Mrs. Dalloway (1925)

"I dig out beautiful caves behind my characters; I think it gives them exactly what I want: humanity, humor, depth; the idea is that the caves shall connect, and each comes to daylight at the present moment"

This quote from Virginia Woolf's diary, and re-quoted in the Introduction to this edition written by Bonnie Kime Scott, explains a good deal of Mrs. Dalloway. It's a satire on early 20th century British society, illustrated by way of its characters. And it's a long list of characters, that are each a slice of English society known to Wolfe and described with precision in long luxurious sentences that reveal their inner thoughts and attitudes. Not only people but nature - clouds, trees , sky -are brought to life in the same way providing atmosphere.

There is not much of a plot, but the novel moves along on the metaphor of time. The "action" takes place over one day; clocks strike the hour regularly, characters mark their age by remembering when they were young.

The novel culminates in Mrs. Dalloway's party. Paraphrasing Woolf, the sky "resigns" as it pales from day light to darkness. But London doesn't; that's when the "revelry" begins.

A really wonderful book with prose to savor.





( )

I find stream of consciousness books usually hard to follow but not this. Brilliant. ( )

Famous book by Virginia Woolfe that takes place in one day in the life of a woman giving a party for some sort of fancy aristocratic types. Her husband is in government and she receives a visit from a man who she might be the love of her life who is back from a long time in India. The book is a sort of stream of obviousness set of impressions from the people in her life that day as they pursue their mostly pretty mundane activities in life. It culminates with many of them at the party. At best, quite poetic. At worst, too meditative and meandering.

I reluctantly gave it a high mark because I was eventually won over. She has lots of good moments in the writing, starting with her appreciation of 'life', especially in the context of the recent war, and the wonderful description of a June day. There is a note of regret throughout, about her charmed, but naive youth, and turning down an interesting man's marriage proposal, although he turns out to be hopeless.
There are no chapters and the mental meanderings are a bit purple and prolonged at times. But the knives come out for poor Miss Kilman, (interesting choice of name), the Christian who is clearly hated by Dalloway and I imagine by Virginia. Ugly sweaty and poor, though principled. Her influence on daughter Elizabeth seems unlikely. And finally what is it about the Love interest, Peter's pocket knife, which he is constantly fiddling with? ( )

So many of the reviews for 'Mrs. Dalloway' are about walking, about absorbing in little pieces, of putting the book down for days on end.

Impossible.

I delayed as much as I could, reading a few pages, and then doing the dishes, reading some more, and then making another pot of coffee, but I just could not stop myself from settling down and taking it all in at once. I moved about the house, but the book was always near my elbow, on an armchair, balanced on a iced tea jar above a damp counter, at the foot of the bed while I glance through the paper one more time (all the while feeling a little absurd about having a pen ready to circle help-wanted ads, who does that?)

Virginia Woolf has been presented to me as so monumental a figure that it's only recently that I've dared to dive into her fiction for pleasure, rather than for the themes to write some uninspired paper; anything I write is going to come off as uninspired next to Woolf.

But reading Woolf is a pleasure, her writing is of the kind where you want to linger, to go back a few pages and see how she did that, or those one-liners that skewer or exalt a character, a sentiment. Where you pause and just savor how perfect that was. So I can understand when others write about leisurely intake. But that's not what I wanted this time. I'll try that next go-around. Because I will read this again, and again. Maybe another time after that, too. ( )