Wolfe, Jesse. “THE SANE WOMAN IN THE ATTIC: SEXUALITY AND SELF-AUTHORSHIP IN ‘MRS. DALLOWAY.’” Modern Fiction Studies, vol. 51, no. 1, 2005, pp. 34–59. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/26286352. Accessed 7 May 2021.

I will use this source to explore the sexuality of the characters, specifically Clarissa.This article relates Clarissa’s sexuality to Virginia Woolf herself which may or may not be a part of the essay.

Sautter-Leger, Sabine. “Railed in by a maddening reason: a reconsideration of Septimus Smith and his role in Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway.” Papers on Language & Literature, vol. 53, no. 1, 2017, p. 3. Gale Academic OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A490474584/AONE?u=cuny_hunter&sid=AONE&xid=77cd7357. Accessed 7 May 2021.

This will be used to relate Septimus to the overall narrative of the novel and Clarissa herself. This will also be used to connect the anxieties and fear post WW1 to the ideas of conformity and rebellion and the mental state of those who were deeply psychologically ‘affected’ by the war or otherwise.

Virginia Woolf and Her Female Contemporaries, edited by Julie Vandivere, and Megan Hicks, Liverpool University Press, 2016. ProQuest Ebook Central, https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/huntercollege-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4815440.

Selections of this will be used to contextualize Virginia Woolf with her contemporaries with specific emphasis on their ideas about marriage and love. 

Eng, D. T. C. (2020). Virginia woolf as a creative social artist: Female transcendence and male ambivalence in to the lighthouse and mrs. dalloway. Agathos, 11(2), 93-105. Retrieved from http://proxy.wexler.hunter.cuny.edu/login?url=https://www-proquest-com.proxy.wexler.hunter.cuny.edu/scholarly-journals/virginia-woolf-as-creative-social-artist-female/docview/2462487385/se-2?accountid=27495

This will be used to analyze and contextualize females and femininity in a primarily patriarchal and phallic centered society. 

Drobot, I. (2020). Virginia woolf’s modernist path. her middle diaries and the diaries she read. Philologica Jassyensia, 16(2), 412-413. Retrieved from http://proxy.wexler.hunter.cuny.edu/login?url=https://www-proquest-com.proxy.wexler.hunter.cuny.edu/scholarly-journals/virginia-woolfs-modernist-path-her-middle-diaries/docview/2477759601/se-2?accountid=27495

These are Woolf’s journals which may or may not be used in the essay. They would give context to her mental state and yet there may not be anything which relates to the specific thesis I’ve chosen. 

Wood, Olivia. “A Diamond and a Tropic Gale: Reexamining Bisexuality in Mrs. Dalloway.” Journal of Bisexuality, vol. 18, no. 3, July 2018, pp. 382–394. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1080/15299716.2018.1540374.

This will be used to examine love vs marriage in the novel, specifically related to Septimus and Clarissa’s relationships with Evans and Sally respectively. 

“Marriage.” Family Experiments: Middle-Class, Professional Families in Australia and New Zealand c. 1880–1920, by SHELLEY RICHARDSON, ANU Press, Australia, 2016, pp. 177–216. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt1q1crn1.15. Accessed 7 May 2021.

This will be used to analyze marriage as an institution as popularly regarded by people in the 1920’s. This may or may not be used to examine the socio economic status’s of opinions of marriage. 

Littleton, Jacob. “Mrs. Dalloway: Portrait of the Artist as a Middle-Aged Woman.” Twentieth Century Literature, vol. 41, no. 1, 1995, pp. 36–53. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/441714. Accessed 7 May 2021.

This will be used to challenge the Bildungsroman and analyze how Woolf did not create Clarissa as a young coming of age woman but as a woman struggling with middle age and the reflection of when she was a young woman. Primarily this will be used to emphasize how a womans life does not end with marriage at a young age as the novels of previous periods (including the georgian and victorian era, extending further into the zeitgeist) imply by usually ending just after or soon after a woman and her male partner marry. 

GELFANT, BLANCHE H. “Love and Conversion in ‘Mrs. Dalloway.’” Criticism, vol. 8, no. 3, 1966, pp. 229–245. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/23094188. Accessed 7 May 2021.

This will be used to explore how Clarissa Dalloway uses her parties as forms of love, conversation as a means of connection and intimacy yet reinforcing that she is ever divided from her guests by ending conversations early to ‘entertain’ others.

Wolfe, Jesse. “THE SANE WOMAN IN THE ATTIC: SEXUALITY AND SELF-AUTHORSHIP IN ‘MRS. DALLOWAY.’” Modern Fiction Studies, vol. 51, no. 1, 2005, pp. 34–59. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/26286352. Accessed 22 Apr. 2021.

Wood, Olivia. “A Diamond and a Tropic Gale: Reexamining Bisexuality in Mrs. Dalloway.” Journal of Bisexuality, vol. 18, no. 3, July 2018, pp. 382–394. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1080/15299716.2018.1540374.

Sautter-Léger, Sabine. “Railed in by a Maddening Reason: a Reconsideration of Septimus Smith and His Role in Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway.” Papers on language & literature 53.1 (2017): 3–3. Print.

Virginia Woolf and Her Female Contemporaries, edited by Julie Vandivere, and Megan Hicks, Liverpool University Press, 2016. ProQuest Ebook Central, https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/huntercollege-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4815440.

Eng, David T. C. “Virginia Woolf as a Creative Social Artist: Female Transcendence and Male Ambivalence in to the Lighthouse and Mrs. Dalloway.” Agathos, vol. 11, no. 2, 2020, pp. 93-105. ProQuest, http://proxy.wexler.hunter.cuny.edu/login?url=https://www-proquest-com.proxy.wexler.hunter.cuny.edu/scholarly-journals/virginia-woolf-as-creative-social-artist-female/docview/2462487385/se-2?accountid=27495.

Drobot, Irina-Ana. “Virginia Woolf’s Modernist Path. Her Middle Diaries and the Diaries She Read.” Philologica Jassyensia, vol. 16, no. 2, 2020, pp. 412-413. ProQuest, http://proxy.wexler.hunter.cuny.edu/login?url=https://www-proquest-com.proxy.wexler.hunter.cuny.edu/scholarly-journals/virginia-woolfs-modernist-path-her-middle-diaries/docview/2477759601/se-2?accountid=27495.

Marriage in Mrs. Dalloway and the challenging of the Bildungsroman which ends with a marriage. This novel begins when the marriage has already taken place and is not an end point but a middle point in a woman’s life. I wish to focus on the examples of marriage in the novel and expand from there.

As I reread AILD I’m picking up more and more on the themes of social hierarchy and assumption (or perhaps illusion would be a better word.) I noticed two particular things this time around, though I’m not sure if I’ve already written about these in some capacity. The first is Anse’s characteristics as opposed to our modern business values.

Anse’s characteristics are horrible, don’t get me wrong, but they would also be very welcome on Wall Street. Think about it, he delegates all his work to his children and his wife, a leadership quality that is praised in business, he uses his mastery of microeconomics (welfare economics) to find his new wife later in the novel. At the beginning, by waiting till the last minute to pay for the doctor to visit Addie, he kills her. Even if the doctor could have eased her suffering she would not have been able to return to work. Intentionally or unintentionally he kills Addie, his ‘asset’ in order to replace her with a new one. In accounting this is called depreciation of an asset and expected cost to replace, the expected cost is the cost of a set of new teeth. From an accounting standpoint Anse is getting rid of the sunk cost asset and upgrading. By no measure of the imagination is Anse a good person; he is not evil though. Because he was born with the farm as his only asset instead of a trust fund he could not advance in the world yet by using his manipulative and micro economic skills he maintains the life he has. If he were born with a Vanderbilt inheritance I’m sure he would be able to at least maintain it and not squander it like many heirs do. He might even be a scrooge about it and lobby for taxes to be lowered. My second focus is on Cara.

Cara opens the book up to the social hierarchy that exists within this community. Often when looking from the outside in on a community the nuances of that community’s differing beliefs and social standings are overlooked and instead outsiders paint with a wide brush. Through the differing perspectives we as readers are opened to the nuances of this world. Cara in particular opens the door to analyzing the social hierarchies and ladders that exist within this community. While she is not rich or from town like other more urban characters in the novel she finds another form of putting herself ‘above’ others and that is through her supposed faith and piety in the christian church.

By putting herself on this ‘peacocking piety’ pedestal we can see how even when a community has little to nothing there will still be ways people self stratify. However, the methods of which they judge themselves against others will differ. For Cara the method is clearly religious but for Darl it is his philosophical bend and for Jewel it is his craftsmanship and devotion to his mother. There will always be a way a person differentiates themselves from others to view themselves as above, it is simply most evident in Cara’s chapter. 

Here’s a side rant no one asked for. Even the second time around Cara is a character I truly hate. I grew up in a Roman Catholic family, raised by a devout grandmother who dragged my sister and I to church and religion classes every week. Through the church (and her constant extra involvement in church events and gatherings) I got to know several women who were and probably still are exactly like Cara in their self glorifying martyrdom and ‘piety’. They put themselves on a pedestal of perfection through religion and supposed devotion while denying it (the self created pedestal) exists. They look down on everyone below them because they think they are closer to God than any other sinner. They often (at least one woman I remember) are awful mothers who pretend their home life is perfect and should be envied when really she favored one child over another so heavily that child developed serious mental issues and had to move to another state to get away from them. This is the same woman who refused to associate with anyone who was not a christian. They want to be envied even if they turn a blind eye to the true evil happening in front of them. The head of the religious studies program (a different woman in the same church) either didn’t pay enough attention to know or ignored that the head priest was/is a pedophile for years. Cara reminds me of these women and it irks me to my bones. Cara is truly the Phyllis Schlafly of this book. Side rant over.

Perhaps- and I really am just guessing here- Woolf was inspired by the Freudian idea that all people crave death on a subconscious level. It would fit with the narrative of the book. Clarissa wanted to die. She thinks on whether or not Septimus died with his ‘treasures’ and then immediately thinks of her wedding day. Her ‘treasure’ and how she could die happy as she was on her way to her own wedding. But her wedding day is long behind her, her treasure was already acquired and now what treasure does she have?

Throughout the novel she seems to have been reflecting on her own life’s meaning from the small (like the flowers for the party etc.) to the larger themes of marriage, love, social acceptance and finally death. 

Clarissa is ‘introduced’ so to speak to death at her party, as if it is one of her guests, a guest uninvited yet brought to the party by the Bradshaws. “Oh, here’s death.” is what she thinks as Mrs. Bradshaw tells her of Septimus’s suicide. She thinks it as if she had been waiting for it to appear just like any other of her party guests. Clarissa then begins wandering around her party as if looking for death itself, to have a conversation with it and yet the conversation only happens in her own mind. 

As she is wandering through the party she is also attempting to find someone, anyone to distract her from thinking about death but “There was nobody.” in the room to which she wanders. Only when she doesn’t find any can her mind wander to its deeper subjects instead of everything she had busying herself with all day. They were distractions from her true thoughts, her ignored thoughts of how unhappy she was and is. These people and parties, flitting between guests and the mental work that went into planning them seem to work as self induced medication to ignore her true feelings and thoughts about death which can only come out when the party is in full swing and there is no one and nothing to distract her. 

This seems to be supported by her continually interrupted thoughts while she is in the room alone. She is thinking of death and horrified that it was talked about at her party. “The Bradshaws” had essentially invited their own guest to her party, one she didn’t want to interact with and one she wanted to and had been ignoring at the party and all day. She thought the car back firing was a pistol at the beginning of the novel after all. Though she tries she cannot stop thinking of death. She tries and fails to fall back on her usual coping mechanisms of people and party details. These are her usual coping methods of distraction. 

But it fails. Her self medication is failing and she cannot help but think about death. Her distrust and dislike of Sir William is most likely resulting from her fear of her own mental state and the fear that Sir William will discern it, if he were to closely look, pointing out what she refuses to acknowledge. She says there is something in him that is “Forcing your soul” and that it “made life intolerable, men like that.” Then, finally, we see what she thinks about death. 

“They went on living (she would have to go back; the rooms were still crowded; people kept on coming). They (all day she had been thinking of Bourton, of Peter, of Sally), they would grow old. A thing there was that mattered; a thing, wreathed about with chatter, defaced, obscured in her own life, let drop everyday in corruption, lies, chatter. This he had preserved. Death was defiance.”

Compared to Turn of the Screw (which was written earlier in the authors career and who’s title appears to be a favorite phrase of the authors as he uses it in chapter 12 of  What Maisie Knew) this novel is in fact “modern”. The very discussion of divorce is not something Victorian society acknowledged in any way other than sweeping it under the rug. While it existed it was a huge taboo. While cheating on a spouse has always existed in society it is only in the ‘modern’ world where it is openly discussed. Addressing these concepts at all, especially in the beginning of the novel makeTo her parents Maisie is a game piece, a billiard ball shot at by both of them to defeat their opponents. These and other concepts in the novel bring in the ‘modernism’ of Henry James’s writing, however, it seems that the end message of the novel is that the old victorian ways are more ‘moral’. 

The old Victorian ways can be seen most personified in the character of Mrs. Wix. She is older than both of Maisie’s parents and her two step-parents. While she is poor and a widow she is the most moral of all the characters in contact with Maisie. While Maisie is the central character she is directly influenced by her guardians, each representing a different aspect of society. The new, modern glamorous society which is underhanded and deceitful as represented by her step-parents, the older establishes society which is also underhanded and deceitful but more established as represented by her parents and the oldest and most noble aspect of society which is represented by Mrs. Wix. 

While Mrs. Wix is not well educated and very poor she is without question the most moral of all of Maisie’s parental figures. While she is a widow she never perseus any new romantic relationships. This distance from the other sex has her remaining morally ‘pure’ in contrast to both Mrs. Beale and Ida who both live off of the men around them. Mrs. Wix, in contrast, lives off of her own merit and will only allow herself to be taken care of by Sir Claude when Mrs. Beale is not in the picture of their family. She is also a mother and acts on her motherly instincts when caring for Maisie. This is because she most accurately represents the old mores of the Victorian past. She is the noble poor woman who stands in contrast to the amoral or loosely moralled parents and step parents. 

By choosing to remain with Mrs. Wix Maisie, who throughout the novel is exposed to more than her fair share of modernity and traditional mores. While she is shuttled back and forth between her parents and steph parents she is also shuttled back and forth between modern mores and traditional ones. By choosing to remain with Mrs. Wix at the end of the novel it appears as those James is stating that the traditional mores are the better choice between the two. While she could have lived a life of luxury with her step parents, who would in turn be living in sin, she instead decides to stay with Mrs. Wix, most likely in poverty and most likely abandoned by both her parents, her father, having already left to live off a mistress in America. This choice seems to speak to Maisies simultaneous understanding but rejection of modernity. 

This story, going from Maisie’s home situation and her relationship with her step parents verses her biological parents is the opposite of a Cinderella story. The biological parents, who in fairytale stories are saint-like, deceased, or controlled by an outside force are, Maisies story, narcissistic and manipulative. In fairy tale stories, like Cinderella and snow white, it is the step parents who are the narcissistic and manipulative ones. In this reversal a form of modernity is achieved, the idea of an inherent biological love and protective instinct for children is challenged. The sad fact is that bad parents who manipulate their children to get back at their ex-spouses do exist. This theme is modern in itself, the myth that ‘when a child is born inherent parental instinct kicks in’ is still present in our society but there is a growing awareness that not all parents are good parents. This, I think, is also reflected in the fact that there was a film adaptation of What Maisie Knew released in 2012. Unlike most film adaptations of novels written in the 19th century this was not a period piece but a modern adaptation. I have not seen the film however it has received good reviews. Undoubtedly one of the reasons the production was based in present times was because of the novel’s treatment of the biological parental figures not as saint-like but beset by unfortunate circumstances and instead as flawed and selfish. Previous stories and novels did not have this candor towards biological parents. Instead, both Mrs. Beale and Sir Claude show, at least initially, more parental protective instinct towards Maisie. Whether this is performative or not is yet to be discovered. Mrs. Wix, meanwhile, though she has no biological or legal connection to Maisie is the most parental towards her. She is also the only of the non-biological parents that is a biological parent herself. Her daughter, Clara, was loved and died tragically. Mrs. Wix herself is a morally upright yet poor woman. She is the closest to the myth of saint-like and beset parent that features so heavily in fairytales. Yet she has no biological ties to Maisie. An argument could be made that Mrs. Wix sees Maisie as a replacement for Clara however that would require intense close reading and heavy speculation. It is a far more obvious conclusion that Mrs. Wix has the most paternal instincts of all 5 parties and cares for Maisie the most because she has those inherent parental instincts that are not guaranteed in all parents.