[Vwoolf] Mrs. Dallow-day?

Mon Jun 13 21:17:39 EDT 2016

I‘m sorry but I think that this is a terrible idea that misses much of the
point of the novel and misconstrues its relationship to historicity!
First, Clarissa’s experience of urban  London is not exactly peachy, in
large part because she is a woman trying to negotiate male space.  I’d go
so far as to say that it’s traumatic, so much so that she never leaves the
house again after her morning outing to buy the flowers and that it leads
to the invention of Septimus Smith, a readymade victim of
history/historicity, to negotiate the full encounter for her.  Second, his
experience isn’t peachy either.  Would these Dallow-Days include ritual
suicides as well?  Here’s death at my party.  I too am currently at the
Joyce conference and at my hotel there’s a lovely restaurant called
Dalloway Terrace which could serve a double purpose.   People could dine in
style and then fling themselves into the street below!

The novel actually has a complicated and uneasy relationship to historicity
and both thematizes and dramatizes that relationship.  While Woolf locates
the novel primarily in day-time (an unspecified  Wednesday in the middle of
June), as it unfolds it gradually approaches a confrontation with date-time
and that confrontation is at the moment of suicide, when Septimus reads
from a newspaper and mentions a cricket match, and Peter Walsh later
corroborates it.  All the London newspapers report a match between Surrey
and Yorkshire on June 20, 1923.  To engage in historicity in this way
threatens the autonomy/sovereignty  of the fiction, which Woolf has been
intent, as Anne suggests, to preserve,  but it's also necessary (for a
number of reasons) for Woolf to have that engagement.  While I agree that
we need to be very careful with this business, I do not agree that there is
no point of contingency between the day of the novel a real date:

https://www.academia.edu/18174757/Dating_Mrs_Dalloway_the_Use_and_Abuse_of_History

Michael F. Davis, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Associate Chair
Department  of English
Le Moyne College
Syracuse, NY 13214
USA

On Mon, Jun 13, 2016 at 9:52 PM, James Gifford <james.d.gifford at gmail.com>
wrote:

> "Dallow-Days" -- the plural would not only give more Wednesdays for fun
> but would be more in the spirit...
>
> Cheers,
> James
>
> On 2016-06-13 1:38 PM, Anne Fernald wrote:
>
>> It *is* a beautiful idea and I'd be 100% in favor of finding a way to
>> celebrate a Dallow-Day--we dream of it every June, don't we?
>>
>> Even so, I find myself unable to resist the pedantic point that there is
>> no possible way to date which Wednesday in June the novel is set on.
>> Woolf actively resisted the possibility of such dating as David
>> Bradshaw's work and the work of others has conclusively shown.
>>
>> Sorry! I LOVE a party, but I value accuracy, too.
>>
>> Cheers,
>>
>> Anne
>>
>> On Mon, Jun 13, 2016 at 2:14 PM, Anne Margaret Daniel
>> <daniela at newschool.edu <mailto:daniela at newschool.edu>> wrote:
>>
>>     A lovely idea -- and one I believe currently trending on Twitter, in
>>     London at least, as #Dallowday.  Elaine Showalter's video is getting
>>     many views on this beautiful summer's day.
>>     (and, also, happy birthday today to William Butler Yeats!)
>>     Happy rereading, with larks and plunges, to all.
>>
>>
>>
>>     On Mon, Jun 13, 2016 at 1:34 PM, Kristin Czarnecki
>>     <Kristin_Czarnecki at georgetowncollege.edu
>>     <mailto:Kristin_Czarnecki at georgetowncollege.edu>> wrote:
>>
>>         An endorsement for creating a Mrs. Dallowday:
>>
>>
>>
>> https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/jun/13/celebrate-dallowday-mrs-dalloway-virginia-woolf
>>         <
>> https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.theguardian.com_books_2016_jun_13_celebrate-2Ddallowday-2Dmrs-2Ddalloway-2Dvirginia-2Dwoolf&d=CwMFaQ&c=aqMfXOEvEJQh2iQMCb7Wy8l0sPnURkcqADc2guUW8IM&r=k1OoytuRmrU4MiIwbI-7ElFohPGR5Vr0JxDyMjG9DsI&m=W5Z69E9NfVP9G_8_QZd1-3WmSUCz1B2OhrXmqv1yBmI&s=d4uHuD2VsYx3mvPeBiGJTnOsey78vK15cimQv7wXtjk&e=
>> >
>>
>>         Bring out the cardies and cocktails – it’s time we celebrated
>>         Dallowday
>>         <
>> https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.theguardian.com_books_2016_jun_13_celebrate-2Ddallowday-2Dmrs-2Ddalloway-2Dvirginia-2Dwoolf&d=CwMFaQ&c=aqMfXOEvEJQh2iQMCb7Wy8l0sPnURkcqADc2guUW8IM&r=k1OoytuRmrU4MiIwbI-7ElFohPGR5Vr0JxDyMjG9DsI&m=W5Z69E9NfVP9G_8_QZd1-3WmSUCz1B2OhrXmqv1yBmI&s=d4uHuD2VsYx3mvPeBiGJTnOsey78vK15cimQv7wXtjk&e=
>> >
>>         www.theguardian.com
>>         <
>> https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__www.theguardian.com&d=CwMFaQ&c=aqMfXOEvEJQh2iQMCb7Wy8l0sPnURkcqADc2guUW8IM&r=k1OoytuRmrU4MiIwbI-7ElFohPGR5Vr0JxDyMjG9DsI&m=W5Z69E9NfVP9G_8_QZd1-3WmSUCz1B2OhrXmqv1yBmI&s=kTsnKnSZ5VhuXWN2So2jY3ctpPaOTi08rOeBA1hvERc&e=
>> >
>>         Ulysses has given Dublin Bloomsday, so why can’t London raise a
>>         glass to Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway?
>>
>>
>>
>>         Kristin Czarnecki
>>         President, International Virginia Woolf Society
>>         Associate Professor of English
>>         Georgetown College, Pawling Hall 110
>>         Georgetown, KY 40324
>>         502-863-8132
>>
>>
>>
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>> >
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>     --
>>
>>     /This message is intended solely for the named recipient(s)./
>>     Best,
>>     AMDaniel
>>     www.annemargaretdaniel.com
>>     <
>> https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__www.annemargaretdaniel.com&d=CwMFaQ&c=aqMfXOEvEJQh2iQMCb7Wy8l0sPnURkcqADc2guUW8IM&r=k1OoytuRmrU4MiIwbI-7ElFohPGR5Vr0JxDyMjG9DsI&m=W5Z69E9NfVP9G_8_QZd1-3WmSUCz1B2OhrXmqv1yBmI&s=XB7PBhs0l1BQiSrPHKr2HkfeHGHyNvSiJK5lYI6CqXE&e=
>> >
>>
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>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Anne E. Fernald <http://www.fordham.edu/info/24101/anne_fernald>
>> Professor of English and Women's Studies
>> President of the Faculty Senate
>> Fordham University
>> fernald at fordham.edu <mailto:fernald at fordham.edu>
>> Cunniffe 117
>> 718-817-3014 (Senate office, Rose Hill)
>>
>> Lowenstein 921B
>> 212-636-7613 (Department office, Lincoln Center)
>>
>> */Mrs. Dalloway/, now available from Cambridge UP*
>> <http://www.cambridge.org/9781107028784>
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