[Vwoolf] Still on the early pages

[Martin, James]

Stuart, I agree that jays aren’t blue-green, but I’d wager that the green is supposed to foreshadow (and thus mix the palette in the reader’s mind) the green dress she is to don upon her return.
As far as describing her as a bird, I’m sure you have noticed how many women are described as being birdlike in Mrs. Dalloway, perching on the kerb, etc. I believe this is a reference to the harpies - half-woman, half-bird - that guard the entrance to the circle of hell in which the suicides land (from The Inferno). There are several references in that chapter of The Inferno that find resonance in Mrs. Dalloway, including the wild dogs in the bushes (Septimus/Evans), the bushes themselves that bleed when the branches are broken, etc.
As far as light and vivacious go, those are two adjectives that I had difficulties attributing to the Clarissa I imagined upon my first reading of the novel when I was 26 because she was SOOO old! Now that I’m nearly her age, I know many middle-age men and women who are vivacious. Birds are light and, flitting around as they do, appear vivacious.

Von: vwoolf-bounces at lists.service.ohio-state.edu [mailto:vwoolf-bounces at lists.service.ohio-state.edu] Im Auftrag von Stuart N. Clarke
Gesendet: Dienstag, 17. September 2013 18:00
An: woolf list
Betreff: [Vwoolf] Still on the early pages


Why does Scrope Purvis think Mrs D to be “a charming woman ... a touch of the bird about her, of the jay, blue-green, light, vivacious ...”?

Jays are *not* blue-green:
http://www.rspb.org.uk/wildlife/birdguide/name/j/jay/index.aspx
And, for that matter, there’s nothing charming, light or vivacious about their call.

Stuart
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