a strong image to use when describing illumination and in this context, insight into the male perspective of sexual arousal. It allows Clarissa to feel more in tune with feelings of men towards women. A crocus has brilliant purple and yellow coloured flowers and it captures the feelings of inner meaning (24), as in the idea of light being omniscient.
The basis of Clarissa and Sallys relationship is love (24). Suzette Henke calls Clarissa a repressed homosexual who refuses to conform to stereotypical patterns ascribed to her sex (134). Yet, Clarissa defines it by calling the feelings towards Sally, disinterested (25), where she mostly admires and envies her beauty and the qualities that were more commoner in foreigners than in English women (25). Henke suggests the love that Clarissa felt was unclouded by the sexual masks and societal roles that often muddle adult heterosexual relations (135). However, Clarissa appears thankful to Sally for making her feel how sheltered her life at Bourton really was (25). It is only in Clarissas thinking back that she labels the relationship as something which could only be felt between women just grown up (25).
The way in which Peter Walsh impinged upon Clarissa and Sallys relationship is just by being around. Clarissa feels annoyed because she senses his hostility, his jealousy and his determination to break into their companionship (27). However, it is only from Clarissas point of view that this is even spoken of and there is no evidence of it otherwise in the passage. Clarissa only sees Peter as an interruption(27) because the most exquisite moment of her life(26) has just happened; a kiss on the lips(26) from Sally and she sees Peter as embittering that moment of her happiness(27). Yet it is this kind of behaviour from Peter that affects Clarissas ongoing friendship with him. From his interruption, it can be seen as the setting up of the course of their future quarrels(27), which Clarissa recalls as existing because she wanted his good opinion perhaps(27), although much of it would have to do with the pair never getting married. By marrying Richard, Clarissa assures herself of security yet without love and that is why no vulgar jealousy could separate her from Richard (23). Suzette Henke calls Clarissas decision to marry Richard instead of Peter an judicious choice in the interests of self-preservation (131) and it shows through her independence and the consequent party at her home later on, on that June day.
Bibliography
Henke, Suzette A. Mrs Dalloway : The Communion of Saints, New Feminist Essays on Virginia Woolf. Ed. Jane Marcus. London : Macmillan, 1981. Pp. 125-147.
Rosenthal, Michael. Virginia Woolf. London :Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1979. Pp.87-102.
Woolf, Virginia. Mrs Dalloway. Ed Claire Tomalin. Oxford : Oxford UP, 1992. Pp.xii-xxxii.
- Mrs Dalloway. Hertfordshire : Wordsworth Classics, 1996. Pp.22-27.
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