[Vwoolf] Dalloway Day Details Needed

Fri Feb 23 19:31:40 EST 2018

For what it's worth, I have tried to reconcile the formalist position
(expressed by Anne Fernald when she initiated this thread) and the
historicist position (expressed just now by Murray Beja)--
https://www.academia.edu/18174757/_Dating_Mrs_Dalloway_the_Use_and_Abuse_of_History_
--though with an earlier pair of critics from the late 20th century : Paul
Ricoeur who articulated the formalist position in Time and Narrative and
Harvena Richter who was the first to try to identify  “Clarissa Dalloway’s
Bloomsday.”   Basically the argument is that the novel takes place as a
fictional form largely (mostly) in fictional time but that it also has a
strong opposite impulse to stage an essentially suicidal encounter with
real time, which it does when it has Septimus read from a newspaper right
before he kills himself.  In this reading the setting in time is not a
given of the novel so much as a thematized drama of the novel.  Further,
 the two registers of time are also gendered, so that while  Clarissa’s
plot takes place in day time, Septimus and Peter are deployed to engage
with and solve the problem of date time .  It’s also sexualized, though I’m
not sure I adequately made that point in the essay, so that the climactic
encounter is between a female form and a male history, that itself
thematizes and acts out a kind of sexual abuse.  Unfortunately, I might
have relegated this point to a footnote.

In any case, if this reading is right (and while I hope it is, it might not
be) then it has some implications for this discussion.   If the idea is to
celebrate Clarissa’s day, then I think the third Wednesday in the middle of
June, whatever date that happens to fall on in a given year, makes the most
sense.  If the idea is to acknowledge the novel’s suicidal engagement with
historicity, then June 20 is your day.  One could commemorate it with a
cricket match.  By the way, there’s a “Holmes” on the roster for the
Yorkshire cricket team. I’m not sure if Murray notes that in his edition.

Personally I’m opposed to the idea of a Clarissa day, because either option
excludes the other.  On the one hand I don't like the idea of a day that
doesn't acknowledge the problem of “monumental history,” in Ricoeur’s
phrase, or linear time, that elides the whole Septimus plot (he is a victim
of patriarchal historicity).   On the other hand, I don't like the idea of
a date that is too anchored in those two things and doesn't acknowledge
Woolf’s reticence about being in (male) time (cf. “Time Passes” in To the
Lighthouse). But if I were forced to choose—because, for example  it might
have some sort of practical value for Woolf studies--I’d  go with the
former.

With apologies if I’ve said some of this before in this forum.

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

On Fri, Feb 23, 2018 at 3:44 PM, Beja Morris via Vwoolf <
vwoolf at lists.osu.edu> wrote:

> Please let me repeat the message I sent back in June:
>
> I might as well cite here some of my evidence for the date of June 20,
> which seems to me pretty clear cut. As I express it in my edition of *Mrs.
> Dalloway*, we explicitly learn that the day of he novel is a Wednesday,
> and that it is 1923; “moreover, Clarissa wonders if the ‘crush’ of traffic
> is due to Ascot . . . which in 1923 ran from Tuesday, 19 June, to Friday,
> 22 June . . . . Gold Cup Day, on which the most coveted trophy is
> contested, falls on the Thursday. The results of cricket matches noted by
> both Septimus and Peter are those they would have seen in a newspaper for
> 20 June 1923 . . . .” (I go on to cite the London *Times*.) See Morris
> Beja, ed., Virginia Woolf, *Mrs. Dalloway* (Shakespeare Head Press
> Edition of Virginia Woolf). Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1996.
>
> If we want to stress Wednesday rather than the date, then 20 June 1923 was
> the third Wednesday of the month.
> Best,
> Murray
>
> On Feb 22, 2018, at 9:51 PM, Paula Maggio via Vwoolf <vwoolf at lists.osu.edu>
> wrote:
>
> A *New Yorker* writer contacted me with questions about Dalloway Day, as
> he is considering writing about it for the magazine. I've seen the
> discussion on the list regarding the date/day and am wondering if we have a
> consensus regarding the official day. Will it be the second Wednesday in
> June? The third Wednesday in June? Or on a particular date in June?
> (Although that seems not to be favored.) And how will we mark it? A party?
> A walk? Both? I'd appreciate any thoughts you care to share. It would be
> wonderful to see a piece about this in the New Yorker.
>
> Paula Maggio
> Blogging Woolf
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> https://twitter.com/woolfwriter
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> <http://newswriting.wordpress.com/>
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> Morris Beja
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