Mrs. Dalloway Five

"The ideas were Sally's, of course- but very soon she was just as excited- read Plato in bed before breakfast; read Morris; read Shelley by the hour." (Woolf 33)

Clarissa Dalloway is enamored by her childhood friend, Sally Seton in Mrs. Dalloway, by Virginia Woolf. She looks up to Sally, who once "ran naked through the hallway at Bourton." Clarissa remarked that "her behavior frequently shocked old Aunt Helena," yet it makes her even more interested in Sally. This idea of a love affair between two females may be due to the fact that Virginia herself dabbled in gay affairs, having one herself with her longtime friend, Vita Sackville-West, who was also a writer. It is interesting to note that several years before the brief affair happened between Clarissa and Sally in 1889, there was a criminalization of male homosexual acts, but female ones were not included in the law. In a way, Virginia was able to use writing as a means of clearing her conscious with both her ideas of religion and sexual preferences (although she was married to a man for over a quarter of a century).

Woolf, Virginia. Mrs. Dalloway. New York: Harcourt, Brace and, 1925. Print.