In Praise of Untidy Women: Teaching "Mrs. Dalloway"

This morning, I was thinking of the last time I taught Mrs. Dalloway.  I know that I didn't teach it when I was just out of grad school, that first job at Trident Technical College in South Carolina.  I thought I might have taught it when I taught the survey classes at the University of Miami; I have a memory of reading the paperback on the Miami Metro as I commuted back in the years 2000-2001.  

But this morning, I went to my computer file called "Old Computer," to the Teacher Stuff file in that Old Computer file.  Sure enough, there was an old syllabus from the turn of the century, a syllabus which shows that I did not teach Mrs. Dalloway.  

I think I was thinking of adding Mrs. Dalloway to the syllabus, but I might have been re-reading it during my long commute on public transportation because I had just read Michael Cunningham's The Hours.  Back in those days, the only Virginia Woolf selections in the Norton Anthology were her nonfiction.

This morning, I'm reflecting on age and teaching, age and literary characters.  Clarissa Dalloway is 52 years old.  If I had taught this book back in 2000, I'd have been closer to young Clarissa Dalloway than Clarissa Dalloway at midlife.  Now, I am 8 years older than Clarissa Dalloway in the book.

As I have re-read chunks of the book this past week, I've been struck by how Clarissa Dalloway's thoughts move back and forth in time.  But I do wonder if my students, who are the same age as young Clarissa, find it as compelling as I do.  After teaching the book yesterday, I spent a good chunk of my drive home feeling this fierce yearning for my girlhood self and all her friends.  In my case, it's more poignant because so many of my high school female friends have died.  They won't be crashing any dull parties that I might give, the way that Sally arrives uninvited at the end of the novel.

I really loved the descriptions of the young Sally Seton with this reading; I don't remember loving her as fiercely in past readings as I have been now.  I love that one of young Clarissa's older aunts calls Sally "untidy."

With this reading, I'm also struck by how the Peter Walsh character is the one who is much more stuck in adolescence than the two women, Sally and Clarissa.  He still yearns for them, and I suspect he's primarily yearning for the women that they were, or the women that he thought they were.  And I'm feeling slightly guilty, because I'm not spending much time on reading the Septimus passages, although I do circle back to discussing him.

In my morning meanderings, I came across this article in the New York Times, Michael Cunningham reflecting on Mrs. Dalloway.  My writing time draws to a close, so I'll conclude using Cunningham's conclusion:  "“Mrs. Dalloway” would be a book about a London that had been changed forever, superimposed over a London determined to get back to business as usual, as quickly as possible. Clarissa would stand in for all those who still believed in flowers and parties; Septimus for those who’d been harmed beyond any powers of recovery. The novel would also mark the early period of a literary career that would change forever the ways in which novels are written, and read. It’s an intricately wrought portrait of a place and a moment, and a stunningly acute depiction of the multifarious experience of living a life, anywhere, at any time."