The Expression of Female Sexuality

     Virginia Woolf is known for her feminist works, and Mrs. Dalloway is a perfect example of that. Ideas relating female sexuality and navigating attraction in a post WWI era proves to be a recurring theme throughout the book this far. Since this novel is written in a stream-of-consciousness style, Woolf allows the readers to delve into Clarissa’s actual thoughts, as opposed to what is “acceptable” for her to express or feel with the social norms of the time period. 

    I think it is important, however, to first take a look at Virginia Woolf and notice how her own experiences manifest themselves in the book. She is known to have had affairs with multiple women, (one of the more notable being Vita Sackville-West), though she was married to a man. They wrote hundreds of poetic love letters to one another and had a passionate love for each other (Haynes). While British society was far from accepting homosexuality, they were open about their relationship. In 1926, Sackville-West wrote to Woolf that, “I am reduced to a thing that wants Virginia…It is incredible how essential to me you have become.” Clearly, Woolf has experienced love for women, which enabled her to write the character of Mrs. Dalloway in such a realistic way. While most people can write fairly accurately about something that they haven’t actually done, the realism and the detail in the way she describes her feelings toward women seem too realistic and deep to be based solely in fiction. 

    One of the earlier quotes in the book discussing her attraction to women reads, “She resented it, had a scruple picked up Heaven knows where, or, as she felt, sent by Nature (who is invariably wise); yet she could not resist sometimes yielding to the charm of a woman, not a girl, of a woman confessing, as to her they often did, some scrape, some folly. And whether it was pity, or their beauty, or that she was older, or some accident--like a faint scent, or a violin next door (so strange is the power of sounds at certain moments), she did undoubtedly then feel what men felt” (32). 

    Her approach to writing Clarissa so far has not been to create a life heavy in romance, but rather to sit back and think about the different experiences in her life. She reminisced on an affair she had when she was young, with a woman named Sally Seton. Her love for Sally is glaringly apparent, and while I don’t want this blog post to turn into simply a compilation of sapphic quotes, I want to share some to appreciate Clarissa’s, and by extension, Woolf’s love for women. She asks about her relationship with Sally, “Had not that, after all, been love?” (32). 

    She talks about Sally for quite a while, but one of my favorite passages is this one: “The strange thing, on looking back, was the purity, the integrity, of her feeling for Sally. It was not like one's feeling for a man. It was completely disinterested, and besides, it had a quality which could only exist between women, between women just grown up. It was protective, on her side; sprang from a sense of being in league together, a presentiment of something that was bound to part them (they spoke of marriage always as a catastrophe), which led to this chivalry, this protective feeling which was much more on her side than Sally's” (34). 

    In this passage, Woolf touches on a question that I had been wondering for almost all of the book so far: is Clarissa attracted to men? While she describes some degree of affection for them, they don’t seem to compare to Sally. While describing their first kiss, Woolf writes: Then came the most exquisite moment of her whole life passing a stone urn with flowers in it. Sally stopped; picked a flower; kissed her on the lips. The whole world might have turned upside down! The others disappeared; there she was alone with Sally” (35). 

    The ecstasy felt in that moment far exceeds any experience she has described with men. Clarissa seems to tolerate them more than anything. About her marriage to Richard, Woolf writes, “She had the oddest sense of being herself invisible; unseen; unknown; there being no more marrying, no more having of children now, but only this astonishing and rather solemn progress with the rest of them, up Bond Street, this being Mrs. Dalloway; not even Clarissa any more; this being Mrs. Richard Dalloway” (11). Instead of love being something bringing joy to her life, as it was with Sally, she feels trapped and as if she is losing herself. Clarissa feels that she has become just Richard Dalloway’s wife rather than an individual person. 

    Her marriage seems rooted in practicality rather than passion. While stable, both emotionally and financially, Clarissa doesn’t seem especially content, but instead seems like she is settling into the “appropriate” life for the time period. 

    Sally lives in Clarissa’s mind throughout the novel so far, and she seems to be the love that no one else can compete with. The eloquent descriptions of her, as well as of the time they spent together seems far more loving than anything Clarissa has ever experienced with a man, especially her husband. They seem to be in more of a companionship than a true romantic relationship, if even that. Richard cannot compare to Sally, and since this book is written in a stream of consciousness style, we as readers get to see Clarissa’s unfiltered thoughts about men and women. Due to the time period, some of the things we see in the book wouldn’t likely be made public by Clarissa, so I enjoy the openness of her character that Woolf allows. 

Works Cited

Haynes, Suyin. “The True Story of Virginia Woolf and Vita Sackville-West.” Time, Time, 23 Aug. 2019, time.com/5655270/virginia-woolf-vita-sackville-west-relationship/.

Woolf, Virginia. Mrs. Dalloway. Harcourt, 1925.