No matter what else happened in 2023, there is one accomplishment that surpasses them all. During June, I walked into Angels Stadium among Cal State Long Beach’s graduating class of 2023. While I had another month of school to go (missing credits), this was my chance to hopefully end on an esteemed high. For anyone who cared about the notorious ceremonies, there were numerous complaints. Why weren’t students allowed to walk (receive their diplomas)? For many others, it was argued to be significant as a first-generation graduate. People were booing the dean during her camaraderie speech (we didn’t even get a great keynote speaker). Allegedly someone at another ceremony brought an airhorn, and yet another included a student rushing the field just to say he walked on the stage.
I’m not actually here to talk about how significant or not the event was to me. Something about sitting behind home plate at a baseball field with the meshed net blocking our view still remains a bit disheartening. However, I think I felt relief that compared to previous ceremonies, it was a decent day. I got there without issue. I completed my education without having to retake a class. Compared to the overlong legacy of my Associate’s Degree (2008-2019), this was evidence that I was a good student. I completed a Bachelor’s Degree a little over the projected two-year goal. I only got a C in one class. My final G.P.A. was a hefty 3.6, just shy of an A average. It was surreal to think that not only was I done, but I ended with the best form possible.
But what exactly is the big takeaway from this time? What symbolism is there as I enter Post-Grad life and hope to start shaping up the next stage of life? Well, for that I actually need to start in 2022 on Thanksgiving Day.
Earlier that year, I had taken a class on James Joyce that has had a lasting impact on me. It’s made me a fan of the author and I’ve maybe referenced “Ulysses” a few too many times in casual conversation. There is something about taking a university class that is centered around a specific author that I love. In general, I feel that literature is an interactive medium where the reader is in conversation with the author. Maybe it’s not always more than “this is important,” but sometimes you begin to see a greater identity appearing in the hidden details. I saw that with Joyce, and I saw that with an author who came to define my early 2023.
Thanksgiving Day was when I registered for the next semester. Maybe I could’ve been more proactive in planning my final stretch, but I went in a bit too blindly and it led to a lot of schedule conflicts. However, there was one class I did sign up for on Virginia Woolf. When that one fell apart, I had a big gap to fill. Then, I found another class that was sort of about Woolf, a joint class with other British authors like E.M. Forester, that fit nicely. It may have been a three-hour online class once a week, but I was destined to read Woolf.
I suppose that I should slow down a bit and explain my reason for wanting to take this class. Woolf was an author whom I had been looking for an excuse to read for years. Just the previous year, I saw Orlando (1993) and had this profound pull to her, finding the queer themes playfully butting heads with conventions in ways that I found interesting. If I could take a class that let me read THAT book, I could stand to explore other perspectives that made me appreciate the text on a deeper level. It was one of three we read, along with “Night and Day,” and I will say that it was just as thrilling to put my nose into that book.
Despite enjoying “Orlando,” there was one book that has more captivated my interest in the months since we read it. You could suggest that it’s because I feel a kinship to it being an alteration of “Ulysses,” but it’s also just a text that I feel captures what I have come to love about Woolf most. In such a brief window, she has created a text that explores the concept of time as a fluid concept, where every life is spiritually connected and no matter how different we appear outwardly, we are more similar inside than we’d think. It was a tender novel that focused on the social with the personal, where mental illness could change the world around them. For my money, no novel resonated with me this year quite like “Mrs. Dalloway.”
The radical nature of Woolf may be hard to recognize without proper context. As a woman developing a career around the turn of the 20th century, she was a product of two worlds. There was the classical nature of 19th-century romanticism (think Jane Austen) and the desire to push forward and find your own voice. “Night and Day” is a fascinating read albeit stuffy for how it exists within romanticism while pushing back against conventions. It’s a meta commentary on what was expected of women at the time and how the younger generation struggled to find their own voice in an established medium. I’ll admit it’s largely a dull read if you expect something more playful, but the curiosity is there. In fact, the book is so subversive that I’d argue “Night and Day” is a great example of aromanticism.
By the time of “Mrs. Dalloway,” there is a freedom to her style that is unsurpassed. It’s the sense of reinvention where she is having fun with what the form can do. While the story centers around two characters – Mrs. Dalloway and Septimus Smith – it’s a lot more complicated than that. Think of how Richard Linklater used Slacker (1991) to shift between conversations of strangers on the street. Without warning, there will be a stray thought that alters where the reader is headed. Some are more ambiguous and coy details allude to queer subtext. If there’s one major difference to “Ulysses,” it’s that Woolf is more of a sentimentalist as well as an introvert. We may get markers of the outside world for context, but this is a reconstruction of invisible souls.
An interesting aspect of this class was that the editions we were encouraged to buy each came with their own prefaces. “Mrs. Dalloway” was the most detailed, going line by line and finding every reference throughout the text. It also came with a 100+ page autobiography of the author to provide context.
It was here that I became more fascinated about Woolf as an individual. She was a bookworm, obsessed with analyzing literature and bringing attention to the modern greats. Even as it romanticized her personal accomplishments as an author, an interesting trend began to appear throughout. It’s one that I may respond to as someone who has written through a depressive spell or two. At various points, she found herself unable to write because of mental illness. There were times when she had conflicts with living in England, and it was reflected in her work. Efforts to produce were both a triumph and a struggle, and I think it begins to show through in her best work. I’d argue that her obsession with imagery like clocks and rivers alone makes her suicide more ominous and, as I said before, suggests there was a dialogue in her books with the reader about who she was.
Something was encouraging about the way she was able to endure for as long as she did and make literature a far more interesting place. She may have seemed free by the point of “Orlando,” but it came with years of complicated struggles. Even then, her passion for life and desire to experience its many intricacies reflects something that I find commendable in a writer. After learning more about her, I’ve come to hold her dear. Her greatest gift was an honesty which I think was always indicative in her writing.
The most noteworthy example is “Mrs. Dalloway.” Even as it’s a great text about how we’re all connected, two characters feel isolated. Mrs. Dalloway may be surrounded by an adoring public awaiting her party, but there’s nobody that she feels connected to. When she hears about Septimus’ suicide, she hints that there are thoughts she’s had not dissimilar from his. It’s a staggering detail, and one that transcends gender lines, but also reflects a reality that Woolf knew well. Women weren’t the only ones to fall victim to hysterics. Men were just as capable. By unifying her characters, she reveals through mundanity that everyone is trying to survive. There may be things that make us different, but we’re more similar than we think.
To provide context, Septimus never meets Mrs. Dalloway. He is a married man who is suffering shell shock following the war. Concern for where his worth lies runs throughout the text. In some of the book’s most provocative moments, Septimus is seen having flashbacks and talking to his deceased comrades. In Joyce’s hands, it’s easy to see this as comical, but for Woolf, there’s a sensitivity that makes the reader think her greater point for writing this was to combat the trivial response some had to mental illness. Yes, Septimus still ends the story dead, but that’s a simplified reading of what happens. He frees himself of the struggles around him, including his inability to mentally see beyond the past. Woolf has openly admitted that she sees some of herself in him, and I think it speaks to how challenging she was to the reader. By sympathizing with a man who has severe hallucinations, she pushes literature into the 20th century and forces us to find meaning in ourselves as well as how we treat real-life Septimuses.
There’s plenty more to deconstruct from “Mrs. Dalloway” that I don’t wish to get into. What I will say is that it’s reflective of a style that I personally connect with and base a lot of my own fiction writing on. Everyday life has these small moments of brilliance attached, and Woolf was keen on artfully capturing them. It may be less crass and even antagonistic than Joyce's, but both show the core of humanity in ways that make you want to stop and simply observe. “Mrs. Dalloway” starts with the protagonist wanting to buy flowers. Her journey there in any other book would be a scant paragraph. Here, it’s an epic unto itself, where side events come to life and we realize that our prime directive is just as important as our much-needed distractions.
While I hadn’t intended my final semester to have an online class (let alone one that, at longest, had me there for over four hours working on a project), I am grateful that I did. No matter where the opinions come from, I am grateful to academia for exposing me to a greater world around these topics. It’s one of the things that I’ll miss most. To hear every student, whether I agree or not, share their interpretation of that week’s passage was a thing that filled me with curiosity and ambition. I wanted to see how diverse a text can get, and Woolf’s work definitely encouraged that. Even comparing it to walking around campus, the thought of “Mrs. Dalloway” encouraging you to stop and appreciate life was affirming.
I don’t know that I’ll have an experience like this again in my life. There’s something bittersweet about it. One can hope that I find a book club or writer’s workshop that will allow me to express that creative side productively. For now, I take a look at where my final semester ended, and I hold up this book. It wasn’t the only one that I loved from this year, but it resonated beyond the page. It makes me think of the themes, but also the author and even myself. What does it mean to pursue writing as a career? It’s the great subtext of Woolf’s life, and in some respect, I think it was her need for self-expression. Without it, who knows how things would’ve gone. At its core, writers need to write. The best of us will be there in the archives to be looked back on when everything’s passed. Woolf has done it and I hope that I can too.
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