Public Domain? We go way back!

I’ve been living under the stones I need to be stoned with.

Classics by Night

I literally don’t know what to do with myself. How do you even recover from something like that. I’m actually, genuinely pacing as I type this because - mind you, this might have been the most voraciously I have ever read a book of such length - I am just so overcome. When the lonely people? Find each other??? It’s so insane, because it’s one of Woolf’s earlier books and so her style is much more reserved as to the form it will take later on, but the story content is just so wonderfully executed on its own. Of course, that’s not even talking about the writing itself, which was gorgeous. Peace and love and melancholy on this night forever

As the youngest of her sisters though, I think Irina is wanting in one thing Masha and Olga have by virtue of being alive longer, which is the memory of Moscow (and their parents, but mostly I think just the idea of a ‘complete family’). Olga and Masha talk openly about it, specific details, and they’re able to understand each other’s feelings in a way Irina just isn’t privy to, which I think compounds those feelings of loneliness she manages not being able to talk to her sisters about these things, but also casts a light on her dream of returning of Moscow. We have to remember, when Irina talks about returning to Moscow, she’s already envisioned it quite clearly with her and her siblings - yes there is that element of finding a true love, but it is living together free from the hardships they’re facing that seems to keep Moscow coming up. Masha and Olga have a literal idea of it, but to Irina, who was like 9(?) when they left, it seems like a metaphorical Eden more than anything, but I think also where she knows her sisters were happiest. That’s why I think her decision to leave on her own at the end is so powerful - she’s going to Moscow for all of them. Yes she’s already shown herself to be independent, yes she has nothing left to lose, but I think it is her love for her sisters and the struggles they’ve gone through that propel her still. Even if no one will remember any of them, if all there actions are for naught, as Olga says, “We’ll go on living.” and that is I think how Irina honors the love and care she has for her sisters

I was approaching it like Mrs. Dalloway, where everyone in the narrative serves to contrast or commune with Clarissa and Septimuss’ experience. Meanwhile, we see the exact opposite with Jacob, in how everyone has an opinion on him but . . . it’s not necessarily true to his world or, to an extent, who he even is. Jacob truly is not that interesting of a guy, but everyone around him projects the type person they want to see and love and be around. He is literally the object of 6 different affections, and he maybe cares for 2 of them? Guy of all time honestly