Mrs Dalloway
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A reading life, a writing life, with writer and teacher Sally Bailey. Tea. Tea. Tea.

Tea must be made first thing. I think the birds have had several cups already, but I have not. I have not. And I've been thinking about this image of fragments and paper coiling away from me in small parts like I'm ripping a page out of a notebook and I'm trying to divide it fairly and evenly into little strips.

but the strips are running away from me because somebody has coiled them too tightly. Somebody has put those paper strips around my fingers and my fingers want to be doing, doing, doing. There are things to be doing. This is the beginning of the next week. It is Sunday and my students are already busily typing away to me with their fingers messages of, "When can we meet Sally? Sally, when can we meet?" Although they never

very often call me Sally, a few do. "Dr Bailey, when would be convenient to meet?" Very polite, very kind, sweet messages. And I think to myself, "But I haven't got my paper out yet. I don't know where my notebook is. I'm not sure if I've even can see a whole page yet. I still need to write. I still need to write. I had to write to commission this week an essay on Mrs Dalloway, Virginia Woolf.

1925, for some reason I never forget that date. The date of publication. But that is a novel, written in fragments, and you've only just started following one part, one voice, Mrs Dalloway's voice, before somebody else comes, swooping down to take it from her. Time. Time swallowed up, like that sip of tea. Mrs Dalloway, let me see if I can find her. She's lying somewhere on my bed. Mrs Dalloway.

Really nothing happens in Mrs. Dalloway except people are grappling around with pockets of time, time slipping away from them. And the real moment, the only real moment there is, is in the minds of the characters themselves as they try to organize themselves. They try to remember what it is was once important to them, what is now important to them, what is it they want to do on this day in June. The whole book takes place across one day.

One long, expansive day which stands in for the whole of history. The history lived and known by these characters anyway. By Mrs Dalloway, married to Mr Richard Dalloway, Member of Parliament. We assume she stands in perhaps for Virginia Woolf herself, or at least part of her, an aspect of her. Mrs Dalloway lives in Westminster. And we hear the sound of Big Ben booming early on in the novel. And also early on in the novel, because time doesn't seem to quite fit, it doesn't

Tickertape along. Tickertickertickertape. Doesn't unroll in a nice seamless fold. It seems to arrive in layers and accretions as people remember and/or forget something and then remember it again. "Remember my party, remember my party!" said Peter Walsh. Peter Walsh who has returned from India where he has fallen in love with an Indian woman. Peter Walsh who was once in love with Clarissa Dalloway.

is perhaps still in love with Clarissa Dalloway, which is part of his problem. Peter has many problems, but one of them is still being in love with a woman who is married. And he's been to see Clarissa on this day in June, and he spent a lot of time avoiding her, avoiding the idea of her by fidgeting and fiddling around with his pocket knife. His pocket knife, which seems to stand in for one of those segments of time

And here's my knife, one of those segments of time that we would like to be able to control tightly with the blade of a knife. Cut it out like this blade now running, the sound of a knife running down my window ledge. But time doesn't run like that straight down without any bumps. No, it doesn't. It seems to move in a more floating and ethereal sort of way. We can't quite grasp it. Where's it gone? I woke up this morning

just before nine, which is quite late. I've been up late reading. I've stopped reading Mrs Dalloway because I finished my essay on Mrs Dalloway. That pocket of time I tried to close down, though of course I was still thinking about Peter Walsh with his pocket knife sitting in Clarissa Dalloway's drawing room as she's sewing her dress for her party. She's putting together a green dress which has somehow been torn from another party.

And she calls out to Peter as he leaves because people in this novel are always arriving and then always leaving. Not quite sure how long they've been anywhere, how long they will stay. "Remember my party, remember my party!" says Clarissa Dalloway to Peter Walsh, her former friend and lover, as they reunite in her drawing room as she's sewing her dress on this day in June, sometime after the Great War. And they've been apart for years.

for years, but Peter Walsh has not forgotten. Clarissa Dalloway, remember my party. Remember my party. And today I have to remember that I've been invited to a party of sorts. I'm going to be taken down the river for a cruise and a cocktail. My friend Beth, my dear, dear friend, who has just been appointed, I think I can say this out loud, it is official.

I can say this out loud as I push open my boat window, as though somehow this needs to be announced loudly, to the cockerel across the way, and to the hens, and to the wood pigeons, and to the flies, and to the munk jacks which come into our stretch of this meadow called Ropeham, and to the geese, let's not forget the geese who seem to dominate this neck of the woods. I think I'm going to announce to them that my friend Beth has been appointed

as a principal of an Oxford College. How's that for an achievement? How is that for an achievement? And I'm terri- I am terribly, I say stumbling over my word, I'm terribly proud of her. And that's why I'm stumbling. I really am terribly, terribly proud of her. I feel quite emotional about it actually because somehow time has

been pulled up by its socks into something very special. And here am I standing by my window on my boat on the south side of Oxford looking out at my washing, my pillowcase and my two blue cloths, blue squares and a white oblong thinking about my friend who I met on a train going up to Scotland at least more than

More than 30 years ago, it can't be. And I don't feel as though I've changed. And I don't feel as though I'm in that version of time moving forward. And a little Robin has just arrived to the right side of the window. And he's certainly not in that version of time 30 years ago on a train going up to Scotland. No, he's not. But he's come to visit in the way Robins do. Announcing themselves with their red breasts.

"Remember my party, remember my party," says the robin to me. I think robins are always going to parties. And my friend Beth and I are going to go down the river today from Folly Bridge, which is just a little closer to town, just south of the police station and St. Aldate's. We're going to go along the river for a cruise because she is moving to Oxford to take up the post.

of being a principal, do we say head of house? I think we do, in an Oxford college. How about that for an achievement? Meanwhile all I'm doing is trying to gather up the start or the end of my day and I'm going back to that image of paper, small parcels of paper rolling away from my fingers and I'm trying to gather it together into a complete whole, a page, and I want to keep thinking about time in that way.

And I want to perhaps offer something to those of you listening who are trying to write and organise your time and find it rolling away, and find yourself scrapping around with pieces of paper which don't quite cohere, and a character, if you are writing, or an idea that hasn't quite found its way. There is no smooth surface yet. You can't quite see what lies around your character, the point of view, the perspective.

And I've been thinking through, as a writer and a reader, small units, small shapes. Whenever I write, I think about the shape of something. I think through sentences and paragraphs which have their own shape and which conduct time and place and point of view in a certain way. And reading Virginia Woolf's sentences, I'm reminded of how she often provides an entire biography

an entire biography in one sentence. So here is a sentence, a sentence which marks Mrs Dalloway getting up from her seated position on the sofa where she's been sewing after her friend Peter Walsh bounces into the room, having run up the stairs after all those years to see his friend Clarissa Dalloway again. Mrs Clarissa Dalloway, Mrs Richard

Dalloway, if we were to be more formal. So here is Clarissa about to move towards Peter Walsh. Now it was time to move. And as a woman gathers her things together, her cloak, her gloves, her opera glasses, and gets up to go out of the theatre into the street, she rose from the sofa and went to Peter. I'll read it again. Now it was time to move, comma,

Pause. As a woman gathers her things together, pause. Her cloak, pause. Her gloves, pause. Her opera glasses, and gets up to go out of the theatre into the street, pause. She rose from the sofa and went to Peter. Now it was time to move. As a woman gathers her things together, her cloak, her gloves, her opera glasses, pause.

and gets up to go out of the theatre into the street. She rose from the sofa and went to Peter. One sentence, beautifully structured around the idea of theatre. Forgive me as I reach for my cup of tea. One sentence, really only about movement. Now it was time to move.

And we're not told it's Clarissa Dalloway, we're told it's a woman who's gathering her things together, having been to the theatre. She gathers her cloak, her gloves, her opera glasses, and she moves out of the theatre into the street. So Virginia Woolf, the author, the writer, moves Mrs Dalloway into another compartment of time and space, just in one very short paragraph, which is an entire sentence.

She appoints her another place and space in time in which we can watch Clarissa Dalloway as though she were on stage at the theatre. And somehow it gives her more credence as a character. Somehow she becomes more active, although she's been sitting on the sofa for quite some time. Quite some paragraph time, that is.

looking and watching and observing Peter Walsh as he stumbles over his sentences, as he tries to gather together parcels of time and place, his history, as he tries to tell her that he is in love. "'But what are you going to do?' she asked him a few paragraphs back. "'What are you going to do?' "'Dear Peter, he was in love. He was in love.'

And this is the first time that Mrs. Dalloway moves to greet her old friend. And so Virginia Woolf, the writer, gives us space to consider that event in a new space and time. A little miniature stage she puts up in that paragraph, just one sentence. Now it was time to move, and as a woman gathers her things together, her cloak, her gloves, her opera glasses, and gets up to go out of the theatre into the street,

She rose from the sofa and went to Peter. It's an appointment in time. It's an attempt to move your character on when you're perhaps stuck. After all, they can't sit there all day thinking about each other privately inside their minds. These pools of time which Worf is so fond of generating. These circles, these ever-extending circles, ripples on the surface of the mind of the character we happen to be visiting with.

We spend a lot of time on the inside of characters' minds. At some point, they have to move and do something. They have to unstick themselves from flat pool, that surface, or that surface turning into a depth. We can't stay inside our minds all day. We have to do something, but it's how we organize the doing, and it's how we, as writers, organize things.

characters doing things. And I've been thinking about this in my own writing life as I tried increasingly to write in small parcels of time because of pain, quite frankly, that four-letter word. And I think when you experience pain or difficulty, it's easier just to stay in one place and fix yourself there. But a character can't do that. A character has to move. It has to have a purpose. It has to have some kind of plot. And all the plot really means is...

Movement of some kind. A character must move. He or she must be interrupted, taken somewhere else. She must see something new. She must hear something new. There must be some kind of novelty, some arrival, some event, just as Peter Walsh arrives. In the middle of Mrs. Dalloway sewing her dress up for her party, he interrupts her. He bursts into the room and presents himself as an apparition.

from the past. You have to force events sometimes, you have to force your characters out of their pools of time as we have to force ourselves out of one order of time into another. We have to move on somehow. We have to know where we're going. We have to know what we're doing with our day. What are you doing with your day, Sally, today? What are you doing with your day? What will you do first?

What will you do first? Time is pressing in upon you. Will you go to the Quaker meeting? You've missed the nine o'clock. It's already half past nine. You've stayed too long in this pool of time. Will you go to the eleven o'clock meeting? You could go on your scooter. It's a sunny day. You have at least half a battery life. Will that be long enough to get you to the Quaker meeting house on St. Giles? I think so. Or will you stay and write? Or will you stay and explain how it is you are moving your character on? I think...

I think I will do that later in another pool of time. I think I shall come back later and show you another space and time. Another space and time. Another fragment. Another piece of paper I unfold and now fold back up because I need to move on with my day. I need to move on with my day and my day cannot properly start unless I have attached myself to words so I think what I must do first is I must read.

I must read. Not Mrs. Dalloway, because I have finished reading Mrs. Dalloway. And many of those sentences I've enveloped inside my mind, like the sentence I just read to you: "And she rose." "And she rose." "She moved." That's all I needed to push myself on, and I can see that paragraph in my mind's eye. I can see the woman leaving the theatre with her gloves and her opera glasses, and I can add to that, I can add a hat.

which I would do, lady of the hats as I am. I can add a pair of shoes and I can add a sound. I can add an outline. I can add a few words. She may be with somebody else. She may be with a kind of Peter Walsh character, an old lover, an old acquaintance, an old friend with whom she was once very close. But time has passed. The seams of time have ripped open.

So much has happened between this moment in time, this event, being at the theatre, perhaps they are sitting side by side in one of those royal boxes right at the front that lean over the top of the theatre, or perhaps they meet each other on the way out, going down the red velvety stairs.

Or perhaps they catch a glance of one another and are embarrassed and feeling awkward, feeling pressed upon to say hello or say something across that vast gap. Historic time. So that one paragraph gives me so much because it is utterly clear what is happening. She moved. She rose. She leaves the theatre. She goes outside. The show is over.

Now it was time to move, and as a woman gathers her things together, her cloak, her gloves, her opera glasses, and gets to go out of the theatre into the street, she rose from the sofa and went to... That's for you to decide. That's for you to tell. Thank you for listening to A Reading Life, A Writing Life. If you've enjoyed this podcast, please like it, give us a review,

or mention us to friends or on social media. Thank you.