Mrs Dalloway

by Virginia Woolf

Stella McNichol (Editor) and Elaine Showalter (Notes)

Elegantly interweaving her characters' complex inner lives in an unbroken stream of consciousness, Virginia Woolf's Mrs Dalloway continues to enthral readers with its exploration of the human experience; of time, space, madness and regret. This Penguin Classics edition is edited by Stella McNichol with an introduction and notes by Elaine Showalter.

Past, present and future are brought together one momentous June day in 1923.
Clarissa Dalloway, elegant and vivacious, is preparing for a party while reminiscing about her childhood romance with Peter Walsh, and dwelling on her daughter Elizabeth's rapidly-approaching adulthood. In another part of London, war veteran Septimus Smith is shell-shocked and on the brink of madness, slowly spiralling towards self-annihilation. Their experiences mingling, yet never quite meeting, Virginia Woolf masterfully portrays a serendipitous unity of inner lives, converging as the party reaches its glittering climax.

Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) is regarded as a major 20th century author and essayist, a key figure in literary history as a feminist and modernist, and the centre of 'The Bloomsbury Group'. This informal collective of artists and writers which included Lytton Strachey and Roger Fry, exerted a powerful influence over early twentieth-century British culture. Between 1925 and 1931 Virginia Woolf produced what are now regarded as her finest masterpieces, from Mrs Dalloway (1925) to the poetic and highly experimental novel The Waves (1931). She also maintained an astonishing output of literary criticism, short fiction, journalism and biography, including the playfully subversive Orlando (1928) and A Room of One's Own (1929) a passionate feminist essay.

If you enjoyed Mrs Dalloway, you might like James Joyce's Ulysses, also available in Penguin Classics.

'The book's celebrated stream of consciousness is one of the few genuine innovations in the history of the novel'
New Yorker

• ISBN10: 0141182490
• ISBN13: 9780141182490
• Publish Date: 25 May 2000 (first published 14 May 1925)
• Publish Status: Out of Print
• Out of Print: 15 March 2021
• Publish Country: GB
• Imprint: Pearson Education Limited
• Format: Paperback
• Pages: 288
• Language: English

Reviews

[Joséphine]

Actual rating: 0.5 stars

Once upon a time, I used to love semicolons. Mrs Dalloway made me wish they didn't exist. The stream of consciousness narration got on my nerves, especially because it was from the third-person perspective. Half the time, I couldn't figure out whose thoughts I was meant to follow. The semicolons made it worse because before one person's thoughts were complete, they were already melding into someone else's consciousness. Not to mention, there were more semicolons than full stops on most pages. It was annoying.

This book was very caught up in the banality of life. Usually, I enjoy philosophising about meaning vs. meaninglessness, and can be quite fascinated by nihilism (see my love for Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett and The Chairs by Eugène Ionesco). In the case of Mrs Dalloway, however, reading was excessively tedious, and by the end, I didn't feel fulfilled in any way.

Yes, I could see what Woolf sought to accomplish on an intellectual level, and in theory, she did break away from conventions and anyone who dares to experiment ought to be lauded. In fact, Virginia Woolf was one of the early modernist writers — quite an accomplishment.

While the underlying ideas intrigue me, I didn't care for the execution. Seeing how I wanted to abandon Mrs Dalloway every other page, I'm hard pressed to rate it any higher than 0.5 out of 5 stars. The literary criticism surrounding the novel (and author) is much more fascinating, in my opinion.

[nannah]

I've seen this book on many wlw reading lists, and that's ultimately what made me pick this up at the library. Unfortunately, that's also the (largest) reason I disliked it.

Book content warnings:
suicide
ableism

Mrs. Dalloway is a book that's more of an experiment in stream of consciousness than anything written in prose or poetry style. It made reading and enjoying this novel difficult, to say the least. Yeah, I can be impressed by Virginia Woolf's skill as a writer, but it ends there. Reading this was a challenge I don't ever want to attempt again. After finishing the last page, there was no satisfaction, no particular feeling of conclusion, etc.

What's it about? Honestly . . . much of nothing. You as a reader are taken wandering around as characters go about their day. You experience one character's views, then hop into another's mind, then another. Then you end the day.

That's about it. 194 pages later, and I'm not really sure what I possibly have gained from this book. satisfaction? no. Positive wlw representation? no. A story? no.

I know people say the experience of the writing and setting an atmosphere is worth reading, but I can't agree, I'm sorry.

[brokentune]

"Did it matter then, she asked herself, walking towards Bond Street, did it matter that she must inevitably cease completely; all this must go on without her; did she resent it; or did it not become consoling to believe that death ended absolutely?"

Mrs Dalloway drove me nuts.

The odd thing is that I could not wait to start this book because there are some terrific books and plays that make reference to Mrs Dalloway. Most memorable to me is Michael Cunningham's The Hours, later adapted for the big screen by David Hare.
I loved that film. How could I not be excited about the book that inspired the film?

So, I got myself settled with the book and tried to follow Mrs Dalloway's train of thought as she goes about her day, trying to organise her party. And this is where I struggled. I am in awe of the way that Woolf constructed the novel and used the concepts of following Clarissa's thoughts for a day to convey all sorts of issues ranging from her doubts about herself, her relationship with her husband, her relationship with her friends, her past, her regrets, her fears, her thoughts about the significance (or insignificance) of the individual, etc.

"But what was she dreaming as she looked into Hatchards' shop window?"

The flip side of following her thoughts was that it was hard to follow the snippets of information and to make connections between the different thoughts. Not that I shy away from a challenge! It is just that the triviality of some of it made me want to go to Regents Park, find Clarissa, and tell her to get on with organising her party.

"It was her life, and, bending her head over the hall table, she bowed beneath the influence, felt blessed and purified, saying to herself, as she took the pad with the telephone message on it, how moments like this are buds on the tree of life, flowers of darkness they are, she thought (as if some lovely rose had blossomed for her eyes only); not for a moment did she believe in God; but all the more, she thought, taking up the pad, must one repay in daily life to servants, yes, to dogs and canaries , above all to Richard her husband, who was the foundation of it—"

Of course, it was part of Woolf's point, that the banality of everyday life held significance. That routine and small acts were a straw to clutch when the big questions and dreams of youth had dissolved, and when one's heart no longer felt connected with anything.

"She had the oddest sense of being herself invisible; unseen; unknown; there being no more marrying, no more having of children now, but only this astonishing and rather solemn progress with the rest of them, up Bond Street, this being Mrs. Dalloway; not even Clarissa any more; this being Mrs. Richard Dalloway."

Luckily, Mrs Dalloway is not the only important character in the book. There is also Septimus Smith.

"London has swallowed up many millions of young men called Smith; thought nothing of fantastic Christian names like Septimus with which their parents have thought to distinguish them."

Septimus is a veteran of the First World War and Woolf - admirably - depicts him as one of the many young men who have returned from the war suffering from the experience.

"The War had taught him. It was sublime. He had gone through the whole show, friendship, European War, death, had won promotion , was still under thirty and was bound to survive. He was right there. The last shells missed him. He watched them explode with indifference."

Unlike Clarissa, Septimus does not have anything to put his heart into. Everything he did love died either with the war or in the war.

"It might be possible, Septimus thought, looking at England from the train window , as they left Newhaven ; it might be possible that the world itself is without meaning."

So, while Clarissa ponders about life from an emotional perspective, Septimus analyses life with some detachment. Both stories are told separately and intertwine only once - but crucially - when nostalgic and feeling Clarissa shows her shrewd unfeeling side, and Septimus decides to stop thinking things over.

"What does the brain matter," said Lady Rosseter , getting up, "compared with the heart?"

[Michael @ Knowledge Lost]

Clarissa Dalloway goes around London preparing to host a party that evening. It’s a nice day and she finds herself being reminded of her youth in the Bourton and wondering about her life and her choice of husband; marrying the reliable Richard Dalloway instead of the mysterious and challenging Peter Walsh, as she never had the option to be with Sally Seton. These conflicts have been reintroduced when Peter pays her a visit.

The novel begins with Clarissa’s point of view and follows her perspective closely, travelling forwards and back in time and in and out of her mind to construct an image of her life. Clarissa is bubbly and lively, caring a great deal about what people think of her, but she is also self-reflective. She is often questioning life and constantly wondering whether happiness is truly possible. Though she is happy with her marriage to Richard she feels both great joy and dread towards her life and struggles to strike a balance between her desire for privacy and her need to connect with others.

Her husband Richard Dalloway is a member of the conservative government and plans to write a history of The Brutons, a great military family. He is a loving husband and father and devoted to social reform while appreciating English tradition. Peter Walsh is a close friend of Clarissa, once desperately in love with her. When she rejected his proposal, he moved to India; though frequently having romantic problems with women throughout the novel he is currently in love with a married woman in India. A socialist and highly critical of people, he is conflicted about everything in his life. Then there is Sally Sutton, a close friend of Clarissa in their youth, she was a wild handsome woman who would say anything. They were sexually attracted to each other as teenagers. Sally now lives in Manchester where she is married and is known as Lady Rosseter.

This is primarily a novel about life and relationships, with Clarissa reflecting on her life and wondering if she has made the right choices when it comes to marriage. There are so other themes that play a big part within this novel as well; some of these include disillusionment towards the British Empire, fear of death, oppression and balancing life between the need to keep up appearances and having some privacy. I won’t go into these themes in any detail, for the simple reason that I feel that Virginia Woolf leaves it very open to interpretation and it is up to the individual reader to make of it what they will.

For me, the major theme that came out was the struggle Clarissa had with trying to play the good hostess by drawing people together through her parties and her introverted nature. I saw Clarissa as an introvert, though she has a bubbly personality, she is often feels shrouded within her own reflective soul and thinks the ultimate human mystery is how she can exist in one room. She likes the idea of being independent and able to spend time to reflect but she is also aware of the inevitable loneliness that comes with a life of self reflection. If you understood something completely different from this novel, please let me know how you read this book in the comments below.

Now that I’ve looked at the themes of this novel, I want to have a quick look at some of the motifs and symbols used in Mrs Dalloway. The most important of them is time, which is so important to the structure, themes and characters of this novel that Virginia Woolf almost called it The Hours. Time keeps order to this novel; with all the thoughts, memories, and encounters within Mrs Dalloway, it becomes a vital element to the book. Also the old woman in the window across from house symbolises the life Clarissa desires; a private life with time to reflect. You also have things like the flowers with all their colour, varieties and beauty being a motif for emotions, Shakespeare and poetry representing these emotions as well and water suggesting the possibility of death.

Virginia Woolf can be a difficult author to read and requires a lot of thought but as I’ve now discovered with Mrs Dalloway, it is worth the effort. I remember reading To the Lighthouse and really struggling, but when I was told it was about sex, I thought I really missed the point. It’s a novel I plan to revisit again but as I mentioned in this review, I think Woolf writes her novels in such a way that you can interpret it anyway you want.

I don’t know if I would call myself a Virginia Woolf fan now, but I was really impressed reading and studying Mrs Dalloway. I will admit that that I’m planning to read A Room of One’s Own and reread To the Lighthouse. Maybe after that I might call myself a fan but I would recommend reading Virginia Woolf for all serious literature readers and studiers and anyone that needs to increase their pretentious levels. For me, Mrs Dalloway was both an interesting book and an interesting endeavour into improving my critical reading skills.

This review originally appeared on my blog; http://literary-exploration.com/2013/05/21/book-review-mrs-dalloway/

My biggest problem with this book is the writing. She writes and writes and writes and it's like she barely stops for air. There are no pauses or breaks and I found it exhausting. Yes I know, stream of consciousness. But I hate it. 160 pages felt like 160,000 pages.

Plus I didn't like Clarissa or Septimus and the story was boring.