I found that, as I was reading Mrs. Dalloway, I started making a connection between the mysterious Richard Dalloway and the mysterious L. from The Mezzanine. Both characters, despite their lack of initial depth as characters due to a lack of description from the main character/narrator, come across by the end of the book as the sign of stability for the main character, for better or for worse. They both, L. and Richard, represent a sweet domesticity between themselves and the main character.
I wrote in a previous blog post that I wish we had gotten more perspective from L. as a character. In fact, I would’ve enjoyed Howie even telling the reader anything more about L., besides the fact that they get along with one another (a sign of similar thinking). Richard, I believe, is the result of my argument for L., as in he is essentially the faceless entity with no personality given a voice in the story.
L. is essentially only described in relation to Howie. And while this does offer insight into their relationship and is telling of the compatibility between the two characters, it doesn’t tend to offer the best look into the personality of L. herself. In my other blog post about L., I talk about how I would have liked to see Howie’s same types of observations through a more nuanced lens, a lens that automatically comes with not being a straight white guy. The interesting thing about Richard is that that more authentic and nuanced view that I believe would be so abundant coming from L. flows from Richard in such a way that it really does mirror what I believe L. would bring to the table. Richard’s compassion for others, despite his rather stuffy title as a “conservative politician” when first introduced to the reader, practically replaces the setback of being a straight white guy. Clarissa, although she doesn’t initially appear to think of him as anything more than a husband and perhaps even a status in society, really does understand him to a certain extent, and he understands her.
Both L. and Richard are by no means major characters within their respective books (although there is an argument to be made that Howie is the only major character in The Mezzanine), but both are important in providing a backdrop via which we can measure the main character. Both characters are almost so lacking in personality apart from their relationship to the main character (at least for the first half of the book in the case of Mrs. Dalloway) that they provide the “clean background trick” for the main characters of their novels. When the main character is doing or thinking something odd or nostalgic, it usually tends to connect back to our love interest, L. or Richard. However, their difference does emerge in how they are shown to compare to their main character. Where L. will often mirror Howie in a shared oddness, Richard and Clarissa will often only mirror in a shared respectability, but yet differ when it comes to their concerns about the world (triviality to Richard might seem like the big picture to Clarissa).
Do you feel that L. are more similar or more different? Are they different in character and similar in their role, or vice versa? Or neither?
I can see where you would draw parallels between Richard and L. As you said, they both add more "sweet domesticity" to the lives of our main characters, and (at least initially) they're only mentioned in passing. However, I feel like the similarities end there for me. I'm not really sure that Richard's compassion and sensitivity of thought replaces the "setback of being a straight white guy" (which is a phrase that made me laugh, by the way.)
ReplyDeleteIn your post about L., I understood that you wanted a version of the Mezzanine that incorporates Howie's over-thinking processes through the lens of someone in a marginalized group. L., being a woman, would provide us with a different perspective than Howie. However, Richard Dalloway is, at the end of the day, still a straight white guy (and a rich one to boot). His compassion is an admirable personality trait, but he still wouldn't have a conversation with someone of the opposite sex and over-think about whether they were patronizing him or being rude to him solely because he is a man. It's just not a perspective he'd be able to offer. Also, Mrs. Dalloway doesn't quite have the same over-think-y style that's so characteristic of The Mezzanine, so I think your original sentiment about wanting a "female" version of the Mezzanine doesn't necessarily apply here.
Sorry that this response got so long hehe. I agree that there are some similarities between these two characters, but I'm not sure that Richard's and L's "authentic and nuanced" narrations would be the same.