And in this moment...(The Novel, vol. 4)

Mrs. Dalloway is one of those few precious books that have profoundly altered my perception of what the novel is capable of. Everything from the form to the subject matter to the language ignited something within me, showed me new ways of doing things - oh, literature can be this - in such a way that the experience was wholly unique. Woolf's handling of characters offers a novel perspective into their seemingly mundane moments, thoughts, sights, etc. Her language weaves a tapestry between disparate beings; meanders down this or that side path, in doing so illuminating histories and memories, cracking open every hour and letting life rush out. The stream-of-consciousness form, in a way, makes each character a medium for the author's random, disassembled ruminations that might otherwise not find themselves in the novel; the characters become fragmentations of the author, each of them splitting off from the contextual core of the book as underground caverns are dug for them. This method of writing keeps characters from becoming stock and almost circumvents the issues of character manipulation and extortion that we discussed concerning Bleak House.

What resonates most with me, however, is the feeling of absence and solitude that pervade the novel. There is a definitive failure for one human being to personally connect with another, and because of this, the characters are always lacking that "something central which permeate[s]; something warm which [breaks] up surfaces and ripples the cold contact of man and woman, or of women together." Clarissa, Rezia, Septimus, Peter - all are looking for the semblance of themselves in someone else, so as to not be the one in streets looking for anyone to let them know "I am unhappy." Is this a post-war sentiment? Have we been exposed to an overload of horrors, become too aware, possibly too psycho-analytic (with apologies to Spencer), too traumatized? Woolf expands and complicates the notion of what could be considered traumatic. Anything from sexual assault to the smallest submission of the will, or the most personal upheaval in one's life, is treated as traumatic. And this trauma is largely what distances the characters, removes the naturally close, turns the characters inside. But part of the beauty of Mrs. Dalloway is the subtle hope infused in the knowledge that the characters - and by extension, us - are all searching for connection, solace, and meaning amidst a world that is absolutely absorbing for some, spiteful and ignorant for others, fanatical to still more - and facing this diversity on the page that stands shelled in every kernel of life, I could not help but to look deeper inside my own life, past labels and expectations and outside influence.