"But this business of love, this falling in love with women. Take Sally Seton; her affair in the old days with Sally Seton. Hadn't it been love after all?" Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay by Clarissa Dalloway in Mrs. DallowayMrs. Virginia Woolf's Dalloway is perhaps one of the most important texts of the genre in modern English literature. Woolf is known for her brilliant narrative technique and intriguing characterization. One of Mrs. Dalloway's most important and entertaining characters is Sally Seton. This short note will attempt to explore the character of Sally Seton and examine aspects of homosexuality and love, the notion of age and time, post-war colours, femininity, the capitalist angle and modernist technique in the book in relation to Seton's character. Sally is introduced in the book in a flashback of Clarissa recounting her summer time in Bourton with Sally, Peter and Richard around 1903. Clarissa says the following about Sally at the time:...she sat on the floor with her arms around her knees , smoking a cigarette... she (Clarissa) couldn't take her eyes off Sally... She (Sally) literally didn't have any money that night when she went to them... It was Sally who made her feel, for the first time, how protected she was life in Bourton. She knew nothing about sex, nothing about social problems... Sally gave her William Morris... they sat... they talked in her bedroom... about life, about how they were going to reform the world. They wanted to found a society to abolish private property... It was Sally's idea... Sally went out... picked flowers that had never been seen together, cut off their heads, made them swim on the surface of the water in some bowls... Then he forgot the sponge, and ran naked along the corridor... (they always spoke of marriage as a catastrophe)... then came the most exquisite moment of all her (Clarissa) life... Sally stopped... kissed her on the lips. (MD, p.27-29) These lines from Clarissa's past highlight Sally's significance in her life and in the book. First, the basis of homosexual attraction between Sally and Clarissa is found. Clarissa's words resonate with her attraction and love towards Sally in her past, which contrasts with her lack of such desire currently towards her husband Richard Dalloway. Ann Ronchetti even goes so far as to say that perhaps "Clarissa Dalloway is a repressed homosexual, a victim of patriarchal culture" (p. 164). It can then be noted that Sally Seton becomes the identifying mark of Clarissa's homosexuality as she further reflects on her feelings for women due to her relationship with Seton, saying: Clarissa's attraction to women extends beyond Sally Seton and goes beyond the years they shared as young women: It was something central that permeated; something hot that broke the surfaces and rippled the cold contact of the man and the woman, or the woman together. Because of this, he could vaguely sense it. She resented it, she had a scruple collected who knows where, or, in her opinion, sent by Nature (which is invariably wise); yet she couldn't resist sometimes giving in to the charm of a woman, not a girl, a woman who confessed to her, as they often did, some scraping, some madness. And whether it was pity, or their beauty, or that she was older, or some accident... no doubt then she felt what men felt. (DM. p.26) Furthermore, Clarissa's relationship with Seton is often told as "representing a period of childhood innocence that is in stark contrast to the adult self who remembers this love." (page 139). The relationship between Clarissa and Sally is often considered just one example ofpure and innocent childhood friendship in terms of love, or it is presented as the undisciplined phase of adolescence. Kate Haffey presents various critical approaches to their relationship: Sally Seton is positioned as “the largely charming and reckless friend of (Clarissa) youth (Transue 69). And the love between the two women is described as "childish charm" (Showalter 144), as "romantic idealism" (Transue 69), as a "love that can leave virginity and... purity intact" (Raphael 138 ), and as “unclouded by the sexual masks and social roles that often confound heterosexual relationships” (Henke 135)… As Judith Halberstam states, “in Western cultures, we trace the emergence of the adult from the dangerous and undisciplined period of adolescence as a desired period of maturation (4)” (p. 139) It is important here to highlight the theme of age and maturation from adolescence to adulthood which is reflected in the character relationship of Sally and Clarissa. Both women had ideals and very different ambitions in their teenage years. Sally was a rebel and very progressive in her thinking and further inspired Clarissa to be the same, and they "always talked about marriage as a catastrophe". socially acceptable in adult life. Sally becomes Lady Rosseter, wife of a rich man with five children and Clarissa becomes Mrs Dalloway. This meaning of time passing and leading to a present that is juxtaposed with a more idyllic past, and Sally becomes Clarissa's representative of the idyllic. past. As Wáng and Xiao Lì state in their essay “Time and Love in Mrs Dalloway”:The passage of time is Woolf's central concern…Big Ben is a hint at the meaning of time throughout the novel…Clarissa…and other characters are in the grip of time and as they grow older they evaluate how they have spent their lives. Clarissa...senses the passage of time, and the appearance of Sally and Peter, friends from her past, underlines how much time has passed...Clarissa sometimes wishes that the happiness of the past would continue, but she cannot reject the reality of the present past. (p. 6-7) Another reading given to the relationship between Sally and Clarissa is the aspect of post-war England that is intrinsically present in Woolf's narratives. Sally and Clarissa's homosociality is considered to be the result of the time when the five-year World War obviously bought men closer to other men with whom they fought the war alongside them and also women closer to women who were left behind to take care of domestic matters. Certainly, “these two scenarios would have strengthened the complex bond between man and man and woman and woman… Woolf… was aimed at readers who survived the First World War and would feel personal and emotional while reading this novel and Woolf has wonderfully crafted this idea and portrayed it beautifully without any flaw” (p. 9) in the relationship between Sally and Clarissa. Regarding femininity, in The Psychic Life of Power, Judith Butler argues that a woman “realizes” normative femininity by rejecting sexual pleasure itself. Butler further argues that normative femininity is maintained by emulating, without fully embodying, cultural ideals of femininity. This adherence to normative femininity can be seen in the character of Sally Seton. As her past and present selves are juxtaposed through Clarissa's eyes and Sally becomes Lady Rosseter, Sally effectively forecloses her same-sex desire, fully “realizing” heterosexuality and solidifying normative femininity. This normalization of her radicalism could also be seen as a result of how patriarchy constrains women.