As established during class, Mrs. Dalloway focuses on the flow of thoughts people have rather than their actions or the "objective reality" that surrounds them. The internal discourses people have in their heads is what defines their character. Judging by what Clarissa Dalloway thinks about in her mind, one may infer that she is concerned with her appearance and the way she appears to others. She considers how she would look "if she could have her life over again," and compares herself to to someone Lady Bexborough, wishing she had been like her. (10) She later describes herself as feeling "suddenly shrivelled, aged, breastless," moments after learning that Lady Bruton has invited her husband to lunch without her. (30) Her thoughts could be exaggerated but they give insight into her self-image, which is what stood out to me during her unexpected reunion with Peter Walsh.
As I interpreted the sequence, Peter and Clarissa have their own self doubts and critical observations of each other. This is what most struck me the first time reading through this part-- that Peter and Clarissa both seem to experience feelings of personal inadequacy or think that the other is being too critical/hurtful. The line "He's very well dressed, thought Clarissa; yet he always criticises me," and the following criticism on page 40 sort of mirrors "Why make him suffer, when she had tortured him so infernally?" on page 41. They both feel hurt by each other, and a little later the excerpts "...a complete life, which she put down by them and said, "This is what I have made of it! This!" And what had she made of it?" along with "And she would think me a failure," on page 42 suggest self doubt coming from Clarissa and Peter respectively. They seemed to be thinking the same things about themselves or about each other.
However, looking through the passage again I noticed that this trend wasn't always the case. Peter thinks Clarissa looks older, Clarissa thinks Peter looks the same. (39) After Peter considers that's he's a failure in the eyes of Clarissa and her family, he recalls his experiences in India and feels pride in having not spent his time as Clarissa has. (42-43) Despite acknowledging that my observations weren't always true, I'd conclude that Clarissa has some worries about what other people (such as Peter) think of her, but these "other people" might also be experiencing the same worries as she does. Maybe this reflects the way our minds work along with how information is conveyed through the thought processes of different characters.
Citation
Woolf, Virginia. Mrs. Dalloway. ed. Bonnie Kime Scott. New York: Harcourt. 2005. Print.
Yes, and of course Peter and Clarissa can't read one another's thoughts, so they don't realize that they both make each other acutely self-conscious. I think this is probably true of many of us, often times--we see a kind of preemptive critical view of the other person, as if anticipating the criticism he or she will make and criticizing them first. Clarissa's line about Peter being well-dressed is funny in this regard--as she thinks how he criticizes her for caring about things like clothes, but then notes a kind of hypocrisy in him for obviously caring about what impression he makes on her. (There are so many levels of self-consciousness, it gets confusing to write sentences about it!)
ReplyDeleteI think the point of this similar thinking between Clarissa and Peter is to point out common themes in human nature. The key idea that Virginia Woolf is trying to make is that the most critical person of you is you. I imagine that as she was writing this section she was trying to convey the ideas she mentioned in the essay we read. To truly have a good novel, you have to be able to understand the character. Exploring the minds of Clarissa and Peter is supposed to give us insight to them as characters and, possibly, make it easier for us to relate to them. While neither person is the same, the similarities between the both is an excellent commentary on how self-oriented the human mind is and how this affects our day to day thinking.
ReplyDeleteI think you brought up a very good point, regarding Peter and Clarissa's personal feelings of inadequacy when they are around each other. It is easy to see that Clarissa feels somewhat critiqued by Peter, even when he is not around ("the perfect hostess", as well as constant thoughts of what he would say to her if he saw what she was doing), but often skimmed over is the fact that Peter is somewhat intimidated by Clarissa as well.
ReplyDeleteI really like the ways the Clarissa and Peter's thoughts mirror each other in this section; it's very funny how they both know each other well enough to anticipate the other's unspoken criticisms, and yet don't seem to realize how inadequate they're feeling. It's eye-opening to think about how everyone does this in life. I think that we all have some ability to predict what others think, but only rarely do we consider how other's predictions of our thoughts make them feel. The multitudinous levels of perception quickly become mind-boggling.
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