Melodrama, Spontaneous Tear-Bursting, and a Pocket Knife: The Life and Times of Peter Walsh

Alright. This week's blog prompt isn't as conducive to snarkiness as the past few have been, so I figured if I push out (exorcise, if you will) a few of the remarks I've been wanting to make about Mrs. Dalloway at the start of this post, I won't be as cynical in the rest of it. So, without further ado, I present:

Five analogies for trying to read Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf

1. Eating a raw potato without chewing

2. Trying to find buried treasure with the wrong treasure map

3. Looking for hay in a needlestack 

4. Listening to Rebecca Black's "Friday" on loop for 24 hours

5. Bailing out Lake Superior with a teaspoon

Ha-ha-ha. And one more thing: this book has no chapters. Seriously? I get the whole "let's break convention!" mindset, but listen--sometimes rules and standards are there for a reason. They're there because they work. They're there because people like them. I see absolutely zero reason to break convention for the sake of breaking convention, and I've touched on that before in my blog post about Postmodernism. Long story short: if you're going to write a book, please put chapters in it. Don't be Virginia Woolf. 

Phew. Okay, hopefully that got some of it out of me. We'll see.

At any rate.. I've gotta say, Woolf has really outdone herself with this "Peter Walsh" character. This man is a rollercoaster of empathy and disdain. He seems like a pretty okay guy for the first couple [units of measurement that we lack because Virginia Woolf is above using chapters]. Mrs. Clarissa Dalloway rejects his marriage proposal, and that's harsh--I get that. I can empathize. He's a poor soul who's been rejected by the love of his life. That hurts! But then things get weird. 

"How [Peter] scolded her! How they argued! She would marry a Prime Minister and stand at the top of a staircase; the perfect hostess he called her (she had cried over it in her bedroom), she had the makings of the perfect hostess, he said."

Peter, buddy, once you get rejected, the acceptable discourse isn't to go off on the lady that rejected you. We pick up and move on--and that's something Peter can't do, evidently. But the above scene is just a flashback, and knowing Woolf, it might just be a dream. The story moves forward, and Peter goes off to India gets his own girlfriend. Things seem to have worked out, right? Maybe Peter got over Clarissa, right? Nope. Definitely not. Peter, not having talked to Clarissa in--from what I gather--quite a few years, shows up at Clarissa's doorstep to have a lovely discussion about how he's getting married to his pretty girlfriend from India and she's got kids and it's gonna be great. Alright Peter, we get it, Clarissa rejected you. You want to get back at her. I can still sort of empathize. But then things get weirder. 

"[Clarissa] cried to herself in irrepressible irritation; it was his silly unconventionality, his weakness; his lack of the ghost of a notion what any one else was feeling that annoyed her, had always annoyed her; and now at his age, how silly! Know all that, Peter thought; I know what I'm up against, he thought, running his finger along the blade of his knife, Clarissa and all the rest of them; but I'll show Clarissa—and then to his utter surprise, suddenly thrown by those uncontrollable forces thrown through the air, he burst into tears; wept; wept without the least shame, sitting on the sofa, the tears running down his cheeks."

For those of you who don't speak Dalloway: Clarissa and Peter are having a delightfully awkward discussion about Peter's life with lots of unspoken tension. There's soap opera-esque mental exclamations and everything. It's great. And then Peter straight up bursts into tears. Sorry, what? That's right--Peter cries. This isn't the only time this happens, by the way. Peter randomly turning on the waterworks is a pretty typical occurrence in Mrs. Dalloway. 

Well, Peter, you've wholeheartedly emasculated yourself in front of the love of your life. How's it feel? It probably can't get any weirder than this. 

"And Clarissa had leant forward, taken [Peter's] hand, drawn him to her, kissed him,—actually had felt his face on hers before she could down the brandishing of silver flashing—plumes like pampas grass in a tropic gale in her breast, which, subsiding, left her holding his hand, patting his knee and, feeling as she sat back extraordinarily at her ease with him and light-hearted, all in a clap it came over her, If I had married him, this gaiety would have been mine all day!"

You have got to be kidding me. The thing that wins over Clarissa Dalloway's heart is Peter showing up at her doorstep, having a tier 10 awkward conversation, and then bursting into tears? Clash of the melodramatic titans. You'd think at least one of them would do something normal, but nope, it's an endless exchange of histrionic one-upping. Then, after another painfully awkward exchange with Clarissa's daughter, Peter runs away, mentally berating Clarissa for being Clarissa. 

Was I lying when I said rollercoaster of empathy and disdain? And it gets weirder! One of the things I've failed to mention regarding Peter is that he has a neurotic tendency to finger his pocket knife whenever he's deep in thought. Don't even get me started on that--what really matters is what happens after Peter runs out of Clarissa's house. For brevity's sake: He finds a random girl, stealthily walks behind her, fantasizes about her while fingering his pocket knife. Yeah, you read that right. Let's recap--Peter gets rejected by the love of his life, shows up at her doorstep a decade later, talks for a few minutes, bursts into tears, runs away, and goes on a voyeuristic rampage behind a random girl. 

Wow. I never thought I'd say someone could outdo Hemingway after what I went through in A Farewell to Arms, but if anyone has even come close, it's Ms. Woolf. The reading I've done stops at around here, so I can only imagine how much stranger this book gets given that I'm only 25% done with it. If Virginia's plan was to immerse me in melodrama and keep me reading through non sequiturs, she's done a pretty good job. I am reading the book, after all. It's interesting, in a bad reality TV sort of way. 

Phew! I guess I had more snark in me than I'd accounted for. Oh well.