diza's blog

Clarissa Dalloway prioritized parties, facades, and appearance. She placed large importance in the presentations of herself and the network of people she surrounded herself with. While in Regent’s park buying flowers, Virginia Woolf illustrated a cluster of people idling around a fancy motor car passing through, speculating it to hold the Queen. Clarissa, to ensure that the Queen thought of her with respect, made sure to present “a look of extreme dignity” as it drove past (Woolf, 16). Unlike the other civilians obsessing over the presence of royalty, she maintained a cool demeanor to make sure the Queen acknowledged her with such a superior appearance. Her facades were often presented, and made other appearances in the ending scenes of her party. She spoke the same cordial 6 words to everyone, creating the cheerful but disingenuous persona as a perfect hostess, as Peter Walsh anticipated. At this party, turning out very successful to Clarissa’s relief, she rekindled with her old frien...

     The passage where Howie and Tina interact in The Mezzanine stands out from the others, illustrating a mechanical way of talking with carefully thought out gestures and statements. Although Howie is found in other situations interacting with others, the specific scene creates a rigid environment that shows his approach to small talk. He is on his way to spend lunchtime break and runs into Tina, a co-worker. She tells him to sign a felt flower vase for the office trash cleaner, and they chat until she gets a call. Howie wants to leave and gives the mechanical gestures that mean he has to head off ("pulling up the pants, checking for my wallet, a joke salute").     Nicholson Baker illustrates this rigid routine as one that is required to be completed after Tina initiated conversation with Howie. He implies that the back and forth conventional steps are just necessary to maintain a good social appearance. He mentions this through comments such as “[Tina] ...