Crazy Cohn.

I really dislike Cohn. It's a very straightforward feeling. I don't even care that he's Jewish for that fact has nothing to do with my judgment of him. It's the way he talks, the way he's awkwardly trailing after Brett, the way he sends Frances away, and the way he's so easily susceptible to others' influences. Like Jake, I do not consider him a masculine figure, certainly not one worthy of Brett's love. At best, Cohn is pitiable, rather like a puppy. Brett takes him to San Sebastian out of pity, Jake befriends him to offer him advice - reading the interactions between the two, I think Jake is very much motivated by a feeling of sympathy and perhaps a bit of jealousy for Cohn still has his life, his masculinity, but he's squandering it away.

And then there's the fact Cohn's a punching machine. He's extremely volatile, almost naively so. He has a complete lack of control over his emotions and resorts to the most brutal and crude way of expressing his rage. Unlike Jake and Bill, and to a certain extent Mike, Cohn is unbelievably sensitive. It's almost feminine the way feelings leap and soar in him. It's a terrible weak trait in a Hemingway hero, and it certainly not admirable. It makes him susceptible to others' derision and an easy target. I do not condone the way Mike jeers over his Jewish ancestry, but there is a shade of justification for Mike. Cohn hangs around Brett like an adoring knight, which would be fine, almost sweet if you were utterly romantic, but he thinks too highly of himself. For he sees Brett as a woman to be claimed and protected by him, hero extraordinaire, when she doesn't need him and certainly doesn't want him.

Why does the sun also rise?

Last night, as I finished perusing the book, I closed it and stared at the cover. There, the title of the novel, a perplexing yet poetic title, stared back at me. What was this? What does it mean, I wondered. Why did Hemingway choose such an ambiguous almost lyrical title for his book. Sure there's something masculine about the Sun, hint Apollo, but is this ultimately a book about men? The Sun is bright, constant, and arbitrary. When it shines, it does so passionately, but when there's rain, it shies away behind the clouds. Are we supposed to interpret that strange, changing nature of the Sun to be the theme of the novel? Does it explain the irrational behavior of our heros and heroine? 

Or is the focus of the book rather centered on the words "also rises?" For there is something profound about the two words. Rise, and rise again, and again. It suggests a motif of resiliency, of life constantly pushing and churning against obstacles, and succeeding. There is something that hints at Jacob Barnes and Brett and all the rest, maybe except for Cohn. They are all veterans of war, one of the most devastating wars in history then known. It has cost them and left behind varying shades of damage. And yet they have survived. They have loved and lost, fought and been beaten. Life goes on, and the sun will also rise. 

Jake as Septimus

I didn't believe that a book could be more sorrowful than Mrs. Dalloway until I read The Sun Also Rises. God, the latter was just like a punch to the gut. Jake Barnes, an incredibly normal and respectable guy, is so very much like Septimus Smith. There is something fundamentally lacking about Jake and this wound, physical and physiological, prevents him from seeking the love that he so obviously desires. And yet everywhere, he is bombarded with other people in love. Walking in the street, he notices "a man and a girl... walking with their arms around each other (83)." He silently criticizes the careless matrimonial behavior of Robert Cohn, and derides the crowd of chaps that follow Brett around who are so thoughtless with their gift to procreate life. 

Septimus too suffered from his inability to feel particularly because everyone around him showered him with feelings. To realize that you lack something so essentially ingrained in everyone else is a frightening realization. It is an unbelievably lonely feeling. To escape it, Septimus commits suicide and Jake exhibits bitter behavior. What Jake will do though remains to be seen.

Reflection on Laura Brown

While my position may appear strange to many, it is one that resonates profoundly for me. The one character who I found to be most sympathetic with was Laura Brown, the mother who abandoned her children without regret and ended her life without death. To me, her actions and background do not appear fictional; she is, in many ways, very much like Clarissa Dalloway. In the novel The Hours, the author explains the reasons why Laura married Dan: "Why did she marry him? She married him out of love. She married him out of guilt; out of fear of being alone; out of patriotism." Was the love she had truly love? Or was it a self-induced kind of affection that arose out of the fear of loneliness - that eternal gripping fear - and patriotism? In the movie, Laura explains to Peggy that she feels as if Dan had deserved her for his actions in the war. But this sentiment, even coming from herself, is unspeakably degrading. For it sets her up as an object, a prize, to be won; Dan deserved her, not because she loved him, but because he needed a reward for putting his life on the front line for their nation.

There is also the matter of her fear of being alone to consider, and it too is not her fault. Everyone is a bit afraid of the chasm of isolation. Perhaps Laura married Dan to escape from it, but she must have found that feeling even more overbearing after marriage. There was undeniably comfort and happiness, if only one-sided, in their lives as husband and wife, but Laura came into this marriage with that feeling of unworthiness, which crept on and strangled her heart. How could she be happy when she didn't feel worthy of it? Like Clarissa in the novel, Laura was agonized by her own thoughts and by the world that demanded her to be happy. In some way I think she parallels Septimus, who too was tortured by his inability to feel what others expected him to experience.

I do not advocate abandoning your family, but desperate times do call for drastic and sometimes unforgivable actions. Laura did so with open eyes and she did not expect forgiveness. It takes courage to leave such a wonderful life behind, yet her act was one to preserve herself, much like Septimus's defiant suicide. It was selfish of her to leave behind Dan, Richie and her daughter, and perhaps some can argue it was too selfish, but it's her desperation to find a life of her own, her enforced sense of unworthiness, and her courage to do so that wrenches my heart and draws my sympathy like no other.

Clarissa + Septimus = Survival 101?

Wrapping up Mrs. Dalloway, I close this delightful book with only one regret. It's a small nagging burst of thought that I can't suppress - what if Clarissa and Septimus had met? Would they have been friends? Could they have fallen in love? Would she have been able to save him, or am I naive for wishing so? They are so impossibly similar and yet their fates are infinitely different. Whereas he chose to leap to his death in defiance, she paused, wondered, and lived.

Comparing the two, it's possible to see parallels: for instance, they were both victims of excruciating loneliness despite the comfort of their respective situations - he a favored worker and she a successful housewife - and the love they receive from their spouses. They each experienced a sort of past trauma - he the death of a close friend and she the death of a talented sister. And they both approach life with a unique perspective - he from the eyes of a poet and she with the theory that all life was interwoven. The one significant aspect on which they diverge is the ability to feel; whereas Clarissa is overflowing with empathy, Septimus despairs his stoic personality. This, combined with the joyous celebration of life that swirls around him in central London, overwhelms him to madness.

Yet, think for a moment, pretend Clarissa was a central figure in Septimus's life (just as she had been in Richard's life in The Hours), would she have been to help him move on from the struggles of life? The movie doesn't believe so, but that is only one interpretation. I personally believe (maybe because I'm passionately optimistic) that such a happy ending would have been possible. For while Virginia Woolf was a poetically wonderful writer, she was also a victim of suicide trapped in an unhappy marriage, and there are times when I think she underestimates the human resilience. That Septimus may have lived had he a Clarissa-like figure is the dream I hold on to.

What if!

Had Clarissa chosen Peter over Richard, her life would have been miserable. Where Richard can provide her with comfort, stability, and a room of her own, Peter would have consumed her life, ate up her vitality and stamped out her virtues. Peter, always toying with his knife, appears to me to be irregular and downright fanciful; he loves Clarissa, to be sure, but his love for her is hurting her. "Are you happy?" he had asked of her, but what kind of question is that to address to a married woman with a grown daughter and thriving household? He later stalks a young woman (a prostitute?) through the streets for the fun of it, and he enjoys an affair with Daisy, another married woman. The way he longs after Clarissa is as if she belongs to him and Richard has stolen her away; his love for her is selfish, almost despicable.

Many would sympathize with Peter's passionate, romantic soul, but his overwhelming emotions would have suffocated Clarissa who, like Woolf herself, enjoyed life at a distance. Where Richard feels lucky to have Clarissa, Peter takes great glee at picking apart her faults. Although there was a period in her life when Clarissa was undeniably radical, even Peter is forced to observe that she would likely marry Richard because of her conventional core. For someone with her delicate sensibilities and empathy, a marriage with the wild and untamable Peter would have been stifling. Even if we pretend that it was Clarissa's refusal of Peter's marriage proposal which was the catastrophic event that altered him forever, his dramatic removal to India seems to me rather histrionic. This act belies an overly dramatic personality that is unchangeably Peter's.

Panel Discussion: Septimus Smith (continued)

As a continuation of the panel presentation today, I would like to argue that Septimus Smith is a tragic Christ figure. His death, defiant as it was in the eyes of others, achieved nothing; the great message bursting from his heart failed to reach an audience. He and so many others in his generation sailed off to war, to glory perhaps, for the sake of England, and returned dead, mad or both. World War I, history books have argued, was fought over nothing. Whether it be German aggression or the assassination of an Austrian Archduke, what ultimately was the purpose of this war? Who were the true winners? And who were the real victims?

If we examine the biblical parallel a bit closer, we may observe that Jesus was God's sacrificial lamb to seal his covenant with his people. Likewise, Septimus and many others were sacrificed in the war to yield a victory. But where Jesus's death washed the people of their sins, what did Septimus's help to achieve? Where Jesus willingly laid down his life (for he was born to do this), Septimus didn't even want to die for the people, for his homeland. In fact, he died to escape from Dr. Holmes, who may or may not symbolize British society. Peter Walsh, who notices an ambulance that may have carried Septimus's broken body, pauses to observe the convenience of modern society. Clarissa, the most empathetic character we have in the book, gains a renewal of joie de vivre, but what about the rest of her party? If it can be argued that Septimus died for the lives of these "important" men of Parliament, then was his death worth it? Was anything that we note in England in the 1920s - the skywriting, the flower shop, the Prime Minister - worth the lives of millions?

"Are you happy?"

There is something striking about Peter's statement on page 46. It's the question that ends this soul-wrenching interview between him and Clarissa after years of separation. But what does it mean? What can it mean? Peter, the passionate suitor whom Clarissa rejected years ago but still harbors a distinctive affection for, asking her, the married woman, holding her hand, crying earnestly before her - what does it tell us? He goes on to ask "Does Richard-" but here we get interrupted, purposefully, from ever knowing the completion of his thoughts. Now enters Elizabeth, "my Elizabeth" Clarissa calls her much to Peter's annoyance, the living, breathing proof of Clarissa's marriage to Richard. An anchor perhaps, even a reminder for her of what her life has become.

But of Peter? He's so impossibly memorable. His letters boring, his mind radical, and his life a mockery. Why does Richard feel so unthreatened by him, clearly the more dynamic rival of the two? In the history between Clarissa and Peter, we see her happy, joyous, even different! There was a time when she too was a radical, reading Plato, Morris and Shelley "by the hour;" it makes us wonder why she would settle for a bland, conservative Richard? For me, Clarissa is insecure. She loves adventure, and like Septimus, she wants to do something meaningful with her life; yet she is frightened. It might be the misogynistic society that has torn away her independence or it might be her inner fear, but whatever it is, it's holding her back.

Richard provides the comfortable house in Westminister while Peter offers the exciting journey into the horizon. We know the path Clarissa chose, but was it the right one?

Remembering Rezia

Last friday in class, a thought was brought up that struck me like an arrow - Would you pity Rezia? Lucrezia, the young Italian woman who married Septimus; a foreigner, a lonely wife, a talented hat maker, and an innocent whose life was unfortunately entangled by WWI. We learn that she likes "ices, chocolates, sweet things;" we are told that she's "gay... frivolous, with those little artist's fingers" and "apt to lose things." She was amused by Septimus's silence, enchanted by his seriousness. Overall, she comes off as a young girl unsuited, above all, to marry Septimus.

He becomes engaged with her in a fit of panic. He marries her thoughtlessly, lovelessly, and somewhat pointlessly. She wants children, a gentle, serious, clever "son like Septimus." He withdraws from her, shunning her outpour of eager love and attentions. For her part, she too is incapable of understanding the bleeding chasm war has torn in him. She is incapable of filling that empty hole; she is too young, too inexperienced, too innocent to suit Septimus. Yet there is no doubt that she tries. And watching her efforts fail over and over, his presence descend further and further into madness, and their paths slide farther and farther away from each other is heartbreaking. Was there ever a hope of reconciliation? Or a marriage of minds? If not, then who's to blame? Rezia with her feathery hats or Septimus with his gravity?