Ambiguity and Absurdity in Woolf

When we were discussing the motorcar montage we started talking about the absurdity present in Mrs. Dalloway. Some people felt that the montage was meant to be absurd and show the ridiculousness of the British public reverence for the royal family. Others felt that because of the power of the language describing the genuinely deep emotional response of a nation scared in passages such as “for in all the hat shops and tailors’ shops strangers looked at each other and thought of the dead; of the flag; of empire.” I think generally when we have ambiguity like this it means that there isn’t one right way to read the passage and we have to account for both elements.
I think we frequently see absurdity in Mrs. Dalloway because one of the primary techniques Woolf uses in her writing is the contrast of very dramatic language and very ordinary circumstances. For example “Why seek pinnacles and stand drenched in fire? Might irt consume her anyhow! Burn her to cinders! Better anything, better brandish one’s torch and hurl it to earth than taper and dwindle away like some Ellie Henderson”. The circumstances that bring on this passage are the poor quality of the dress worn by Ellie Henderson and Clarissa's general feeling that the party is going badly. Generally such mundane sentiments are voiced by fairly shallow characters, I think we can all imagine the stereotype of the ditsy blonde gossipping about her friends poor dress choice. But this description is laced with incredibly dramatic imagery causing it to feel out of place in the description of an elderly upper class British lady’s party. This is where the absurdity lies, in the juxtaposition of grand themes (frequently one’s own mortality) with elements of daily life, and a life style which we have not romanticized to the extent of a more working class life so that the themes of mortality could be seen as fitting for one who struggles to get by.
That said I don’t think Woolf's point is that Clarissa Dalloway (or any of the other characters in the book)  is an absurd person. I think she is trying to portray how we don’t need a life that we traditionally associate with grand themes in order to have a rich and meaningful life. Clarissa frequently states just how much she loves life and how deeply meaningful her parties are to her. She feels threatened by peters criticism of her as the perfect hostess because she knows that he sees her in that role as very shallow. Indeed Clarissa's life is generally devoid of any struggle or drama which we usually consider to be part of establishing a deep character. Clarissa doesn’t do anything which is particularly meaningful or important or that seems like it would be worth writing a novel about and that is peters criticism of her.

However going back to the Mrs. Brown handout it is clear that Woolf as a writer is much more interested in what characters think then their role in society or their actions. I think part of the argument of the novel is that we don;t need those grand surrounding and a glorious struggle for love or status in order to have a life which is deeply meaningful. We don’t need setting or plot in order to earn the right to contemplate grand themes, our lives and our world are meaningful to us regardless of how they seem to other people. Therefore to Woolf Clarissa is a very deep character because her thoughts are so interesting and deep, not because of her actions.

In many ways this reminds me of The Mezzanine, while baker is certainly not endowing mundane daily life with the sort of grand themes such as mortality that Woolf is, he is pushing for a recognition of the richness present in our daily lives that we tend to ignore. He finds this in the minute details of his daily life but the principle is the same, even though our lives do not have the sort of plot which we traditionally associate with depth and struggle, they are still rich meaningful and worth living.

Howie on Marcus Aurelius

Howie clearly has a visceral negative reaction to Marcus Aurelius's idea that all of human life is ultimately transient and therefore meaningless. This makes sense for Howie a character who is utterly focused on the minute details of daily life and how they effect and create the experiences which make us who we are. For him the elements of life which Aurelius finds transient and meaningless are highly meaningful and so to have someone tell him to reject these things is galling.

 It is interesting to me that immediately after reading the quote and reacting passionately Howie mentions that it is easy to resist such stoicism when eating cookies on a park bench in a rather pleasant plaza. In his mind he is witness to the evidence which counters Aurelius's claims. He is present to any number of objects which he could think about and determine the ways in which they were designed and the ways in which they effect him to produce his experiences. He sees depth in a life which Aurelius would view unsatisfying and materialistic.

Nicholson Baker Writing Style

The most obvious element of Baker's writing style is the use of footnotes, but since Howie describes in depth his own reasons for using them I will not describe why they are such an effective element of his style here. Baker also makes extensive use of the second person to put us into the stories Howie is telling and to help us relate to the observation Howie makes. Since the focus on the novel is on intense observation of the usually unobserved parts of daily life which make up our life the use of second person helps to make these observations part of our lives rather then just Howie's. Baker also very carefully uses italics and punctuation marks to make Howie's passion and interest for the subject at hand clear. If Howie's enthusiasm for daily minutiae was not clear then the meaning of the novel could quickly change to emphasize the pointlessness of modern materialism or it could simply become boring. However, Baker keeps it interesting and avoids making Howie's enthusiasm seem overblown through careful use of emphatic punctuation.