There is an interesting passage in Katherine Mansfield's short story "At the Bay" in which Stanley Burnell returns from a routine day at work, in a state of some angst because he left home that morning without saying good-by to his wife, Linda. As readers know, the omission was deliberate: he wanted to punish Linda for perceived indifference to his patriarchal privileges.
But now remorseful -- Stanley is fundamentally insecure and badly needs the support of his wife -- he pretends it was at least in part an oversight.
"Forgive me, darling, forgive me," Stanley says, leaping across a flower bed and taking Linda into his arms.
"Forgive you?" smiled Linda. "But whatever for?"
"Good God! You can't have forgotten," cried Stanley Burnell. "I've thought of nothing else all day. I've had a hell of a day. I made up my mind to dash out and telegraph, and then I thought the wire mightn't reach you before I did. I've been in tortures, Linda."
"But, Stanley," said Linda, "what must I forgive you for?"
"Linda!" -- Stanley was very hurt -- "didn't you realize -- you must have realized -- I went away without saying goodby to you this morning? I can't imagine how I can have done such a thing. My confounded temper, of course, But -- well" -- and he sighed and took her in his arms again -- "I've suffered enough for it today."
Just after that, Linda notices that Stanley has a pair of new gloves and pulls one on her hand, smiling as she does so -- turning her hand this way and that.
Stanley wanted to say, 'I was thinking of you the whole time I bought them.' It was true, but for some reason he couldn't say it. "Let's go in," he said.
Stanley, for all his flaws -- one can easily view him as a pompous ass -- wants to tell the wife of his four children, a wife upon whom he is utterly emotionally dependent, that he loves her, but somehow he can't get it out, even indirectly. And when I read it, I was immediately reminded of a similar series of events in Virginia Woolf's book "Mrs. Dalloway."
Therein, Richard Dalloway, a member of Parliament, accepts an invitation to lunch with Lady Bruton, to which Clarissa isn't invited, leaving his emotionally fragile wife, on the eve of her big party, in a state of distress. At one point during the early afternoon, resting in a tiny bed, Clarissa has the urge to call out to her husband only to recall where he was lunching.
"He has left me; I am alone forever, she thought, folding her hands upon her knee."
To his credit, the ever-thoughtful Richard [readers see that characteristic a number of times in the story] is worried about his wife and and at the conclusion of the lunch [at which, as it turned out, his attendance was not really required], he wants to bring a significant present home to Clarissa, which he finds difficult to do because a bracelet he had once given her had not been a success. So he settles for a large bouquet of roses, and, of course, readers know Clarissa is first and foremost a lover of flowers.
For the next three pages of the book, readers follow along as Richard walks home, thinking of his happy, fulfilled life with Clarissa, and determined to tell her he loves her, in so many words.
"... here he was, in the prime of life, walking to Westminster to tell Clarissa that he loved her. Happiness is this, he thought."
But as he surprised her with the bouquet, he couldn't say it. "He could not bring himself to say he loved her; not in so many words."
As was the case with Stanley and Linda Burnell, in a sense it didn't matter. Taking the flowers from Richard, "she understood; she understood without him speaking; his Clarissa."
The inability of husbands to tell their wives, in so many words, that they love them is, I suspect, not at all uncommon, probably because it makes men feel vulnerable. And vulnerability, so common a sensation for women, is probably the last emotion a man wants to experience.
Virginia Woolf and Katherine Mansfield were both friends and rivals from 1917 to Mansfield's death in 1923 -- despite very considerable differences in background and social status. "At the Bay" was published in 1922 and then "Mrs. Dalloway" in 1925. Both stories are set within one day as is James Joyce's massive novel "Ulysses," serialized from 1918 to 1920 and first published in full in 1922.
Earlier, in 1918, Mansfield's story "Prelude" (one of her three stories about the Burnell family) had been completed at Virginia Woolf's urging and published by Virginia and Leonard Woolf. It was the second release from their hand-operated printing press, the first, entitled "Two Stories," contained Leonard's "Three Jews" and Virginia's "The Mark on the Wall." Such were the beginnings of the "The Hogarth Press."
Virginia Woolf was a strong believer in the notion that quotidian events should be the first and foremost concern of a writer -- and such is the focus of Katherine Mansfield's series of stories. It's a series one can view as a cycle on the state of women during the times in which she lived.
"Examine for a moment an ordinary mind on an ordinary day," Woolf said in her essay "Modern Fiction," which can be found in a book of her writing entitled "The Common Reader."
"Let us record the atoms as they fall upon the mind in the order in which they fall, let us trace the pattern, however disconnected and incoherent in appearance, which each sight or incidence scores upon the consciousness. Let us not take it for granted that life exists more fully in what is commonly thought big than what is commonly thought small."
And in such fashion readers learn of Stanley Burnell and Richard Dalloway struggling to relate to their wives what is in their hearts -- in the most ordinary of circumstances. Such is life.
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