Mrs. Dalloway

who went in weighing seven stone six comes out weighing twelve.

Proportion, divine proportion, Sir William’s goddess, was acquired
by Sir William walking hospitals, catching salmon, begetting one
son in Harley Street by Lady Bradshaw, who caught salmon herself
and took photographs scarcely to be distinguished from the work
of professionals. Worshipping proportion, Sir William not only
prospered himself but made England prosper, secluded her lunatics,
forbade childbirth, penalised despair, made it impossible for the
unfit to propagate their views until they, too, shared his sense of
proportion--his, if they were men, Lady Bradshaw’s if they were women
(she embroidered, knitted, spent four nights out of seven at home
with her son), so that not only did his colleagues respect him, his
subordinates fear him, but the friends and relations of his patients
felt for him the keenest gratitude for insisting that these prophetic
Christs and Christesses, who prophesied the end of the world, or the
advent of God, should drink milk in bed, as Sir William ordered; Sir
William with his thirty years’ experience of these kinds of cases, and
his infallible instinct, this is madness, this sense; in fact, his