Mrs Dalloway (original 1925; edition 2003)

This book is the story of a single day in Clarissa Dalloway's life as she prepares for a party. Famous for its stream of consciousness narrative, I found my stream of consciousness straying away from what Clarissa was planning to do for the party, to what I was planning for dinner that night. This book is so highly regarded that I really wanted to like it. I wouldn't say the book was a bust, but you have to be in the right frame of mind for this one. I think I'll try some other Virginia Woolf titles and maybe pick this up again. ( )

Woolf has a great sense of humor and I love how dialogue and thoughts are intertwined. Overall, though, not a memorable story in my opinion. ( )

Just a few thoughts on one of my all-time favourite novels that I re-read for my book club meeting today. Ever since I saw the film "The Hours" I just can't get Meryl Streep out of my head as the perfect Mrs Dalloway, even though in the film she was Clarissa Vaughn a well to-do American Woman based in modern New York. It is because Streep has that amazing facility to suggest that an awful lot more is going on in her head than would appear to be from the actions she is performing, like when she is on her way to buy some flowers.

One of the stars of Woolf's Mrs Dalloway is London itself, especially for me because I used to work in the Westminster district where Clarissa Dalloway set out to buy those flowers and I could so easily imagine the sights and sounds as she walked through St James' Park. The passage in the novel where Woolf flits inside the heads of her characters as they pass unknowingly by in the Park is a superb example of the stream of conscious technique. This is one of my all-time favourite sequences and it was a joy to read it again.

I have been reading H G Wells early novels and stories recently, written at the turn of the century and the difference in writing styles between them and Woolf's novel written in the 1920's is immense. Books that seem worlds apart.

Mrs Dalloway is a short novel it could almost be a novella and yet it can be a tricky read, because it is not always clear where or in whose head the story is taking place, however I think there is enough here to delight even the first time reader, not familiar with the modernist style (of which Woolf was one of the leading exponents). If ever a novel deserved five stars it is this one, I'm already looking forward to my next re-read. ( )

This book can be hard going. It's like a really rich piece of food - you have to take it in small chunks. However, it's a really rewarding reading experience. The language is beautiful and Woolf captures the characters in such minute detail that you have a complete picture of who they actually are.

Some might find the stream-of-consciousness style a bit grating - I did in parts - but otherwise an utterly fascinating vignette. ( )

A fantastic novel, but to say I enjoyed it might not be exactly the right word as it's not an easy read. It still feels experimental, even nearly 100 years after it was first published, with its stream-of-consciousness style deftly flitting from the mind of one person to the next. All of the characters, however brief a glimpse you get into their heads, feel like complete, real people. ( )

4.5 difficult to read much at a sitting, for me, because it's so much like an exploded poem (peppered with parentheses & enormous run-on sentences...sort of like this review!) but incredibly beautiful due to the same poetic handling - felt almost T.S. Eliot-esque to me in fact, & no one handles language like that man! Enough moments of soul-stabbing poignancy to give it more than a 4. Absolutely lovely, all in all. ( )

one of my favorite books ever. i remember i first read it in kevin kopelson's joyce & woolf class at iowa and was very focused on mrs. dalloway's business with sally. ( )

Was not keen on it at first, but it grew on me.

...with that extraordinary gift, that woman's gift, of making a world of her own wherever she happened to be. (Peter Walsh on Clarissa Dalloway, 114)

With twice his wits, she had to see things through his eyes - one of the tragedies of married life. (Walsh on Clarissa, 116)

Because it is a thousand pities never to say what one feels, he thought... (Richard Dalloway, 175)

Having done things millions of times enriched them, though it might be said to take the surface off. The past enriched, and experience, and having cared for one or two people, and so having acquired the power which the young lack, of cutting short, doing what one likes, not caring a rap what people say and coming and going without any very great expectations... (Peter Walsh, 247)

But the enormous resources of the English language, the power it bestows, after all, of communicating feelings... (Clarissa, 270)

...she had never been so happy. Nothing could be slow enough; nothing last too long. (Clarissa, 282)

For she had come to feel that it was the only thing worth saying - what one felt. Cleverness was silly. One must say simply what one felt. (Sally Seton, 292)


( )

i definitely enjoyed this more than 'to the lighthouse' but am finding woolf disappointing so far. maybe it's me that i'm disappointed with, but i'm not so thrilled with either book i've read. i found this far more engaging, however, than 'to the lighthouse,' at least in parts. ( )

Most astonishing this time round was the anticipation in Woolf of the not-yet-existing Frankfurt school. Famously (so far as I know: I'm boning up on it this summer), the Frankfurt school discovered links between rationalism, positivism, and state violence; WWI and, later, fascism were not (or at least not simply) negations of the Enlightenment, but part of the same. With that in mind, reread Walsh and Richard Dalloway and their civilized, cynical pose toward Empire and its great projects, reread Septimus Smith, sacrificing himself to Shakespeare and crushed by psychology. I'm sure this argument has been made hundreds of times before, but to this medievalist, it's brand new and fun. For my students, perhaps not so much so.

And good lord people who think the novel's boring and hate it because it's plotless: yeah, being plotless is just the point, as this is central to Woolf's critique of the arrogance of narrative teleology. I hate to say ecriture feminine, but, well, there: I said it.

By the way: I chose this edition because: a) used copies are very cheap; b) it includes a map of London with the itineraries of the characters clearly marked. Understanding the order of the novel requires knowing London, so there you go. ( )

Review to follow. ( )

don't read this ( )

3.5 stars. ( )

most boring novel..... ( )

This was just so beautifully written. I really feel like Virginia Woolf really understood people in a way that almost no one else does, and I also feel completely unable to write a decent review of this book. I just love it very much, that is all. ( )

First Virginia Woolf novel! I didn't think this would be quite my cup of tea, but I really enjoyed it. Beautifully vivid language and strange compelling insights into the business of living. ( )

I keep feeling as though I'm doing something wrong with this. Intellectually, I recognize that there is something beautiful and emotive and melancholy about all this, no doubt. But the whole emotional connection isn't coming across too well. Great passages and recollections. But I keep wanting to fall asleep while reading this. I can't explain why. Maybe I'm not ready. I'll try again later. ( )

I struggled all the way through with the blending of stream of conciousness and third-person omniscience. It jumps back and forth between characters, to a guy walking down the street, to someone who never even makes an appearance aside from her one random thought. Additionally, each character's thoughts were identical to the next--they were merely the thoughts of Virginia Woolf. The opening scenes were the most interesting and least confusing of the book; after that, it all went downhill for me. ( )

University assignment. One of the few fiction works I've read more than once. ( )

I found the point of view flitting here and there really distracting and crazy.
I also didn't give a damn about any character in this novel in the least, never mond their crazy problems.
Might be a great and classic and groundbreaking book, but wasn't for me. ( )

In her inimitable writing style, Woolf created a novel that beautifully captures the complicated interactions between our mental terrain and the external world pressing on us. The story begins with Mrs. Dalloway planning for her party that evening, and deciding that she needs to buy the flowers herself. As she walks to the shop, her observations of her surroundings trigger memories and emotions, thoughts that jump from past to present to future in no chronological order, and images that are vague and associative or concrete and embodied stories. Woolf has such mastery in the way she captures a mind. The subconscious and the conscious twining together, the way our thoughts can hop from coherent and functional concentration to light reverie in seconds. How our mind can travel down a chain of thoughts, whilst we are almost unaware of the process, and arrive at a new topic that seems completely unrelated, but actually had a logical progression. I am not actually straying from a plot synopsis, because the majority of the book actually takes place within these interior dimensions. As Mrs. Dalloway prepares for her evening party, we frequently see her thoughts, rather than action or dialogue.

Just as the mind nimbly sweeps from one idea to the next, so does the omniscient narrator skillfully move from perspective to perspective. While Clarissa is preparing her party, starting with the flowers and returning home to mend her dress for the night, her old lover Peter Walsh is just returning to England. One of his first stops is at Clarissa's house; he surprises her while she is in the middle of her sewing, and while she clutches her scissors, and he plays with his pocket knife, they have a friendly conversation that contains much more depth in the memories and undercurrents than in what is actually said. (I read a review that pointed out the importance of being armed in this book, having weapons, as this scene eloquently illustrates.) During this interlude, the narrative moves smoothly from Clarissa's mind to Peter's and back again, but eventually leaves when Peter does, and follows him as he walks from Clarissa's house to his hotel. Again, the reader enjoys a long sequence where the outside world is just a vehicle to evoke the more interesting inner thoughts and permutations. Actually, the correlation of physically walking through London and mentally wandering through memories is a trope in the story; we follow Clarissa, Peter, Septimus and Rezia - even Richard and Elizabeth Dalloway for short periods of time - and these journeys occupy the majority of the book. While the characters roam, the reader is invited to occupy their most private mental musings.

A narrative with so little action, and so much introspection, may sound like a dull read, but it absolutely is not. I have never read an author who was able to portray in words, in a story, the inexplicable workings of our minds; no, our souls. Woolf's language is gorgeous; the imagery is powerful, moving, strong. She creates extended metaphors that make my writer's heart quiver with delighted admiration. Her grasp of beautiful language rivets the attention. Most writers need action to drive the story forward, but in this case, the fascination is focused inward, and is so compelling that only a minimal plot is needed to contain the characterization that takes place on a grand scale. We learn so much more about the people in this story than in novels of comparable length. They feel like real people that transcend the page.

This is a complicated novel, though, and while action is limited, and mental behaviors are emphasized, Woolf uses various structures to direct these intangible and amorphous activities, and to contain them. One of the major devices she employs is time. The story follows the course of one day, and frequently the narrative is interrupted by the hour tolled out over the city. Different clocks have different meanings, from the oppressive and always correct Big Ben, to the whimsical and lighter bells at St. Margaret's, just a bit off the proper time. The hours are described as leaden circles that dissolve in the sky, and they interrupt the thoughts of the characters, sometimes lead to a switch in the narrator's perspective from one character to the next, and always reinforce the contrast between the outside and inner worlds. Though memories and emotions and thoughts feel timeless, all wrapped up inextricably in our heads, nonetheless time marches on, second by second, hour by hour, and we are carried forward with it.

Such a nuanced book, operating successfully at multiple levels: the developed characters of Clarissa and Septimus, the portrayal of the mind and subconscious, the various themes such as time and death and conformity, the pairing of physical walks through London with mental walks through memories and contemplation, and many other fascinating tropes that I have not covered in this review. This is one of those books that deserves critical study, either on your own or with the help of the many great essays that are easily available via the internet. Woolf is innovative and profound, and what is even better, she is so altogether readable at the same time. Mrs. Dalloway is one of her most acclaimed books, and I certainly recommend it. ( )

Review from The Book Wheel:

Reading Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf reminded me of why many of these books I have pledged to read are considered challenges. I was really looking forward to reading this book because I was under the impression that other people liked it. As I found out later, this is not necessarily the case and I can understand why. It’s not that Mrs. Dalloway is a bad book and, in fact, it gets better as it goes along and even has some profound quotes, such as, “Nothing exists outside us except a state of mind.”

The book is incredibly detailed and vivid in its descriptions, and Woolf does a great job of really getting inside of the heads of various characters. The problem is the stream of consciousness writing made it difficult to recognize transitions from one person to the next. No matter what page I was on, I felt like I was having aha moments about two pages before. I was always reading a few pages of my comprehension. The result is that I can look back on the book with some fondness, but I remember the difficulties I encountered. My favorite parts were those pertaining to Septimus and Rezia (even more so than Mrs. Dalloway herself). Theirs was a palpable and tragic story that I could have read an entire book about.

To be fair to the book, I skipped the Introduction. It was more or less a play-by-play of the entire book and I thought that reading it would ruin the story for me. Instead, I read it after I finished the book and it put things into better context for me. If I were to do it over again, though, I still don’t think I would have read the Introduction first. I don’t like knowing everything that’s going to happen in a book, even if it makes it “easier” to get through. The book has a great quote that says, “It is a thousand pities never to say what one feels,” and so, I will be honest….. I could have just read the Introduction and skipped reading the book altogether and come away with the same amount of comprehension. But that’s neither here nor there and I am left feeling ambiguous about the book. I enjoyed it after the fact, but not as much while reading it. ( )

Mrs. Dalloway relates the day in the life of Clarissa Dalloway, an English high-society matron during post-World War I. The novel deftly weaves together snippets of several characters in a stream of consciousness style as Mrs. Dalloway prepares for a party she is hosting that evening. Some of the characters who flit in and out include Clarissa's old flame Peter Walsh. Peter was jilted by Clarissa in their youth. He had moved to India to pursue a career and several failed love affairs and seems out of step with his peers. Septimus Smith is a WW I veteran suffering from shell shock, who is cared for by his Italian wife Rezia. Elizabeth is Clarissa's 17 year old daughter, who seems destined to follow her mother's footsteps, despite not being all that interested in society. Sally Seton is an old friend of Clarissa's who she may have had a lesbian affair with in their youth.

Despite several of the characters coming from vastly different backgrounds and some of them never even meeting Mrs. Dalloway, the author does a very good job of knitting these differing points of view together in a coherent and intelligent way. ( )

http://wineandabook.com/2012/09/25/review-mrs-dalloway-by-virginia-woolf/

GENERAL SPOILER ALERT: If you've never read Mrs. Dalloway, and would like to discover it with no previous knowledge of the plot, I suggest you stop here. Since it was published in 1925, I'm writing with the assumption that I'm the one late to the party (which is usually the case with the classics) and many of you lovers of literary fiction have probably either read it already or are super familiar with the plot. So, if not, stop. Now. You've been warned.

"So on a summer's day waves collect, overbalance, and fall; collect and fall; and the whole world seems to be saying 'that is all' more and more ponderously, until even the heart in the body which lies in the sun on the beach says too, That is all. Fear no more, says the heart. Fear no more, says the heart, committing its burden to some sea, which sighs collectively for all sorrows, and renews, begins, collects, lets fall. And the body alone listens to the passing bee; the wave breaking; the dog barking, far away barking and barking." (page 58-59)

My parents are in the midst of a remodeling project (they're adding french doors that open onto a deck off of the dining room), and a crucial part of any home project is the purge, the figuring out of what to get rid of and what to keep. On the chopping block was a bookshelf full of vintage books, mostly classics, that they'd acquired over the years. With the exception of my recent splurge at Strand, I've been willfully resisting bookstores, so I'm excited for the shopping bag full of books that I'll be taking home to NYC bit by bit over my next several visits.

The first book from my haul I dove into was Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway, chosen because it was referenced multiple times in Gregoire Bouillier's The Mystery Guest, and I wanted in on the references.

This copy was my mom's, evidently for a class in college. I LOVED reading her notes in the front and back of the book (doesn't she have neat handwriting!?!), and it was pretty fascinating to see how they were teaching the tome when she was in college, though I wish I had read the notes after I read the book. I kept looking for evidence of Clarissa's latent lesbianism and kept waiting for Septimus to finally crack.

I really enjoyed Woolf's narrative style. It reminded me of a clean, steady continuous shot in a film, where the director is able to jump from one character's perspective to another seamlessly. The shift between each characters' perspective seemed effortless and Woolf was able to weave the central characters' story lines together in a way that made sense and didn't seem forced (which is an issue many authors have when they try to compose a coherent novel comprised of multiple interconnecting stories).

Like Joyce's Ulysses, Mrs. Dalloway takes place on a Wednesday in June (the entire 700+ pages of Ulysses takes place on June 16th, 1904), and like Joyce, Woolf is incredibly focused on the interior life of her characters, on the innumerable thoughts, experiences and impressions that collectively make up how an individual experiences the world. However, Woolf succeeds where I've often felt Joyce fails, in that her purpose seems to be communication whereas Joyce many times seems content with incomprehension and inaccessibility for the common reader (ex: Finnegan's Wake). To be fair, I haven't read Ulysses yet (I will! It's on the list and is coming, along with a Bloomsday Reader, in that same shopping bag full of books from my parents!), but reading A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man in high school left a bad taste in my mouth. Even though both Woolf and Joyce are exploring the interior lives of characters, Joyce's exploration seems masturbatory and personal whereas Woolf's feels open and communicative. Maybe I'll change my mind after spending more time with Joyce...

Balance and counterbalance seem to factor heavily into Mrs. Dalloway. Woolf is constantly balancing two oppositional forces (desire v. duty, coming together v. falling apart, masculine v. feminine) and these conflicts serve to unify all the disparate action occurring over the course of the story: Clarissa pulling herself together at her dressing table in preparation for the evening's party balanced against Septimus' slow descent and unraveling to the point of suicide; her desire for Peter Walsh balanced against her dutiful marriage to Richard Dalloway; the vibrant Sally Seton of Clarissa's youth (with whom she shared a passionate kiss) balanced against the woman Sally becomes post-marriage to Lord Rosseter; women who feel deeply yet pull themselves together and press on balanced against the men, acculturated to feel nothing, who give up and fall apart. There is just so much going on in terms of detail and imagery but it was all essential and working toward the common unifying themes. Such a tight piece of writing! Mrs. Dalloway is a master class in revision and paring down a lengthy piece to just the purely essential.

And the semi-colons! Recently, I listened to UC Berkeley Professor John Bishop via iTunesU discuss Mrs. Dalloway, and he pointed out that her use of semi-colons were another example of coming together v. falling apart: semi-colons take two sentences/ideas and bring them together, making them one sentence. Pretty damn clever, Mrs. Woolf.

Bishop also pointed out some interesting parallels between Woolf's life and that of her central characters of Clarissa Dalloway and Septimus Warren Smith, which I hadn't realized because I haven't read much on Woolf's biography. Woolf was a central member of the Bloomsbury Group, and often hosted parties and gatherings for those involved, so, like Mrs. Dalloway, a part of her life concerned the bringing of people together. Woolf later committed suicide by filling her pockets with stones and drowning herself, allowing herself to come apart like Septimus. Crazy how life imitates art.

Rubric rating: 9. I loved it and I'm excited to explore more by Woolf. In fact, To The Lighthouse is on my nightstand... ( )

All the action within this novel takes place during one day and evening as Mrs Clarissa Dalloway, an upper class woman, is first preparing for, then throws a party in the evening. While still at home before she sets out to run her errands, she is visited by Peter Walsh, a man she's known since she was a young girl and who once asked her to marry him. For the whole of the novel, we wander from one stream of thoughts to another, with Clarissa's mind wandering from the moment's happenings and backwards into the past, then without preamble we are following Peter's thoughts, then Clarissa's husband and so on, with the author's focus wandering between every person encountered in the novel. Clarissa thinks about the life choices she has made. Peter has just come back from India and is seeking a divorce from his wife now that he has fallen in love with a much younger married woman. Clarissa's husband has bought her flowers and intends to tell her he loves her, something he presumably hasn't said in a very long time. There is Doris Kilman, the teacher of Clarissa's daughter Elizabeth, who, while she venerates the young girl to a degree that borders on desire (or as much desire as a religious fanatic will make allowances for), despises her mother Clarissa for all she stands for as a society woman living a life of ease and luxury. We meet Septimus Warren Smith, sitting in the park with his wife; he is a war veteran suffering from a very bad case of shell-shock who is being treated for suicidal depression. His wife is concerned because he talks to himself and to his deceased army friend Evans, who may have been much more than just a buddy, and together they are waiting to meet a psychiatrist who will suggest a course of treatment for the young man.

I had a couple of false stars with this book over the years, never making it past the first couple of pages, and must say one needs to be in the right frame of mind to fully appreciate this short, yet very profound novel. Having just finished reading A Room of One's Own I found myself in the right mood for more of Woolf's deep reflections on life and how we are affected by circumstances and the people we are surrounded by, whether by choice or happenstance. Once one gets accustomed to the flow of words, which doesn't follow a traditional narrative style with chapters and commentary, but pours forth in an organic way meant to mimic a real-life experience, one is transported by the portraits Woolf paints of these people, whom we get to know from the inside out, as opposed to the other way round. Because of this, there is a timeless quality to this novel, even though the events it alludes to are very much fixed in the London of the 1920s. ( )