In reading Mrs. Dalloway, I have always kept Woolf’s short story “The Legacy” in the back of my mind. In the short story, Gilbert Clandon, a wealthy politician, is clearing the effects of his wife, Angela. However, it’s strange that Angela has taken the time before her death to leave items for her loved ones and friends: “It was as if she had foreseen her death. Yet she had been in perfect health when she left the house that morning, six weeks ago; when she stepped off the kerb in Piccadilly and the car had killed her.” Curious as to what his wife has left him, Gilbert notes that it was probably nothing, save for her volumes of diaries, which have been the subject of arguments in the past. He notes that Angela was always against him reading her writings, saying that it should wait until “‘After I’m dead—perhaps.’ So she had left it him, as her legacy. It was the only thing they had not shared when she was alive.” As he reads her diaries and letters, he finds that Angela starts out praising her husband, but stops mentioning him as she begins communicating with a mysterious B.M., who is eventually revealed to be the late brother of Angela’s secretary, Sissy Miller. The “legacy” she left Gilbert in her diaries was the fact that she had stepped off the kerb to kill herself and rejoin her lover—and to escape her marriage.

Though the kerb is only explicitly mentioned twice in the novel, my reading of “The Legacy” has added a new dimension to how I interpreted the two scenes. In the first mention of the kerb, as Clarissa set out to buy flowers, “she stiffened a little on the kerb, waiting for Durtnall’s van to pass” (p. 4). As she she waited on the kerb, the letters which Peter wrote her occupied her mind. The kerb is mentioned a second time when Peter follows a young woman, after visiting Clarissa. As she “waited at the kerbstone,” Peter thinks that “there was a dignity about her She was not worldly, like Clarissa; not rich, like Clarissa” (p. 53). In both these instances, Clarissa and Peter have each other on their minds—the kerb serves as a place for them to consider the other.

It’s interesting to see the similarities between the relationships of the characters in Mrs. Dalloway and “The Legacy.” Clarissa, like Angela, is married to a wealthy politician who is not exactly the most present husband. The two women are not entirely happy with their marriages, and there is another man who serves as a “what-if” to the married women. However, what’s different about the two is that Clarissa has come to terms with her marriage. She has a daughter with Richard (Angela notes in her diary that she wishes she had a child with Gilbert), and realizes that though she may not be happy with her marriage, she is at the very least content. In the moment that Clarissa and Peter share a kiss (p. 47), Clarissa has a moment of doubt. She thinks that if she had married Peter, happiness could have been hers forever, and she thinks of running off with Peter—only to be grounded by the appearance of Elizabeth, her daughter.

The similarity of Woolf’s use of the kerb as a literary device in Mrs. Dalloway and “The Legacy” leads me to think the following: firstly, could Angela be Clarissa? I once read somewhere that Woolf’s original plan for the novel was for Clarissa to die by suicide during the dinner party, and that Septimus would not appear in the novel. What would the effect of this have been—would we read it like “The Legacy,” that Clarissa seeks to escape her marriage? Secondly, the kerb as a literary device: the act of waiting on the kerb and stepping off it presents us with a sense of limbo—yet, why is it only women (Angela, Clarissa, the woman Peter watches) who wait at the kerb? Angela steps off the kerb to be hit by a car, Clarissa stiffens as a van passes; there is no mention of a vehicle with the woman Peter follows. What is the effect of Woolf’s placing of women at the kerb, and how do these three instances of being at the kerb, and varying appearances of a vehicle create distinct visions of life and death?