A Diamond and a Tropic Gale: Reexamining Bisexuality in Mrs. Dalloway

Abstract

This article provides a fresh analysis of the desires of the title character in Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway. Hardly any queer scholarship considers the possibility that Clarissa Dalloway is not a lesbian trapped in a heterosexual marriage, leaving a gap in the discourse for other readings of her sexual orientation. One of the few articles that does read her as bisexual, Nowell Marshall’s “Refusing Butler’s Binary: Bisexuality and Performative Melancholia in Mrs. Dalloway,” uses an outdated and problematic figuration of bisexuality from the 1970s that undermines the validity of Clarissa’s attraction to men and women by suggesting that it is a symptom of feeling inadequately feminine and an inability to fully actualize her gender. This article explores the literary and sexological gaps in Marshall’s argument and provides an alternative reading of Clarissa’s sexuality more in alignment with Woolf’s text and her own sexological theories, building on Brenda S. Helt’s analysis of these theories in Orlando and A Room of One’s Own. The author first analyzes Clarissa’s attractions to men and women, then demonstrates how Clarissa’s desires should not be read as indicative of her gender identification, and concludes by comparing Woolf’s characterization of Clarissa Dalloway with that of two other female characters, Doris Kilman and Sally Seton.

Keywords:

• Bisexuality
• Mrs. Dalloway
• Virginia Woolf

Notes on contributors

Olivia Wood is a graduate student at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and a consultant, teaching assistant, and workshop leader at the University Writing Center. Her work focuses on sexual representation in Virginia Woolf and Twitter as a platform for political activism. In the future, she hopes to study how and why bisexual young adults perform and hide their identities.