Mrs. Dalloway, Again

Fifth year of an economics PhD is all about rhythm. You're supposed to be in the groove and on your way. Discipline, focus, and a self-reinforcing web of commitments.

Which is to say you shouldn't be surprised if I tell you my insomnia has grown in stature and I am a pebble away from collapsing under my own weight.

So what does one do at 2.46 am on a Wednesday with a once in a century pandemic on the loose along with a generation-defining election in a week?

A Review of Mrs. Dalloway

I have mentioned before that my favorite Virginia Woolf novel is To the Lighthouse. Indeed, that book touched me in a way no other work by Woolf has done, and though my opinion hasn't changed after reading Mrs. Dalloway again, I have a lot to say.

This time's sojourn in the London of 1923 began on a train ride to Southampton. I needed something to distract me from the worries of traveling in the midst of covid. And so I decided to get into a different stream of thought. A stream of consciousness, if you will.

Virginia Woolf's books have some common traits. They are all demanding reads: your concentration cannot drop or waver. Woolf is constantly moving across several characters' heads; she's switching the subject of the sentence deftly; and she's doing it all beautifully. Missing a beat doesn't only mean losing the flow. A distracted read probably means you would end up not liking the book, at a minimum.

The cold stream of visual impressions failed him now as if the eye were a cup that overflowed and let the rest run down its china wall unrecorded. The brain must wake now. The body must contract now, entering the house, the lighted house, where the door stood open, where the motor cars were standing, and bright women descending: the soul must brave itself to endure. He opened the big blade of his pocket knife.

Second, Woolf's books carry an undercurrent. Even if it is a scene of tranquility that she is painting, there is, right there, subtly, just underneath the surface, a whirlpool of anxiety and anger. It recalls Louise Glück's commentary on John Berryman, "The background is the abyss; the poems venture as close to the edge as possible." Virginia Woolf's darkness spills out through her characters, as with other writers, but it also seeps through her prose.

The secret signal which one generation passes, under disguise, to the next is loathing, hatred, despair. Dante the same. Aeschylus (translated) the same.

Third, her books are emotionally heavy. Virginia Woolf did not have a happy life. She was introspective and incisive with her assessment of the world and its many flawed characters. Her books can easily put you into depression. They are not for the faint of heart. Mrs. Dalloway is still a more sprightly read, unlike To the Lighthouse, but the abyss of despondency is a step away, all the same.

...with hazel eyes which had that look of apprehension in them which makes complete strangers apprehensive too.

And, finally, her books are extraordinarily perceptive. 

She felt very young; at the same time unspeakably aged. She sliced like a knife through everything; at the same time was outside, looking on.

The story covers a day in London and flits across the lives of several protagonists, chief among them being Clarissa Dalloway and Septimus Warren Smith. It's really just a single solitary day. The characters, however, are not merely living out the present -- they cannot -- for they cannot escape how their lives are inextricably connected to their past and how they are living out the consequences of decisions made many many years before. It's one of the themes of the book: the weight of past decisions lingers and its consequences cast a shadow decades removed. 

The notion of Time is not only connected to the past. Clarissa and Septimus both understand the fragility of their existence. Its finiteness and their sheer mortality troubles them. In To the Lighthouse (TTL) too there are questions about what a person leaves behind when they are no longer alive. But while this vexed question is left as the backdrop in TTL, in Mrs. Dalloway the characters actively consider their own mortality. 

Clarissa worries about the futility of her life. She finds it difficult to accept that her place in the world is transitory. She hopes the echoes of her existence reverberate in other people's lives. She wonders if the very wind and the leaves and everything else gets suffused by the momentary presence of ephemeral individuals. Septimus, in his fits of madness, feels he has obtained immortal knowledge which the wretched world cannot comprehend. He sees through it all. But the burden of knowing is crushing him, his mortal self. 

Time even makes its corporeal presence felt through the booming leaden circles cast by Big Ben. The striking of the tower is interspersed through the pages as it faithfully marks the passage of the day but also serves a constant reminder to all about the inexorable passage of time.

Big Ben was beginning to strike, first the warning, musical; then hour, irrevocable.

Yet it is not the role of Time that affected me while reading the book. It was its discussion of mental illness. Septimus Warren Smith is a veteran. He lost his closest friend in the battlefield. The trauma of the loss ensconces his soul slowly. It grows like a parasite. It affects his ability to communicate with his wife, Rezia, who he courted while billeted in Italy, who grew up in a convivial atmosphere of a family hat-making business, and who is now tormented by her husband's madness and terrified by his suicidal tendencies.

Even more troubling is the relationship Septimus has with his doctors. We begin with Dr. Holmes, a man completely out of his depth. Holmes thinks Septimus has no affliction. He gives an ignoramus' assurance. He lets Septimus' neurosis grow unabated.  It grows to the point when Rezia finally approaches the considerably more famous and expensive Sir William Bradshaw.

Woolf's dissection of Bradshaw is extraordinary and unnerving. It was possibly informed by her own experience with psychiatrists and psychologists -- Woolf suffered several nervous breakdowns throughout her life. There is a public facet of Bradshaw. He is kind, impressive, and an adherent of "Proportion." Proportion being the principle that the secret to a good life of health and success is keeping life's elements in check. Having the right balance. Superficially, his proposed treatment for Septimus is merely so: sending him to a house in the countryside where he is monitored and allowed to recover, away from Rezia.

But Rezia senses a sinister counterpart to Proportion. She calls it "Conversion," the tendency for those who live life in Proportion to force deviants into shape, to whip them without remorse; dehumanizing their worries as mere pathologies. In other words, Conversion seeks to conquer. Rezia fears for Septimus. She sees the ruthless cruelty in Bradshaw's methods. Cruelty, not of the physical kind, but something far worse. She is powerless. 

That is the most disturbing part of the novel. What is mental health? How do we understand it? How do we treat it? And what terrors does the patient suffer that are inaccessible to a closed well-educated well-polished professional? Rezia did a far better job of keeping Septimus sane than any doctor did. I do not think this is coincidence.

When I read Virginia Woolf there is always one character that seems to speak Woolf's mind most clearly. In TTL, it is Lily Briscoe. In Mrs. Dalloway, it is Septimus. Septimus is asking for help. Help is nowhere to be found.

The day ends. Clarissa organizes a party where prominent names pay visit. She also meets old friends who have influenced her life indelibly and about whom she cannot stop reminiscing on most days. But she has no time for them. The Prime Minister is here. And so is Sir William Bradshaw and a dozen other dignitaries.

In a novel about one's exhausting battles with inner demons; still having to make sense of life in the physical world; living in the shadow of a disorienting First World War, all in an exquisite, if demanding, stream of consciousness writing style, one hopes to find meaning in futility. And to answer the following question:

"What does the brain matter," said Lady Rosseter, getting up, "compared with the heart?"