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 talk to me. I could talk about this for days. Please talk to me about it. I need to talk to someone about this. One essay was not enough.

Least to say, female-to-female^2 queer relationships were exceedingly complicated during the Victorian Era— as were male-to-male queer relationship but I assure you, female-female ones have been far more complicated for historians to dissect since the dawn of time (thanks to the chronic societal panic surrounding the “loss of masculinity.” I could also talk about that and how stupid it is for days.) During early feminist movements of the 19th century there was a widely accepted concept of female-female partnerships referred to as a “female marriage” (we know these as “Boston Marriages” here in America because we have to have a different word for everything). I cannot stress enough how these were NOT IN ANYWAY ROMANTIC UNIONS. These existed purely for the purpose of advocacy for the suffrage and rights of women. There was however something referred to by historians as “female friendships,” which were, as modernly defined, “sapphic” or “lesbian” relationships between women. These, on the contrary to female marriages were always very carefully hidden from society and weren’t considered to be an actual thing that existed at all. If you ever wondered where the meme surrounding The Historian“™” calling an “obviously queer relationship between women” a “close female friend” and a relationship between “roommates,” I have devised that this is likely one of its many origins (beyond just the blatant erasure of historical queer experience that I also talk about in my essay. You should read my essay. I worked very hard on it.). This is not to say that the pre-existing notion of unions between women didn’t make it easier for women in female-female romantic relationships to be a little more open about said relationships, but it wasn’t likely any of them were flaunting how in love they were with their partner in the streets— or if some were, it is highly possible that they were called “ill” and swept away to mental asylums and hidden away from society until they inevitably died of dysentery or something (this is cut content from my essay. You should talk to me about it. There was so much cut content.). BUT ANYWAYS.

So it’s safe to say, Sally Seton very much fits the bill for a woman who would be part of a female marriage, a woman driven by the ideals of better prospects for women, and Woolf seems to depict her as a feminist through and through. She is strong willed, quick-witted, and refuses to conform to the ideals of “proper society,” much like the real feminist activists of the time (which led to her later encounter with Hugh, who kissed her to essentially shut her up and demonstrate the power he still held over her; he, a man, and she, a woman). But our image of Sally Seton at this time, when she was younger and “stronger willed” and more set on defying society, is all but drawn by Clarissa Dalloway, and so, with Woolf being a “queer author,” we have to ask ourselves what Sally Seton represented to a younger Clarissa Parry and what she represents to her now, seeing as she still occupies space in Clarissa’s mind, over half her life later. With the context of their kiss, which Clarissa reminisces about on page 35 and recounts as the most exquisite moment of her life, it’s hard to read their relationship as anything less than queer. Two pages prior, she even discusses her feelings for the other woman, saying: “The strange thing, on looking back, was the purity, the integrity, of her feeling for Sally. It was not like one’s feelings for a man. [...] it had a quality which could only exist between women,” which echoes a lot of the language used between women in female-female “friendships” of the era (Woolf, 33). My take on her relationship with Sally Seton is that Clarissa saw Sally as the alternative to her path in life— the alternative to marrying a politician and becoming “the perfect hostess.” Not that I think Clarissa really considered Sally to be a romantic alternative to Peter or Richard but that she saw a kind of future in Sally, if not with her but in being like her.

Here's the link to a doc of my essay with viewing access (I couldn't find out how to attach a PDF, my bad y'all). Don't mind the bad footnotes, I need to clean those up and trim the content a bit before I submit it to Unique so be nice to me please.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1gsfXcmUEY_dvTYn85a7DNvnHBcJmCAK5blu4TQwXLDI/edit?tab=t.0

1. It is hard to use modern terms to discuss the personal identity of those who did not have our modern terms for describing personal identity, nor do I think we should be allowed to. I talk about this in further length in my essay. But for now, just pretend every time I say "queer" there's a little "*" that says "modernly described as"

2.  I say female-to-female instead of women-to-women relationships because the term “transgender” was not coined until the mid-1990s, and while a wealth of “modernly-considered” trans individuals have been confirmed to exist at the time— and have since the beginning of human civilization and understanding of gender— their terms and understanding of “what it meant to be trans” were wildly different from our modern understandings, and as I have said already, we cannot conflate our modern terms with the people of that time as these terms are so closely tied to personal identity. We can make inferences and guess, but we cannot be allowed to prescribe a personal identity to someone other than ourselves. Also, I have yet to dig deep into the weeds of gender non-conforming people of the Victorian Era and am not the right person to look to for such information. If you want someone who might do a better job, look to Andy, not me. He actually wrote a paper about this.