In the final section of Mrs. Dalloway, the dinner party, that Clarissa has spent all day preparing for, is described. One of the very first things that I noticed about the party itself are the differences between how the servants experience the party and how Clarissa and her guests experience it. The servants are rushed and stressed as they run around, trying to get everything done at the right time and to the proper standards. Meanwhile, Clarissa flits around the room making conversation with her guests, but at the same time she worries that her party isn't going to be a success, despite all of her preparations.
The arrival of Sally Seton or Lady Rosseter, as she is now know, was another thing that really stuck out to me at the party. I was really curious to see how the interaction between her and Clarissa would be after reading the previous mentions of her, and I also was wondering how she would behave as an adult, or a maturer adult than she had been when she had last seen Clarissa. I was really hoping that getting married and having children wouldn't have changed her very much, even though she hadn't been actively in the novel until this point, the picture that had been painted of her character seemed much more interesting and dynamic than the other people in Clarissa's life. At first, she appears to not be the same at all, but then once she starts to interact with Clarissa, it becomes clear that her personality really hasn't changed much.
Something that really surprised me in this section was the appearance of the Bradshaws. I didn't expect the novel to have any sort of direct connection to Septimus after his death, and I thought that it was really interesting how he was yet again tied into Clarissa's story. For most of this novel, I've looked at Clarissa as being a rather superficial and shallow character--mainly because of how she was constantly being put next to Septimus, who was dealing with much deeper issues than guest lists and flowers. When Clarissa goes off on her own and reflects on Septimus's death, I felt like she was starting to agree with me, which really made me change my mind about her. Before I had thought of her as naive and oblivious, I hadn't really blamed her for worrying about seemingly trivial things, but I also didn't sympathize with her. When she was presented with Septimus's death, I wasn't sure how she would respond, but the way that she actually cared so much about a person who she had never met caused me to finish the book with a very positive opinion of her.
1 comment:
The fact that Woolf opens this much-anticipated party scene with the servants' point of view is indeed very interesting (especially in light of _The Hours_, and its portrait of Woolf's own discomfort dealing with her own domestic employees). For them, this is simply one very challenging night at work--a performance, akin to putting on a play. It reminds us of all the hard work that goes into Clarissa's parties, or to any of the things these upper-class characters enjoy. (There's a similar moment at Lady Bruton's lunch, where Woolf describes the food and table settings appearing almost magically, as the servants are more or less invisible to the guests.) Among other things, this reminds us how *local* all of the characters' obsessions are: this party is a very big deal for Clarissa--everything seems to hinge on its success--but for her employees, it's just another day at work. (Although Lucy does seem to care that Elizabeth looks nice in her pink frock--she does have some emotional engagement with this family.)
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