This article is about life's
boundaries. If we think about what Mark Banschick states in it, we will realize that it is very
similar to what Virginia Woolf expressed in Mrs. Dalloway 89 years before.
Clarissa
was filled with boundaries that were imposed by society, and not as trivial as the
alarm clock going off in the morning but that arise similar feelings of being obliged to respond
to the boundaries in a determined way (in the case of the alarm clock: getting
up, and in Clarissa’s: being a perfect wife).
Dr. Banschick says that even our bodies, families,
and eras that we are born into are boundaries. This reminds me of the concepts
of repression of the female body, patriarchal society, and time in Mrs.
Dalloway because as we all should know, the female sex was not allowed to
have sex or experience passion; families were organized in a male-dominated way
in which women stayed at home and men went to work/study outside the home; and
time in the sense of its inevitability: we cannot live again nor change our
past. These concepts are some of the boundaries that shaped Clarissa’s life and
made her turn into Mrs. Dalloway.
Additionally
Dr. Banschick believes that “This dynamic between what we are and what we yearn
to be can make for unhappiness or be the source of incredible creativity.” I think that Dr. Banschick’s words
reflect an important episode on Mrs. Dalloway,
which is the following:
She [Clarissa] parted the
curtains; she looked. Oh, but how surprising!—in the room opposite the old lady stared straight at her!
She was going to bed. And the sky. It will be a solemn sky, she had thought, it will be a dusky sky, turning
away its cheek in beauty. But there
it was— ashen
pale, raced over quickly by tapering vast clouds. It was new to her. The wind
must have risen. She was going
to bed, in the room opposite. It was fascinating to watch her, moving about, that
old lady, crossing the room, coming to the window. Could she see her? It was fascinating, with people still
laughing and shouting in the drawing- room, to watch that old woman, quite quietly, going to bed. She
pulled the blind now. The clock began striking. The young man had killed him- self; but she did not pity him;
with the clock striking the hour, one, two, three, she did not pity him, with all this going on.
There! the old lady had put out her light! the whole house was dark now with this going on, she repeated,
and the words came to her, Fear no more the
heat of the sun. She must go back to
them. But what an extraordinary night! She felt somehow very like him— the young man who had killed himself.
She felt glad that he had done it; thrown it away. The clock was striking. The leaden circles
dissolved in the air. He made her feel the beauty; made her feel the fun. But she must go back. She
must assemble. She must find Sally and Peter. And she came in from the little room.
That is the moment in which
Clarissa recreates when Septimus commits suicide. She is aware and can
understand the meaning of it. And at the same time, she is making of life
something beautiful (art) because she is discovering some sort of patterns of
life that leads her to embrace the concept of death, which is something that no
one can avoid.
According to Dr. Banschick: “Perhaps, just perhaps, there’s magic in embracing what we can't escape.”
This reflects Clarissa’s moment of revelation stated previously. I think that
it is surprising how even today it is possible to find validity in ideas that
were conceived long before in literature.
On the
other hand, Dr. Banschick asks the following question: “Can
living within our boundaries, open us to something bigger?” I think that Woolf
asked herself the same question and expressed it in Mrs. Dalloway through the concept of androgynous mind as a means of
reaching complete happiness and wholeness. In this way, Clarissa is liberating
herself from the boundaries of men and her femininity does not limit her.
Finally, I think that what
Dr. Banschick states at the end of the article, in “A Useful Spirituality,” is
part of what Clarissa discovered in the episode that I quoted above, and if you
find some similarity with the concept of tunneling, we will agree on that.
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