Mrs. Dalloway Said She Would Buy the Flowers Herself

I said I would buy the flowers myself (Woolf 1). For the party I must have flowers. But which ones? There are so many lovely ones how can I bring myself to choose? Even at this flower shop amongst the sea of petals I cannot choose! For they each seem to symbolize something, it all depends on what I would like to be the spirit of the party. And also one must keep in mind tastefulness, for tastefulness is key! Oh, heavens, I remember the awful disaster at Lady Lovejoy's party! There were almost too many flowers; it was as if one was drowning in pollen! 'There were flowers: delphiniums, sweet peas, bunches of lilac; and carnations, masses of carnations. There were roses; there were irises' (Woolf 9). I had the piercing urge to cover my nose and mouth with my handkerchief, yet I refrained for manner's sake. When I saw her 'coming to the window with her arms full of sweet peas' I held my tongue (Woolf 11). No! i wanted to tell her. You will drown your guests with Springtime. Yet I held my tongue, for I was not the hostess, and merely made a mental note to not make the same awful mistake at my own party. I will be a graceful hostess, not the “perfect hostess” that Peter so mockingly hurt me with many years ago (Woolf 54). He meant me to feel it.  He would have done anything to hurt me, after seeing me with Dalloway. Oh, the nerve of that man! But not now, not now, my mind has more pleasant things to attend to.

The weather is fair this June morning, ‘soft with the glow of rose petals’ (Woolf 25). Rose petals! I shall buy roses! But yet, are roses too romantic? They carry a certain sensuality about them that I may not wish to instill at the party, it is merely for mingling for heaven’s sakes! Oh, but roses are so beautiful.  Maybe for another party, another time. Or what about the ones like those at Hampton Court? ‘All the little red and yellow flowers were out on the grass like floating lamps,’ those flowers did have such a gaiety and charm about them (Woolf 58).

If only Sally were with me, she would know what to do. ‘Sally’s power was amazing, her gift, her personality. There was her way with flowers, for instance’ (Woolf 28). If only I had such a gift! ‘Sally went out picked hollyhocks, dahlias- all sorts of flowers that had never been seen together – cut their heads off, and made them swim on the top of water in bowls.  The effect was extraordinary…’ (Woolf 28). Oh, if only I had such a gift now!

I know people laugh at my frivolity, but what is life without the little joys? ‘Admirable butlers, tawny chow dogs, halls laid in black and white lozenges with white blinds blowing,’ these are the things that bring contentment and joy to my heart (Woolf 47). It is a woman’s job to keep house and keep herself, so why not do so in the most beautiful way possible? What scorn I would receive if I carried myself any other way! Like Mrs. Kilman! I saw her in a mackintosh the other day, and it took all my dignity to keep from laughing out. ‘First, it was cheap; second, she is over forty; and does not, after all, dress to please. She is, moreover; degradingly poor’ (Woolf 108). I cannot think of anything more humiliating! How I detest that woman. She laps up all of my Elizabeth’s attention, leaving absolutely none for myself, and she dares stand before me and call herself a Christian woman! I myself have no particular ties to religion, but from the purest of observations I know what the Christians value grace and love. Yet this woman embodies neither! ‘Love and religion! How detestable, how detestable they are! The cruelest things in the world…clumsy, hot, domineering, hypocritical, eavesdropping, jealous, infinitely cruel and unscrupulous, dressed in a mackintosh coat…love and religion’ (Woolf 111). There is very little joy in this world, and ‘the odious Kilman will destroy it’ (Woolf 111). My, I am getting carried away; the mere thought of that woman is enough to make my blood boil.

But my Elizabeth, how lovely she is becoming! ‘She was always charming to look at; and lately, in the evening especially, when she was interested, for she never seemed excited, she almost looked beautiful, very stately, very serene. What could she be thinking? Every man fell in love with her, and she was really awfully bored. For it is beginning…the compliments were beginning’ (Woolf 119). She is so quiet, my Elizabeth, never outward, never loud. She never shares her heart with me, though I bet she does so with that Miss Kilman!

But never mind! It is decided; I shall buy lilies. They are elegant and simple and shall be the talk of the party. Never mind if Miss Kilman thinks me frivolous and shallow, for she is poor and unsightly! I shall cast her from my mind and indulge in the gaiety of the party tonight. Yes, lilies will do. 

The Woman I'd Like to Be

'An excellent wife who can find? She is far more precious than jewels' (Proverbs 21:19). One of my dreams in life is to be a wife and a mother. That may sound silly seeing as many people do not consider this to be anything abnormal or worthy of dreaming, but for me it is not merely a right of passage or an ordinary job. It is an honorable role, one that prides itself on selflessness and philanthropy. 'She opens her hand to the poor and reaches her hands out to the needy. She is not afraid of snow for her household, for all her household are clothed in scarlet' (Proverbs 21:21-22).

I have had many motherly figures in my life, aside from my own mother. These mothers have taken me in under their wings, have nourished me with wisdom and assurance, and have provided me with a security in myself that I would have been lacking if not for them. That is the kind of woman I would like to be, one who constantly reaches out to others, who makes them feel special and safe and loved. One of my absolute favorite passages in the Bible is Proverbs 21:26, saying 'She opens her mouth with wisdom, and the teaching of kindness is on her tongue.' I picture The Mother. The woman who encourages, nurtures, and criticizes with kindness when necessary. This mother is not focused on vanity or material things, but it is her beautiful spirit that shines through, for the Bible says, 'Do not be concerned about the outward beauty that depends on fancy hairstyles, expensive jewelry or beautiful clothes.  You should be known for the beauty that comes from within, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is so precious to God' (1 Peter 3:3-4).  This mother is soft-spoken and never gossips, 'for their wives are to be worthy of respect, not malicious talkers but temperate and trustworthy in everything.' (1 Timothy 3:11).


I want to be the mother who has warm cookies on the table when the children get home from the first day of school. I want to be the mother who has matching hair ribbons for her daughter's dresses. I want to be the mother who makes signs and posters for her son's sports games. I want to be the mother who takes her daughter for a drive to get ice cream when she first discovers how cruel the other girls can be. I want to be the mother who encourages her children and who is firm and steadfast. I want to be the wife who respects her husband. I want to be my husband's best friend. This is the woman I would like to be.

Acknowledgements

It seems to be a time of tragedy in this life of ours. Over the weekend, one of our own in our school community tragically took her life. A fourth grade teacher, beloved by many, mourned by all. It's horrifically coincidental that our Septimus of Mrs. Dalloway also ended his life. And yet further, that the author of the book, Virginia Woolf, also took her life. All of this has put me in a deep place of contemplation and thought and heavy-heartedness. And again, last night I found out that the dear, dear founder of the camp that I have attended my whole life passed away. The shock that hit me was unbelievable.

I was talking with Ms. Tally about the theme of depression and suicidal thoughts throughout the novel, and I realized that part of the reason it is so hard to detect is because the flourished language and the archaic diction. If the words were translated into present-day English, maybe it would be easier to comprehend and see the common thread. Yet I feel like so much is missed because people do not understand. The first clue to Mrs. Dalloway's tremendous heartache is when she is walking to go get the flowers, thinking, 'Did it matter then, she asked herself, walking towards Bond Street, did it matter that she must inevitably cease completely; all this must go on without her; did she resent it; or did it not become consoling to believe that death ended absolutely? but that somehow in the streets of London, on the ebb and flow of things, here, there she survived?...What was she trying to recover?' (6).  It seems so horrible to me that she makes the idea of death and her demise so trivial and matter-of-fact.

It also struck me greatly how insecure Mrs. Dalloway is. She thinks to herself, '...half the time she did things not simply, not for themselves; but to make people think this or that; perfect idiocy she knew...for no one was ever for a second taken in.  Oh if she could have had her life over again! she thought, stepping on to the pavement, could have looked even differently!' (7). It reminded me of how in the Beauty Myth we read that women think that if their appearance was different, their problems would be magically solved. Clarissa goes on to think, 'She would have been, in the first place, dark like Lady Bexborough, with a skin of crumpled leather and beautiful eyes.  She would have been, like Lady Bexborough, slow and stately; rather large...Instead of which she had a narrow pea-stick figure; a ridiculous little face, beaked like a bird's' (7). Mrs. Dalloway finds her security in what others think of her, hence the frivolous parties she hosts. She tries to fill the void that she has (possibly due to the lack of relationship that she has with Richard) with outside approval and material things, yet she still feels the hurt. 'It rasped her, though, to have stirring about in her this brutal monster! to hear twigs cracking and feel hooves planted down in the depths of that leaf-encumbered forest, the soul; never to be content quite, or quire secure, for at any moment the brute would be stirring, this hatred, which...made all pleasure in beauty, in friendship, in being well, in being loved and making her home delightful rock, quiver, and bend as if indeed there were a monster grubbing at the roots, as if the whole panoply of content were nothing but self love! this hatred!' (9). It is almost as if she feels ashamed of this sadness that she cannot shake, of the depression that she feels. And that is what is most sad, that she should feel burdened by her own unhappiness, and that she feels that she is unworthy to feel so.

Three Grandmothers: Deborah and Eleanor

The second of my grandmothers is Eleanor Starr. Gramma Starr. She is my namesake, I am Mackenzie Starr. Her father was an Anglican priest, and as a child she moved to 17 different states. Out of all my grandmothers, she is the one that they write about in stories. The round, soft one with whispy grey curls. The one who has warm cookies ready whenever you pay her a visit. The one who collects porcelain tea sets and had weekly tea parties with you as a child. The one who lives in a house with a white picket fence and a hand-planted garden. Everybody loves Gramma Starr. Everyone. At Christmastime, she bakes hundreds of Christmas cookies and packages them up into beautiful little parcels. She gives one to everyone in town. The bag boys at the supermarket, the assistants at the post office, the guy in the ferry control tower (she lives on an island off of Washington). During Thanksgiving, when we are all together she has us play the thankfulness game. We each receive a cup holding brown, yellow, red, and orange m&m's. Each time we eat one, we have to say something we're thankful for. I receive monthly letters from her, each with a Bible verse on it; each with a life lesson for me to gain. She says, "If I do one of these each month for you, by the time you're my age you could write your own Bible!" Out of all my grandmothers, she is the most cliché. And although we normally use the word "cliché" with a negative spin, it works for Gramma Starr. It's who she is.


The last of my grandmothers is Deborah. That's what I call her, Deborah. After Gramma Starr and my grandpa got divorced, my grandpa married Deborah. They got married when I was four, so virtually she she has been my grandmother for my entire life. I call her Deborah, well, because the rest of my family calls her Deborah. And until recently, the formality of it did have an effect on our relationship. She is from the deep South; she grew up surrounded by peach trees and horse farms, and everyday she would help her dad with the tractor. She adores horses. Absolutely adores them. Growing up, she had several of them. I asked her whether she rode English or Western style, and she laughed. "Sweet pea, I rode bareback! No saddle, no bridle! It's the only real way to ride a horse." That's what Deborah is, wild. She will gladly point out your wrongs in that thick Southern twang, and her wit is sharper than a knife. She's one of those people who has done everything. And I mean everything. She has worked as a crop-dusting pilot, an accountant, a horse trainer, a "house mother" at a home for troubled girls, a counselor, a banker, a sales person. She has even crashed a plane, and clearly she survived.
Before this year, my relationship with Deborah was nearly non-existent. We were always very friendly and could have a good laugh, but there was no depth or meaning to our relationship. And then she was diagnosed with Alzheimer's. It was devastatingly true, you don't know what you got 'til it's gone. A fear that I didn't know my own grandmother gripped me and shook me to my senses. My next visit with Deborah, I poured myself into loving on her and spending quality time with her. We watched movies, baked cookies, read together. But mostly we talked about horses. It's a common love for us; both of us have been riding for our entire lives. We watched horse movies, looked at horse pictures, we even went out riding a few times. This Spring I begged my mom to send me out to South Carolina to spend my Spring Break with Deborah and my grandpa. This time I could see the effects of her sickness a little bit more. She would get flustered with driving directions, would sometimes put her oatmeal in the microwave three or four times, forgetting that she had done it before. I decided that I wanted to conduct my grandmother interview with Deborah. I wanted to preserve every last memory that I had of her. That Spring Break was one of the best of my entire life. Sometimes, Deborah would tell me to get in her truck and we would just drive. We would drive for miles on the highway, not knowing where we were going, stopping to get Dairy Queen on the way. This grandmother assignment could not have come at a better time for me, because without it, I do not think I would have taken advantage of getting to know this wonderful woman who has been my "background grandmother" for my entire life. I could not be more thankful.

Three Grandmothers: Mykha

I have three grandmothers. Both my parents' parents got divorced, and my mother's parents both remarried. I am extremely close to both my biological grandmother and my step-grandmother on my mom's side. My father's father remarried (I have met the man and his wife only twice), but his mother did not. I wanted to dedicate this blog post to writing about these three remarkable women.

Mykha - My dad's mom is Mykha. She is a 4'5" Vietnamese woman, but what she lacks in height is MORE than made up for in spunk. She wears wedges (at least three inches tall) everyday, and whenever she goes out she wears a fur coat and hat. She has a Vietnamese restaurant outside of Chicago, called Mykha's, and it is her entire life. The five love languages are quality time, acts of service, physical touch, words of affirmation, and gift-giving, but Mykha has invented a whole new one - food. I grew up spending my days in that restaurant; my parents managed it for Mykha while she managed the food. My mom says when I was a baby Mykha refused to talk to her for a week because she found out about my mom giving me baby-food bought from Whole Foods. One morning Mykha showed up at our house unannounced with a cooler that was more than twice her size filled with fresh mango and sweet sticky rice. "My công (grandchild) will not eat that American crap! No good! You tell me you need food I bring! My công deserve better!" She has lived in America for more than 30 years and still has no idea how to conjugate verbs. She was born in Da Lat, Vietnam, during the last of the French occupation. Her father had died when she was a toddler, leaving her mother and her five siblings on their own. When Mykha was ten, the French general in their village was killed, but no one knew by whom. As a punishment, the French army chose five people at random and shot them. That day Mykha was pulled out of her math class by the Principal who brought her to the local police station; her mother had been one of the five, and she needed to legally identify the body. She and her five siblings went to live with her great-aunt, who owned a restaurant, and that's how Mykha learned how to cook. Cooking is how my grandma tells you she loves you (literally, her English still isn't great). If she loves you, she makes you a feast. If she doesn't like you, she makes you a little less food. Since her 4'5" frame poses several problems, her entire kitchen is custom made; she isn't tall enough for standard stove and countertop sizes. On her answering machine at her restaurant, after the very professional greeting and stating of the restaurant hours by one of her waiters, you can hear a scuffling, a couple of Vietnamese words, and then Mykha comes on the phone and says, "and remember, Mykha love you." I am not joking.

This, my dear friends, is Mykha.

Women vs. Women

We are all fighting for women's rights, women's equal pay, and ultimately women's happiness. We band together, make protests, form communities. It seems that it is our common goal for all women to feel loved, beautiful, and happy.

Women are supposed to be a sex based on community, togetherness. Weddings, slumber parties, even group trips to the bathroom are all something girls do together, and there seems to be this sense of sisterhood, but 'sadly, these delightful bonds too often dissolve when the women reenter public space and resume their isolated, unequal, mutually threatening, jealously guarded "beauty" status' (Wolf 76).

Why are we all against each other?

What I am talking about is how it seems to me that sometimes our biggest bullies are other women themselves. We care about which girls we hang out with. We dress a certain way to impress our friends. We feel the need to one up each other with boyfriends and relationships. Women judge each other because we feel threatened. If that one women is pretty, that must mean that I am not, right?

Wrong.

Somehow, over the years we have developed this very black-and-white point of view that acts as a wooden shudder through which we look at people, and ourselves. If one girl is good at something, we are not. If I am the only single one out of my friends, it must mean that there is something wrong with me. And for some reason, we always lose in the comparison. Further and further we batter ourselves until our self-esteem is left to nothingness. Even those who seem confident, even the ones who put others down, have deep insecurities. They simply learned to take their anger out on other people. 'Women can tend to resent each other if they look too "good" and dismiss one another if they look too "bad"' (Wolf 75). We can't win with one another. So why do we assume that the media is the only issue that we battle?

While we always want to look good for men, in reality most of the time we feel more self-concious around other woman. 'What are other women really thinking, feeling, experiencing when they slip away from the gaze and culture of men?' (Wolf 76). It seems to me that first we need to fix the way we perceive and treat each other before we can expect any kind of reform in the media and society. The public, the viewers, the masses, we control what the media decides to focus on. They give us what we want to see. So if they see a mass beauty revolution promoting self-value and worth and wholesome self-adoration, isn't that eventually what they will have to sell us? It's all up to us, ladies.

Hunger For Thinness 2: The Disease

Eating disorders are the number one most deadly psychiatric illness in the world. Anorexia nervosa, just one of the many different types of eating disorders, has a mortality rate of 20% (NEDA).

I have had many close friends go through eating disorders and so I have had some very up close and personal accounts with the horrors of the disease. And that's just it, most people don't even recognize it as a disease. Most people think the solution for the nearly 70 million people across the world with eating disorders is to just eat (NEDA).

If it were that easy, trust me, people would do it.

The problem is not that women measure their weight in pounds, it's that they measure their worth in pounds. Eating disorders are not about the food, or even really about being thin. They are about a need for control. If everything is spinning out beyond a woman's grasp and she has no control over it, at least she can control what she eats. She can punish those she loves by not eating, she can reward herself with losing weight, she can punish herself by not eating. It gives her a sense of empowerment and control. The irony is that in the end, the disease controls the woman. Not the other way around. That is often why the projected recovery time is five-ten years for an eating disorder victim. It's about giving up that control. 

At first it may just start out as the desire to drop a couple pounds, and before she knows it, that original goal was twenty-five pounds ago. 'At a certain point inside the cult of "beauty," dieting becomes anorexia or compulsive eating or bulimia' (Kilbourne 127). The hard part is that most people associate eating disorders with emaciated models who weigh under 100lbs. The truth is, only 30% of all eating disordered people are underweight. It is completely false for someone to think that a person "looks like they have an eating disorder." Therein lies the problem. Most women think that they are "too fat" to have an eating disorder, so they do not see a need to get help, or are embarrassed to do so. Thinness is just a symptom of the eating disorder, not the problem itself. The core issue is a sense that one is not "good enough" or "worth it." Worth love, care, affection, etc. 

People often think it's for attention. That the woman just wants to be told she's thin or that she's beautiful. Nothing could be farther from the truth. 'What has not been recognized is how it actually makes a woman feel slightly mad' (Kilbourne 123). It is an illness. Would you tell someone with diabetes that they are just doing it for attention? What about clinical depression? Eating disorders are the same. The person often wants to get out of the trap, but finds that the current of society's expectations for thinness are too strong to breakaway from.