There She Was

One of the most pivotal and important themes in Mrs. Dalloway is what one might call “identity”.  A big question that Virginia Woolf poses is, “What does it mean for one to truly know another person or one’s self?” We spend a huge part of the book viewing Clarissa’s internal image of herself and other people’s opinions and views of her, but yet by the end of the book we still cannot definitely say that at any point in time Clarissa is exactly one thing or another.  One of my favorite questions posed by Mr. Mitchell in class was, “Is Clarissa Dalloway happy?” This question does not have any correct answer.  Clarissa, like all of us, is in constant fluctuation, and Woolf’s internal camera shows us that even when she appears to be very pleasant and “happy” from the outside, there is always more going on beneath the surface.  Woolf dives so deeply into the central characters’ brains that the reader knows much more about each central character than the other characters know about them, but yet we still see that even those central characters are conflicted in their own views of themselves.

One passage key to Woolf’s sense of identity, which we mentioned briefly in class, occurs when Clarissa is alone in her room, looking at a mirror, trying to “assemble” herself:

“How many million times she had seen her face, and always with the same imperceptible contraction! She pursed her lips when she looked in the glass. It was to give her face point. That was her self — pointed; dartlike; definite. That was her self when some effort, some call on her to be her self, drew the parts together, she alone knew how different, how incompatible and composed so for the world only into one centre, one diamond, one woman who sat in her drawing-room and made a meeting-point, a radiancy no doubt in some dull lives, a refuge for the lonely to come to, perhaps; she had helped young people, who were grateful to her; had tried to be the same always, never showing a sign of all the other sides of her — faults, jealousies, vanities, suspicions…” (pg 36)

            The picture on the cover of the Scott edition of Mrs. Dalloway (see below) is extremely symbolic and connects well to this quote and Woolf’s views on identity. The abstract spheres, squares, and other shapes all are coming to one central point, like Clarissa’s pieces of herself coming together while she’s looking in the mirror. You can identify specific parts of the picture, but you cannot say what the picture is as a whole: you can say specific things about parts of Clarissa, but you cannot simply summarize her with these statements. Clarissa, like all of us, is in constant motion and her identity is always changing.  And yet there she was, on this mid-June day in London, doing what she does best: being Clarissa Dalloway.

                                               

How Baker Changed the Way I Think

            Upon reading Nicholas Baker’s The Mezzanine I have become consciously aware of what I am thinking at certain times and have noticed how “interesting” our brains can make everything if you have the “Howie mindset.” In other words, I’ve been thinking about thinking.   There are two main “categories” The Mezzanine focuses on besides Howie himself: ordinary objects that Howie is intrigued and surrounded by and the microanalysis of any interactions Howie has with other people.  For the sake of brevity, I will only be talking about how my view on consumer goods and objects has changed. 

            When I was trying to write my Baker pastiche and was brainstorming ideas for what objects I was going to discuss and “be fascinated” by, I realized that I primarily remember the negative aspects of most consumer goods.  It’s a lot easier to notice the parts of goods that need fixing, rather than noticing what they do well.  We take a lot for granted and only really notice when stuff doesn’t work, rather than when it does. For instance, I began writing my pastiche about the little twisty tie squares on bread wrappers that never seem to work and always let the air out, causing the bread to go stale. In my trial pastiche I was mainly focusing on how the design of the tie was flawed and how grateful I am that they are not used on other products besides breads and English muffins. I quickly realized that griping about products was definitely not in Baker’s style, so I changed topics to something that I could more positively analyze. 

One instance of how Howie’s and my initial views differed was towards milk cartons:

            “Because I grew up as the tradition evolved, I have an awe, still, of the milk carton, which brought milk into supermakets where all the rest of the food was […] the radiant idea that you tore apart one of the triangular eaves of the carton, pushing its wing flaps back, using the stiffness of its own glued seam against itself, forcing the seal inside out, without ever having to touch it, into a diamond-shaped opening which became an ideal pourer, a better pourer than a circular bottle opening or a pitcher's mouth because you could create a very fine stream of milk very simply, letting it bend over that leading corner, something I appreciated as I was perfecting my ability to pour my own glass of milk or made my own bowl of cereal—the radiant idea filled me with jealousy and satisfaction.” (pg 42)

             Milk cartons have always bugged me.  I remember in grade school having to ask someone to open my milk for me because I would repeatedly manage to incorrectly pull the flaps back and have to poke my fingernail through the top to get any of the milk to come out.  Baker, on the other hand, finds these same flaps that I found so annoying to be “satisfying” and “radiant”.  Throughout The Mezzanine, every object that I saw as needing improvement, Baker saw as ingenuity. Baker has forced me to reevaluate this negative thinking towards consumer goods and start to see the beauty in objects which a month ago I would have overlooked.