I was absolutely horrified when I got to the end of the book and instead of a touching nostalgic exchange between the mysterious trinity of Clarissa, Peter, and Sally, I GOT NOTHING. I was NOT disappointed, mind you, that Clarissa's party was not described in more detail or that her story got cut off. I was disappointed that we never got to hear about the past and get more of Peter and Sally. In my mind, as the moment of truth approached, I subconsciously created a million different ways that the conversation could go. I was entirely excited for the friends to reconnect but instead it all just ended, without so much as one anecdote from their past shared aloud. So why did Virginia Woolf decide to drop the conversation?
After I had gotten over the initial depression that the lack of closure had caused, I realized the main reason why Woolf excluded this part; it isn't important. To have a significant plot point such as the reunion would be would do two things, 1) undermine the significance of the other huge plot point, Septimus's suicide, and Clarissa's thoughts about it and 2) go against Woolf's idea of a character driven novel and could turn Mrs. Dalloway into cute little love story rather than an insight into many facets of society and human minds. If I hadn't been so attached to the characters' personalities and personal stories, I would have been able to predict that the conversation would never happen. I guess it's just proof of Woolf's amazing character development.
Thus, the main scene at the end is the scene in which Clarissa goes into the quiet room and thinks about death and life privately. This is so essential to the book. The scene of her introspection is so wonderfully full of symbols and theories that Woolf is presenting about life and death, I read it twice. Each time I return to the passage I find a new meaning or interpretation of the passage. My plot loving brain still pined for the conversation of the three friends, but my psychoanalyzing and philosophizing brain utterly devoured the extraordinarily dense few pages. So I leave my imagination to satisfy the plot loving part of my brain and indulge my more intelligent part with Woolf's words.
Well, I guess the ending really wasn't as disappointing as I had originally thought. The ending as written ties the two main stories together with that fine mist Woolf and Clarissa both believe so completely in. It also sends home one of the main points in the novel. Though the reader never gets to meet Sally completely or hear Peter and Clarissa finally talk, the end of the novel is superbly crafted, classic Woolf.
2 comments:
I totally agree that it would've been nice to see all of the Bourton characters truly reunited, but you are right, it is not important to Clarissa's ending thoughts. It obviously was not part of the story Virginia wanted to tell and had nothing to do with the message she wanted to get across, but it was disappointing to see all of those great characters once again under one roof, but not being able to see any of the interesting interactions they could have had.
Well, maybe the ending *was* as disappointing as you'd thought (indeed, Woolf is fully aware that the reader *wants* to see this conversation continue, and even teases us with the prospect: "There she was")--instead, writing about it and thinking it through has maybe led you to see some aesthetic value in that feeling of disappointment? In other words, Woolf is deliberately undermining our expectation to see this touching and sentimental (or emotionally charged, or conflict-ridden) reunion.
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