People Who Never Listen

        We talked at the beginning of this book about truth and whether the events of The Things They Carried were fictional or factually accurate, and if that even mattered. I was really not interested in this discussion at first. I don't like when authors try to get all "meta" and play with the power they have over a reader. I didn't like it when O'Brien included a section where he was talking to another character in the book about the book he was writing because it took away from the momentum of the story for me, to suddenly jump forward in time and start questioning the reliability of the author. As it turns out, that structure continues to be the norm for this book and while the reliability of O'Brien's narration has been completely shredded, I'm actually okay with it.

        In class today there were several angry outbursts against O'Brien for presenting his stories as truth and then revealing practically everything to be made up. At first, he gets away with this through characters like Rat Kiley and Mitchell Sanders, by framing stories such as the singing rocks or "The Sweetheart of Tra Bong" as Kiley's invention as opposed to his own. But slowly he starts to admit to more and more stories where he himself has played with the details, as seen where he talks to the woman who misinterpreted his baby buffalo story: "All you can do is tell it one more time, patiently, adding and subtracting, making up a few things to get at the real truth. ... Beginning to end, you tell her, it's all made up (81)." Since this specific scene was in the short story entitled "How to Tell a True War Story," I think O'Brien again got away with it. But by the time we reach "The Man I Killed" and "Speaking of Courage," and become emotionally engrossed in O'Brien's pain and guilt and Norman Bowker's lack of direction and Kiowa's death, only to have the events of these stories blasted to pieces by "Good Form" and "Notes," O'Brien has suddenly crossed a line and we're angry. There's an irritation that comes from an author just completely toying with the reader's emotions and reality and never telling what actually happened. It's kind of infuriating and people were even talking about a level of disrespect this shows to factual accounts of death and to actual soldiers, especially if O'Brien is basing this on real people and using their real names. While it is certainly frustrating to have entire plot lines be discarded by a single sentence, I don't quite agree with the backlash against O'Brien for telling his story this way.

         The essence of the book, as O'Brien has repeated so many times, isn't related to whether or not specific events actually happened, but whether a certain genuine emotion can be conveyed to a non-veteran audience. The essence of the book is O'Brien trying to tell someone who has never been to Vietnam, never fired a gun, never seen a loved one die before their eyes or a village in flames, what his experience was like. It's about his struggle to simply talk to people who haven't gone through what he has. While I certainly understand the anger over emotionally charged events being completely made up, for a book that repeatedly emphasizes that fact doesn't matter, I think you have to kind of be expecting that sort of move on O'Brien's part and go along with his claim that he can still tell you what the war was like this way. As we observed at the start, the subtitle is "A Work of Fiction by Tim O'Brien." Though the epigraph is from a diary and seems to claim the book is based on fact, I think it's clear by this point in reading that the epigraph is actually supporting the subtitle and the book's fictional (but true) nature.

        "Those who have had any experience as the author will see its truthfulness at once, and to all other readers it is commended as a statement of actual things by one who experienced them to the fullest."

The main thing I took away from this when I first read it was the distinction between those who have fought and those "others" who have no experience. It is immediately clear that this is an enormous division between two groups of people and one can simply not comprehend the other. In the context of O'Brien's book, the epigraph is saying that those who fought in Vietnam will recognize the war and their own experience of it in his text--even though they would not have experienced these exact events, it would not matter, they would understand. Those who didn't fight, however, would take his words as exact truth because we cannot understand or base it on any experience of our own, we must wholeheartedly believe everything O'Brien says. But his goal is for us to understand the emotional trauma they went through, not for us to ingrain specific memories of it into our heads. The quote never really says "everything here is a statement of actual things," only that it is truthful. And in the context of O'Brien's definition of truth, we know that doesn't mean factual accuracy. As infuriating as it may be, O'Brien's style has actually grown on me as I've come to terms with this book as a post-war story, not a war story as I had originally anticipated. I interpret it to be about the impossibility of returning to complete normality after such an experience, about the struggle to relate to people, the struggle to communicate such intense feelings. It's about a veteran trying to express emotion to an audience who doesn't listen, except to traumatic, unbelievable, fictionalized stories that encompass direct and obvious personal pain or guilt or suffering. It's about the disconnect between veterans and everyone else, and I think our strong reactions and need for stability only reinforce that this disconnect exists.

"It's about love and memory. It's about sorrow. It's about sisters who never write back and people who never listen" (81).

        All that being said. I do think the debate about disrespecting other soldiers is kind of interesting and I don't really know what to say about it except that I'd be curious to hear what other veterans thought of O'Brien's definition of a "true" story.

I'll find who's botherin my baby girl

 Song of Solomon was especially noteworthy in my opinion for the multitude of rich characters; people with intense backstories, quirky habits, and varying levels of social maturity. Not to mention they all have extraordinary names, from First Corinthians to Guitar to Sing. Pilate was easily my favorite character in Song of Solomon. She is quite intimidating, down-to-earth yet strangely mystical, and incredibly unique. Little details like the earring-box with her name, her love of oranges and soft-boiled eggs, and her knack for telling stories, really define her character. Milkman's first impressions of Pilate are also very revealing of how she stands out from the rest of his world, Milkman describing her as poor, but not dirty, her body built like that of a man's, and her voice sounding like pebbles rubbing against each other. Pilate is so different from the Dead family and all their wealth and obsession with ownership, and therefore she's an immediately appealing character to Milkman and the reader. "As they came closer and saw the brass box dangling from her ear, Milkman knew that what with the earring, the orange, and the angled black cloth, nothing--not the wisdom of his father nor the caution of the world--could keep him from her" (p36).

One of the most powerful and defining characteristics of Pilate is the fiercely protective love she has for Reba and Hagar. Love is a pretty big theme in Song of Solomon, and there are a lot of pretty intense issues surrounding it. There's Hagar starving without Milkman's affection, First Corinthians sneaking off with Porter, Ruth's uncomfortable relationship with her own father and son because of a lack of love from her husband, and then there's Pilate. Pilate's love for her family members stands out to me as being the strongest and most instinctive. It's part of who she is, and yet she doesn't let the people she loves take over her own identity, as seen in some of the other characters like Hagar. She's still very much weird, wise Pilate, but she's part of this family of women who don't let each other get hurt. The scene where Pilate confronts Reba's ex-lover with a knife is the most obvious example of Pilate's motherly defense kicking in, and it's also just a pretty hilarious scene in general, with Pilate speaking all cool and collected while the tiny drops of blood form on the man's chest. If Milkman saw that, you would think he would know not to send Hagar a thank-you note, walk off, and still expect Pilate to be cool with him...

My favorite Pilate scene however is at Hagar's funeral when Reba and Pilate start singing "Someone's been bothering my sweet sugar lumpkin." There's something very powerful about these two older women from a not well-off family, singing this song with not only grief in their hearts, but with an almost scary kind of anger and indignation: not crying, just staring at the people gathered at the funeral and shouting "mercy." Pilate's love for Hagar is such a deep motherly love it kind of makes her seem crazy, but in a very different way than Hagar herself. "Looking about at the faces of the people seated in the pews, she fastened on the first pair of eyes that were directed toward her. She nodded at the face and said, 'My baby girl.' Moving back down the aisle, she told each face turned toward her the same piece of news. 'My baby girl. That's my baby girl'" (p318). The whole scene feels very eerie and mystical as a result of these two voices shouting out with "words tossed like stones into a silent canyon" (p319). I feel like this quote does a good job of encompassing a lot of Pilate's character, being the wise and unexpected person she is, and tending to metaphorically disrupt silent canyons with stones all the time just by being her perceptive, story-telling, bone-carrying, unusual self. While other characters, particularly women (but also Guitar to an extent, maybe), experience love as something that ultimately destroys them and dictates their life, draining away everything else that they used to be because of their own obsession and societal limitations, Pilate and Reba's love for Hagar is ultimately something that builds them up and holds them together. This bond between women is really something different and powerful, and while Morrison's epigraph mentions the fathers soaring, I think the theme of family looking out for each other and of finding your place and your people is really best expressed through the mother figure of Pilate.

"Like an elephant who has just found his anger and lifts his trunk over the heads of little men who want his teeth or his hide or his amazing strength, Pilate trumpeted for the sky itself to hear, 'And she was loved!" (p319)

Multiple Perspectives and Christophine

Wide Sargasso Sea is the only book we’ve read this year to use multiple perspectives in telling a story, and I really liked the effect it created. While there was some confusion in who was narrating certain points, being able to explore the internal dialogue of both Antoinette and Rochester was incredibly illuminating. It is crucial for her gaining sympathy later on that Antoinette narrate her childhood scenes and give us a sense of her loneliness and innocence. However if Antoinette had narrated the rest of the book we wouldn’t experience Rochester’s confusion with the world, and we would lose Rochester’s thoughts which--in my opinion--actually make him a more hated character. Rochester’s thoughts are racist, judgemental, selfish, and uncaring, as seen in his description of Daniel Cosway and his reactions towards Antoinette living without him. The scene where he justifies bringing her along to England is especially revealing of how sick his character is by the end: wanting Antoinette to come with him because he is jealous and possessive of her; he’s allowed to start a new life, but she isn’t. “I’ll take her in my arms, my lunatic. She’s mad, but mine, mine. What will I care for gods or devils or for Fate itself. If she smiles or weeps or both. For me.” If we didn’t have Rochester’s perspective, we would perhaps view Rochester the same way as in Jane Eyre: a mysterious man who doesn’t always do good things, but may have some tragic backstory we don’t know about and therefore we don’t judge him as much because we see he’s in pain. But by narrating a majority of the story from Rochester’s point of view, Rhys is exposing his motives and internal thoughts, and making it impossible for the reader to give him the benefit of the doubt. It also allows us to have some sympathy for Rochester earlier in the novel where we know he is also lonely and lost, but by the end of the novel Rochester’s thoughts make him almost evil as he disregards everything about Antoinette as a person and just thinks of her as belonging to him. “My lunatic. My mad girl.”

After being exposed to the mindsets of both Antoinette and Rochester and getting exhausted from their emotional turmoil and general life problems, having a character like Christophine in the story is much appreciated. Rochester is cruel and Antoinette is emotionally unstable, but Christophine is actually productive and relatively level-headed. While I have sympathies for both Antoinette and Rochester, I definitely think Christophine is the easiest character to fully support. She is responsible, takes good care of Antoinette, has an admirable amount of respect/fear from the townspeople, and she gives pretty good advice. She’s a rational thinker and doesn’t get completely taken over by emotions the way Rochester and Antoinette do, yet she is still fiercely protective of Antoinette, and she can still understand what they are feeling.

Christophine is a vitally important person in Antoinette’s life, having had no other figure to love her or help her. Even when her mother was around, Christophine was the person Antoinette associated with safety and comfort. “I left a light on the chair by my bed and waited for Christophine for I like to see her last thing. But she did not come, and as the candle burned down, the safe peaceful feeling left me.” Christophine stays with Antoinette and though she is her maid, Antoinette respects her and trusts her with her most important questions. I think Christophine is pretty intimidating and maybe if she hadn’t performed Obeah for Antoinette, or if she hadn’t mentioned to Rochester the possibility of Antoinette remarrying, things would have turned out better. But in comparison to Rochester and Antoinette, her sound advice and also her loyalty and responsibility make her a much more likable character.

It would have been cool to get some of the story from Christophine’s perspective, but I don’t think it would have been completely necessary because she is able to speak about her emotions regarding Antoinette very effectively anyway, unlike both Rochester and Antoinette who go crazy trying. Still, her character is pretty mysterious and I'd be interested in knowing some of her backstory.

Meaning and Higher Powers vs. Meursault

Meursault’s whole attitude of “nothing really matters” and “we’re all going to die anyway” kind of annoys me and I relate to the other characters of the book who are unable to grasp his indifference. “Do you want my life to be meaningless?” asks the magistrate when Meursault brushes off religion as useless and irrelevant. While the chaplain and magistrate definitely come off as overbearing and suffocating Christians, I kind of sympathize with their reaction to Meursault’s philosophy. By saying he doesn’t have time for them, he is saying everything they do and work for is meaningless, that anything anyone works for is meaningless, and that’s a really depressing thought. It’s kind of true: everyone will die, nothing you do will change that. Most things don’t matter in the grand scheme of things. But my personality at least does not like being told that everything I do is meaningless. It’s a valid way to see things, but if I dwell on the meaninglessness of my existence then I am not doing anything for anybody, and while Meursault is perfectly content with this lifestyle, I am not. I think there’s a lot of meaning in little things like singing a song, getting a card from a friend, accomplishing something you didn't think you could, and being around people you care about. Meursault enjoys some things I would call meaningful, like admiring a sunset and swimming in the ocean and reconnecting with a neighbor. However Meursault doesn’t recognize these at meaningful. They don’t matter because in the long run, little things don’t make you live longer or change the course of the universe. These things matter to me because they affect the quality of the life I’m living and make me feel like I have a purpose. Meursault thinks having a purpose is ridiculous and made up, which is fine, it is sort of made up. But it's also something pretty crucial to human nature and fitting into society and I can understand why people take offense to his views (although this really shouldn't be the main argument against him in court).

Meursault's lack of emotion or purpose in The Stranger make for some interesting interactions with the religious characters like the examining magistrate and the chaplain. The scenes where the magistrate screams at Meursault and waves around the Crucifix, or where the chaplain cries and says Meursault must believe in God, don’t portray religious people, or people who believe in a greater purpose for the world, in a very positive light. They’re basically seen as insane, hypocritical, and unable to control their emotions, which is a pretty stark contrast to Meursault who is calm and a little too rational for us to be comfortable. Meursault is the one who has committed murder and yet Camus is much harsher on the religious people and the people of the court. By providing these absurd people to make fun of, Camus is able to make Meursault’s lack of belief in anything at all seem like a good quality, making it easier to ignore the morally questionable things he does as a result. As a religious person myself, it’s a little sad that the two religious characters in the book are absolutely horrible, and also that both Christians and Meursault claim to not judge people yet they are both judging each other pretty hard core. Both of these characters are so certain in how they think of the world and so sure of the meaning (or lack of) in their life, they are both a little intimidating to me.

We talked in class about “the Absurd” being humanity’s desire to give meaning to things in a meaningless universe, and how Meursault’s personality is based on an awareness of this absurdity. I feel like an awareness that the universe is ultimately unaffected by your presence is maybe a healthy thing, to keep everything in perspective and not get carried away by things that go wrong. But keeping this in mind, I don't think it's necessarily healthy to believe nothing you do matters because on a smaller scale, people are affected by things you do all the time. Meursault may not care much for them, but people matter to me quite a bit.

Humanity! and Rants on Why the Samsa Family Sucks

*Apologies in advance for the randomness and length of this post, as well as the incorrect translation of the book I read and used in my quotations*
       We've established in class that the title The Metamorphosis applies to both Gregor's transformation into an insect, and his family's transformation from lazy, unproductive losers, to strong, self-sufficient people. We've also established that the family has no way of knowing Gregor is still Gregor or has any capacity to understand their speech or communicate with them at all. All that said, I really hate the Samsa family.
       At the beginning of the book, I was sympathetic towards the family because it would really suck if your son/brother was suddenly a giant cockroach. Feelings of horror and disgust are totally expected and reasonable in such a situation. Yet the family does assume the bug is Gregor, and originally Grete even attempts to still think of him as her brother. Upon one of her first times seeing Gregor "she became so frightened that she lost control of herself and slammed the door shut again. But, as if she felt sorry for her behavior, she immediately opened the door again and came in on tiptoe, as if she were visiting someone seriously ill or perhaps even a stranger" (17). It's interesting here that she originally felt sorry for her reaction towards him, because it means she understands he's her brother, who she seemed to have a pretty good relationship with, and is ashamed that she's scared of him. But this soon fades, and what annoys me is that no one is exactly sad that Gregor is now a bug. There's a little bit of crying and consoling later on, but it's mostly right to figuring out financial dilemmas. They only mourn the loss of his financial support and the fact that his presence makes their family look really sketchy.
       At least Mrs. Samsa seems to show some emotion when she protects Gregor from being killed by his own father, but I still don't like her. And I mostly try to pretend Mr. Samsa doesn't exist because he literally does everything wrong and it's possibly partly his fault that Gregor was such an insect-like worker even before his metamorphosis. The family has acknowledged the bug is Gregor and yet Mr. Samsa still pelts him with apple cores even when he's clearly retreating back into his room. And I hate Grete. At the beginning of the book she seemed like such a promising character because Gregor said such nice things about how observant she was and understanding of him, and they had this connection. Grete knew something was wrong right away, and she brings him food out of "the goodness of her heart," as Gregor believes (17). And yet Grete completely turns on him. She takes charge of his life, moves furniture out of his room against his will, doesn't make any attempt to communicate with him--which is surprising since they seemed to have such a connection before and now she understands nothing of him--and eventually advocates for his removal: "You just have to get rid of the idea that it's Gregor. Believing it for so long, that is our real misfortune. ...This animal persecutes us, drives the roomers away, obviously wants to occupy the whole apartment and for us to sleep in the gutter" (38). This is clearly an exaggeration and her statement feels disingenuous and a little selfish. At the same time it does make sense for her to be fed up with the conditions they are living in. But I still dislike her.
       What's saddest to me is just how disillusioned Gregor was about his family's feelings towards him. Reading parts of the beginning now, it's clear how some of the things he described are just horribly misinterpreted. "If only his sister had been there! She was perceptive; she had already begun to cry when Gregor was still lying calmly on his back. And certainly the manager, this ladies' man, would have listened to her; she would have shut the front door and in the foyer talked him out of his scare" (13). Sure Grete is perceptive, but she's also a normal human being who doesn't like the sight of a giant cockroach, and she isn't going to be able to calmly sort things out with the manager. When she feeds him, Grete bolts out of the room and locks the door because Gregor is a disgusting giant bug, but Gregor interprets it differently: "out of a sense of delicacy, since she knew that Gregor would not eat in front of her, she left hurriedly and even turned the key, just so that Gregor should know that he might make himself as comfortable as he wanted" (18). No, Gregor, no. Gregor just doesn't get that his family will never come to terms with his problem. When he dies, they have a quick family crying session, and then pack up and move out, ready to start a good life without him.
       A lot of the family's reactions make sense in a way, but I hate them so much because as a reader we are exposed to Gregor's humanity and it is troubling to me to see that be thrown away, and that celebrated as positive for the family. I had a thought about this and it made me kind of upset: What if Gregor hadn't been turned into an animal at all, but suffered some debilitating injury instead, that rendered him useless for a job, or unable to communicate? The Samsa family would still have to take care of him and would still be forced to take up economic responsibility which would have the same "positive" effects we see in the book. If the story plays out in a similar fashion, then it becomes really uncomfortable to think about because it would mean ignoring the humanity of a person just because they're supposedly "limiting" your success. Without them you would have a more independent lifestyle, but it would also be horrible because they are still human and have an emotional connection and relationship with you and so much more value beyond financial productivity. I think this is why I find it sad for the Samsa family to move on happily with their lives, because even though Gregor is a bug, we know he still has a human mind, and ignoring the potential of human minds is not something that is acceptable (even though they don't know he has a human mind, I know, I know). Anyway, this book was an interesting and enlightening read, and I hope the Samsa family has a horrible life without Gregor. But then again, what could they have done really? Ugh, there are never any answers.

Robert Cohn's Role in The Sun Also Rises

      The Sun Also Rises has ended and I'm still confused about Cohn's role in this story. Jake clearly hates him, as do all of the other characters, but the reason for this hatred isn't as obvious to me as it used to be. Cohn is obnoxious, that's for sure. He's overly chivalrous, especially in defending Brett's honor: "'I didn't ask you to insult her.' ...He stood up from the table his face white, and stood there white and angry behind the little plates of hors d'oeuvres" (p47). He comes off as arrogant to the others, and he doesn't have the best grip on his emotions, as seen when he beats up Romero after discovering him with Brett. He's a little too self-assured and not a particularly interesting guy. That being said, I don't think Cohn deserved all the verbal abuse, from Jake and Mike in particular. They aren't so subtle in letting him know they don't want him around, which must be kind of hard to hear considering Cohn's idea of his relationship with Jake: "You're really about the best friend I have, Jake" (47).
       Over the course of the book I found myself starting to feel bad for Cohn because of all the insults he gets from people, and the fact that his emotional response to Brett dumping him isn't that outlandish to me. While obviously the outsider to Jake's friend group, I don't actually think he's that strange, he's maybe easier to relate to than the others. He's kind of the only sane one in this weird group of people. He isn't constantly wasted, he is understandably a little grossed out by the violence of the bullfights, and he actually wants real friendships and romantic relationships with people. Is it so crazy for Cohn to expect Brett to acknowledge him after they lived together and publicly had a romantic relationship? It's not like Brett ended it, she just expects all her lovers to understand she doesn't actually love them, whereas Cohn "can't believe it didn't mean anything"(185). The scene where Cohn is in his room crying may be a little pathetic, but I feel like Cohn's emotions are pretty much justified, even if his actions in punching Jake and Mike aren't. "Cohn was crying. There he was, face down on the bed, crying" (197). I personally wasn't super into the rest of the characters drowning their sorrows in alcohol and pretending their ironic humor made up for their lack of purpose, so Cohn actually having a humane reaction to his circumstances was almost a relief. I still don't like Cohn, but it's hard for me to agree with Jake about Cohn when Cohn's reactions are almost reasonable. The uncomfortable ethnic prejudices coming from Jake and Mike that seem to intensify over the course of the novel also make it difficult for me to go along with their hatred of him.
      I think there are some similarities between Jake and Cohn too. They both fall for Brett, obviously, but they also don't seem to enjoy drinking and partying as much as the others do, and both do have emotional breakdowns at some point (Jake in his bed in Paris, thinking about Brett), granted Jake is considerably better at hiding his emotions than Cohn. Jake is also not nearly as cruel towards Cohn as Mike is, which I think is significant, Mike comparing Cohn to a steer in the bullfighting ring: "'Tell me, Robert. Why do you follow Brett around like a poor bloody steer? Don't you know you're not wanted?'" I think Cohn's inclusion in the story is maybe a bit of a critique of this society that doesn't really seem to care about anything. Or maybe it's just to show us something about Jake's character: that even though he plays this cool and collected guy who has accepted his circumstances and independence, he'd be "as big an ass as Cohn" if he really did have a chance with Brett (185). Maybe Cohn is there to show us what would have happened between Jake and Brett, while keeping the dignity of our protagonist relatively in tact.

Gender Roles in Mrs. Dalloway

As I read Mrs. Dalloway, I remember being irritated with Clarissa at various instances where she lay around the house, talking of parties, criticizing Miss Kilman, not seeming to care that there was a difference between Albanians and Armenians, and not bothering to educate herself in the slightest. I was a little upset that Woolf would choose to portray her main female character in such a useless way. To make things worse, the only working-class, educated woman depicted in the novel is Miss Kilman, who is satirized and shown to be somewhat hypocritical and annoying. I was disappointed in the unambitious women of the book, however I was not surprised considering Woolf was writing in the 1920s. As the book goes on though, it becomes clear that Woolf is offering a very legitimate critique of the constraints placed on women of this era.

A main theme in Mrs. Dalloway is that you can’t pretend to fully understand anyone and there’s much more to a person below the surface. While many people see Clarissa as “the perfect hostess:” kind of fake and restrained and meaningless, she actually struggles with very real problems and has incredibly complex thoughts and emotions. To her, Clarissa’s parties aren’t just an excuse for rich people to dress up, enjoy fancy food, and act fake together. They’re a way to bring people together and celebrate relationships and culture and life. I’m still not super into the whole housewife “hostess” image, but by depicting her in this manner I think Woolf is making the point that just because a woman such as Clarissa is uneducated and economically dependent on her husband does not mean she is of lower value than him. Even though her type of work may be different from Richard’s, Clarissa is still doing important work that has meaning to her and makes her a more independent character.

Another clue that Virginia Woolf is criticizing gender stereotypes in Mrs. Dalloway is through Septimus and her portrayal of hyper-masculinity promoted during the world wars and the dangerous effects that can have. Septimus’s time in the war resulted in his inability to feel upon returning home, to the extent that he was unable to grieve for the death of his closest friend, a fact that he is almost proud of. Not displaying emotion makes him more masculine, but because he becomes concerned about his lack of feeling, he is seen as weak and cowardly by the doctors who are used to previous generations of warfare that didn’t involve nearly as many mentally scarred veterans. There is simply a societal expectation that men will be impossibly tough and unphased by battle and death, and this is what Woolf critiques by showing Septimus’s struggle for understanding and peace, that ends up resulting in his death.

While I was originally unimpressed with the female characters in Mrs. Dalloway and the depiction of working women, I think Woolf does a good job of establishing that a person’s worth is not defined by the money they make or the facts they know, but by the relationships they have with other people. This combined with Septimus’s story and the reflection on masculine ideals and the danger they can create, made me appreciate Woolf’s writing in regards to gender in Mrs. Dalloway.