The empire of vapidness
On “Mrs Dalloway”’s 100th birthday, I did the predictable and re-read my old copy of Virginia Woolf’s slim yet dense novel set in an England still recognizable today, albeit in increasingly rare—and rarefied—enclaves.
Much like Clarissa Dalloway simultaneously ruing the past while fantasizing about a doomed future with her former beau Peter Walsh, a man who seemed to be constantly on edge, with the most annoying habit of taking out his pocketknife and fidgeting with it in moments of anxiety—which was practically every moment, re-reading the novel was akin to returning, buoyed by romantic nostalgia, to an ex-lover, only to immediately regret the assignation as the same old red flags unfurl furiously around you.
In short, I did not quite relish my re-acquaintance with “Mrs Dalloway.” I found it exceedingly indulgent and grating. The sheer obliviousness of many of the characters in their small yet highly stratified world against the backdrop of the fading empire that was Great Britain between the two world wars rankled me. My own unexpectedly visceral reaction surprised me. At times verged on sacrilege, seeing that it was Virginia Woolf that I seemed to be knocking off from her literary pedestal.
But my exasperation did not by any means imply an indictment of Virginia Woolf herself. Her prose was, as always, meandering, but in the most gorgeous way, stopping here and there with an astute observation that was revelatory, whether the subject was Clarissa, her unexciting but politically well-connected husband Richard, the aforementioned Peter, the unfortunate soldier Septimus Smith who clearly suffers from PTSD, and his poor wife Lucrezia, at her wits’ end at the haughty unconcern of the doctors, including the tony Harley Street physician Sir William Bradshaw. And of course, the novel is Woolf’s love letter of sorts to London, its streets, its parks, its arcades, and terraced homes.
The truth is, nothing much happens in Woolf’s novels, and although tragedy looms, “Mrs Dalloway” is no exception. But what a journey she takes you on inside the minds of her characters, notwithstanding the fact that they are wholly creatures of their time! And therein lies the problem.
It’s difficult to read “Mrs Dalloway” from the point of view of a decolonized mindset and not feel a bristling impatience for the vapidness of its characters—most of them at least. While the Empire had begun its decline by then (though its rulers would not realize it yet), they were still gleefully and greedily plundering their colonies in Asia and Africa shielded by the convenient veneer of civilization. And as they chop off hands and engineer a famine upon their colonial subjects, upperclass Brits like Clarissa Dalloway are caught up in throwing glittering parties that the Prime Minister might or mightn’t attend, and her husband Richard debates whether to tell his wife he loves her, but decides she must know how he feels without him having to say it aloud. Oh Richard, whose love language must be “read my mind.” As is arguably everyone else’s because they are all so damned repressed!
That, I suppose, was Woolf’s subtle genius: she was so fully aware of her own characters’ vanities, superficialities, insecurities, and yes, their traumas. Which is to say that even in their essential shallowness, it takes a writer of Woolf’s brilliance to endow them with complexity.
Would that my ex-lover were as complex. I rashly and briefly reconnected with him not long ago. As I was to discover, a once-great love is only as all-encompassing as the moment you’re living it. Like empire, its power evaporates as the essential emptiness of its core is revealed.
