“We are all Mrs. Dalloway now.” says Evan Kindley in The New Yorker. Well, it may well be that many of us can’t afford to be – she is, after all, a lady of means, of a certain class. But I do get the point – the simple pleasures, the granted freedoms; of a walk in the streets, buying flowers, having a party – for us now laden with the aura of nostalgia and even adventure.
And, at the very least, we crave some moments, however fleeting, like those shrouding Clarissa Dalloway on that beautiful June morning in 1923 London; tempering her disquiet and apprehensions in the aftermath of war and illness, and allowing her instead to revel for a time in the bustle of city life.