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.