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...