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Kissing Sally Seton - Mrs. Dalloway

  As to be expected, Woolf, being a person who we would (modernly) define as queer^1, as implied by her relationship with Vita Sackville-West (who inspired the protagonist of her later novel Orland: A Biography ), has a fair share of queer-coded and seemingly explicitly queer— with cases such as Sally Seton— characters in many of her novels. Mrs. Dalloway is no exception and I almost feel a slight sense of obligation to talk about this topic seeing as I spent the better half of my second semester history class working on a paper discussing the queer relations between men and women during the Victorian Era, seeing as that era informed both Woolf’s experiences as a “queer” individual and the context in which her characters lived. I will include foundational information regarding female-female relationships during the Victorian Era in this blog post for ease of access but have attached a PDF of the full essay for those who are interested in further reading on the topic. You can also...
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The Presence of My Fair Lady in Baker's The Mezzanine

  On page 82 of The Mezzanine by Nicholson Baker, our narrator, Howie, finds himself in the bathroom, whistling the first line sung by Eliza Doolittle in the song “Wouldn’t It Be Loverly” from the 1964 musical My Fair Lady : “All I want is a room somewhere.” Right after starting, however, Howie cuts himself off, out of the self consciousness caused by interrupting his coworker’s whistled rendition of “I’m a Yankey Doodle Dandy” and we do not hear any more of his song. This instance, however, is not the first time Howie brought reference to the musical throughout the duration of the novel, as seen on page 67 where he draws a personal connection to the production by calling the record: “one of [his family’s] oldest records.” This is to say, I would like to investigate the connections between his internal conflict throughout the story, fitting into the world as an adult (and feeling as if you don’t), and the threads of the plot of  “Wouldn’t It Be Loverly,” where Eliza Doolittl...
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