So Many Words

Mr. Dalloway finds himself, at one point in the novel, incapable of telling Clarissa that he loves her in so many words. The flowers are well-received, and perhaps the message gets across (I don't know how Clarissa manages to miss the connection between flowers and old flames coming back to town, but what the hey). But what's interesting here is how well we can relate to Richard's plight, even today- it's hard to say things in so many words, whether it be "I love you" or "You owe me money" or what have you.

What I'm saying, I guess, is that Richard's cowardice is utterly relatable. He's afraid, not of rejection alone, but merely of voicing his feelings. He can't tell his own wife he loves her? Weak. But it's got to be the most common failing in the world to turn back and descend the stair with a bald spot in one's hair. What's really terrible about it is that it doesn't happen to everyone- the Admirable Hugh, for instance, probably never has to deal with it. He buys jewelry all the time. His is a relatively simple courage- but not entirely different from that which Septimus possesses during his "Manly" phase. It's just a smaller-scale lack of sensitivity, even if it expresses itself via "I love you"s and so forth. Modern novels love to tell you that true courage is feeling fear and then overcoming it, but in Woolf's day they didn't hold with such nonsense- true courage was when you bloody well did what you set out to do in a bluff, straightforward manner. Sure, Septimus goes a little mad, and Hugh Whitbread is an utterly inadmirable character when you get right down to it, but never is their manliness itself called into question- and given the other male characters present in Mrs. Dalloway (Who wants to be Peter? ... Anyone?), I'm not at all sure that they're the worst options.