Lovely, I’m not sure how else to describe it. Proustian without the interminable scenes of awful people blathering on. Woolf (at least here, I haven’t read anything else by her) is gentle and empathetic. Each viewpoint character, as strange or damaged as they might be, is a person who makes up a part of the infinite not fully knowable mosaic of human experience. It’s Chestertonian, without being religious. Clarissa’s reveries are straight out of The Ethics of Elfland.
Compare:
Here I am only trying to describe the enormous emotions which cannot be described. And the strongest emotion was that life was as precious as it was puzzling. It was an ecstasy because it was an adventure; it was an adventure because it was an opportunity… The test of all happiness is gratitude; and I felt grateful, though I hardly knew to whom. Children are grateful when Santa Claus puts in their stockings gifts of toys or sweets. Could I not be grateful to Santa Claus when he put in my stockings the gift of two miraculous legs? We thank people for birthday presents of cigars and slippers. Can I thank no one for the birthday present of birth?
There were, then, these two first feelings, indefensible and indisputable. The world was a shock, but it was not merely shocking; existence was a surprise, but it was a pleasant surprise.
— Orthodoxy, Ch. IV The Ethics of Elfland
with
not for a moment did she believe in God; but all the more, she thought, taking up the pad, must one repay in daily life to servants, yes, to dogs and canaries, above all to Richard her husband, who was the foundation of it—of the gay sounds, of the green lights, of the cook even whistling, for Mrs. Walker was Irish and whistled all day long—one must pay back from this secret deposit of exquisite moments
Excerpt From Mrs. Dalloway
Virginia Woolf
I’m attending my 20th high school reunion this summer, which means I’m only about halfway as distant from my youth as the main characters of Mrs. Dalloway are. But looking over the names of the attendees, even those I didn’t consider close friends at the time, brings out a kind of affection. We were young together. Time has passed, what do we have in common now? Our shared youth. We’ve, for the most part, gone five times as long without seeing each other as we spent together. We won’t be able to know or fully share what’s happened in between, but to have known a person even a bit is to have had a glimpse outside your own mind into the unfathomable depths of humanity. It’s training in empathy. It ought to lead to gratitude. It’s what a good novel does. This is a good novel.