Letter to the Times

One of the scenes that I found most interesting in Mrs. Dalloway, was scene in which Lady Bruton writes a letter to the Times with the help of Hugh Whitbread and Richard Dalloway. For me, Lady Burton is one of the most compelling characters in the novel. Despite societies best efforts to exclude her from the realm of politics on account of her womanhood, Lady Burton manages to make her opinions heard and have a true impact on the world of politics, even having the ear of the Prime Minister. She is, of course, not the prime minister, for she is a woman living in England in 1923 and their bounds to her ability to break through societal barriers through her prodigious willpower. She is bounded in that for a variety of reasons she is only able to influence the world at large with the help of men. She acknowledges this as a fact in the 1920’s London she inhabits, and so, when she needs to write a letter to the Times, she calls on some trusted men to advise her and assist her.

She has not entirely resigned herself from needing to go through men to execute her political plans, as is evidenced by the fact that she tries to write the letter to the Times herself before calling in reinforcements. I suspect that part of why she finds her own writing unacceptable, is that she was conditioned by the environment that she lived in that women were not to make political voices heard publicly, and that if she lived in a more modern time, she would have felt confident in writing a letter herself and realized that she did not need men to help her on that particular mission. However, for this reason and others, including the likely explanation that Hugh was truly a master of the “letter to the Times,” she decided she needed the help of Hugh and Richard.

They are of course eager to lend their assistance to such an esteemed friend as Lady Burton, and the three set out to write the letter together. Hugh does the actual writing and wording, Richard provides advice, and Lady Burton provides the political views to be conveyed in the letter and the motivation for writing it. While Lady Burton seems to doubt her own letter writing abilities and appears to be almost in awe of Hugh’s, and values Richards advice, it is clear who the most powerful and influential person in the room is. Even though she is not actually putting the words together, and despite the presumable assumption of others in 1923 London that if two men and a woman are writing a letter together, the men would have the greater influence on its final form, the opposite is actually true. Lady Burton seems to easily lead the letter writing effort, and while she does so politely, has no qualms about ordering men to do her bidding. I admire Lady Burton’s strength and willingness and ability to defy the social norms of her time in order to accomplish what she wants to accomplish.