I know that this will be a short blog post, but I just had to get some ideas out there in hopes that some of you will either agree or disagree with my mini-epiphany. So, when we were first being introduced to Clarissa Dalloway, we learn about her time at Bourton, more specifically, her time with Sally Seton. While at Bourton, Clarissa explains that “she did undoubtedly then feel what men felt” when she was with Sally Seton. Clarissa loved Sally’s amazing gift of a personality and even explains her own excitement when Sally would be in the same house as her, thinking “she is beneath this roof...she is beneath this roof!” In Clarissa’s mind, Sally is this amazing, inspiring person that she is just involuntarily obsessed with.
But as the years go by, Clarissa and Sally grow apart, and Clarissa settles to marry Richard and spend her life as the perfect hostess. But, as Sally leaves Clarissa’s mind, Peter enters, but not in the way you would think. The roles are reversed, and this time, Peter ends up feeling a connection to Clarissa and sense excitement whenever he is near her. “What is this terror? what is this ecstasy? he thought to himself. What is it that fills me with extraordinary excitement? It is Clarissa, he said. For there she was”. The tide has changed from Sally being the center of Clarissa’s universe, to Clarissa becoming the center of Peter’s universe.
After this switch, it will be interesting to see how Peter’s marriage in India will go if he is unable to stop thinking about, or even be separated from, Clarissa. Will he try and win Clarissa back? Or will he go back to India to marry his new found love interest?
I also feel that Sally's universe shifted during the book. In the beginning, when she was younger, Sally was focused on political theories and events, and also the drama at Bourton. Now it seems that most of her attention has moved to her five sons. One might say that this is natural for any parent, but Elizabeth is certainly not the center of Clarissa's universe, so I feel that there's more to Sally's focus on her children.
ReplyDeleteI think it's reasonable to to say the effect of the drifting apart of Sally from Clarissa's mind and Sally's own new personality are related. I agree with your point that Sally was once an exuberant young woman when compared to her character now, and Clarissa even states in the book that she thinks Sally, (or perhaps more appropriately, Lady Rosseter), has lost much of her impulsive nature. This can be attributed to the fact that Sally now lives a much more subdued lifestyle, married and with five kids. Thus, this shift in universes away from Sally Seton makes sense, as she is no longer the Sally that she was to Clarissa so long ago. The only major difference in the switch is that before, Clarissa was the one who put someone (Sally) in the center of her universe. Now, Clarissa is on the receiving end of this idea of being put in the center of one's universe, as she is the center of Peter's world.
ReplyDeleteI agree there seems to be a shift in Clarissa and Sally's relationship, however I'm not sure there really has been a distinct "shift" in Peter's view of Clarissa. He proposed to her 30 years ago, which means she was certainly "the center of his universe" then, and his love life hasn't gone particularly well since then, so it would make sense for her to remain a prominent figure in his mind. Of course being in India and "in love" with another woman would perhaps make his reunion with Clarissa appear like a shift, but I feel like his thoughts towards Clarissa have not dramatically changed or increased in recent years and aren't really comparable to the surprising disconnect we experience between Clarissa and Sally at the end of the book.
ReplyDeleteI don't mean to denigrate the significance of Clarissa's feelings for Sally when I describe them as a "crush." I simply mean that, as you point out, the *feeling* of being so into Sally, of wanting to be *like* her as well as to be liked and affirmed by her, of having her world and horizons opened up by her, is so strong. It's not like they need to have a "relationship" that extends over time in order for this influence to alter Clarissa's world. Woolf captures beautifully the strong affections of the young, where friendship and romantic attraction and a host of other feelings are confusingly bundled together. Clarissa likes Sally, in part, because she seems to hold the promise that Clarissa could be a different kind of person altogether. But this, too, remains a road not taken, as both Clarissa and Sally have left their radical, experimental, book-reading days behind. But the fact that they didn't become social revolutionaries does not mean that this "phase" was insignificant. Indeed, Clarissa calls it "the most exquisite moment of [her] life."
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