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As Mrs. Dalloway prepares for the party she is giving that evening, a series of events intrudes on her composure. Her husband is invited, without her, to lunch with Lady Bruton (who, Clarissa notes anxiously, gives the most amusing luncheons). Meanwhile, Peter Walsh appears, recently from India, to criticize and confide in her. His sudden arrival evokes memories of a distant past, the choices she made then, and her wistful friendship with Sally Seton.
Woolf then explores the relationships between women and men, and between women, as Clarissa muses, "It was something central which permeated; something warm which broke up surfaces and rippled the cold contact of man and woman, or of women together.... Her relation in the old days with Sally Seton. Had not that, after all, been love?" While Clarissa is transported to past afternoons with Sally, and as she sits mending her green dress, Warren Smith catapults desperately into his delusions. Although his troubles form a tangent to Clarissa's web, they undeniably touch it, and the strands connecting all these characters draw tighter as evening deepens. As she immerses us in each inner life, Virginia Woolf offers exquisite, painful images of the past bleeding into the present, of desire overwhelmed by society's demands. --Joannie Kervran Stangeland
| AUTHOR: | Virginia Woolf |
| CATEGORY: | Book |
| MANUFACTURER: | Harvest Books |
| ISBN: | 0156628708 |
| TYPE: | Classics, Domestic fiction, England, Fiction, Fiction - General, Literary, Married women, Middle aged women, Psychological, Psychological fiction, Suicide victims, Triangles (Interpersonal relations), Fiction / Classics |
| MEDIA: | Paperback |
| # OF MEDIA: | 1 |
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Customer Reviews of Mrs. Dalloway
A good book, but tough read! Well, I decided to read Mrs. Dalloway because of "The Hours". I didn't expect this book to be such a difficult read and contemplated stopping many times. However, i pressed on and am glad i did.
Virginia Woolf writes about several different characters; all on the same day which leads to Clarissa Dalloway's party that evening. What made this such a hard read for me was that Woolf would jump from one character to another and I wouldn't know who she was speaking of.
This story talks of the customs of these character who live in England, and also has some flashbacks into their past. There was one total shock in this book, which was when Woolf wrote of Clarissa and her friend Sally share a pretty passionate kiss.
Although it was a difficult read, Woolf was right on track, and some of her themes in this book hold true in today's society!
Brilliant and Original, But Too Cryptic for Many
One of Woolf's masterpieces (although To the Lighthouse is far more accessible) this book introduces us to Clarissa Dalloway: dutiful wife, proud mother, hostess extraordinaire, cream of London society, and perhaps ultimately, failure. Using a stream-of-consciousness technique that was pretty radical for its time, Woolf bounces us from the mind of one character to another in sometimes erratic fashion, presenting a multi-faceted view of a single day in post-WWI London.
The focus is on Clarissa and the grand party she is throwing that particular evening, but as her thoughts frequently hearken back to the past, we gradually learn her life's story, even as participants in that story make appearances in "real time". Peter, just back from India, still has strong feelings about her, despite the many years since she broke off their love affair. Sally, the brazen, independent woman who Clarissa so much admired, also puts in an unexpected appearance, and some may wonder if a romantic attachment might have also played a role in their relationship. Clarissa's husband Richard is something of disappointment, neither as successful as his contemporaries or as passionate as the now-unattached Peter. Will this confluence of faces from her past be enough to shake Clarissa out of her despondency?
A major sub-plot revolves around a young WWI veteran named Septimus who is also obsessed by the past. Seeing visions of his late comrade-in-arms, Septimus finds it difficult to deal with the realities of everyday life. His wife, tormented by his inexplicable behavior, wants to get him medical help, but her husband fears these threats to his freedom even more than death. Will her love be enough to save him?
The intersection of these two plots is not overly dramatic, but in light of the facts of Woolf's own demise, the effect of one upon the other should not be overlooked. The novel bears more than a hint of social criticism, blaming the patriarchal culture for Clarissa's lack of choices, but even more than that it is a cry for help from an author who was plagued by her own fears and doubts.
As characters, the women are better realized than the men, and apart from the over-critical Peter and the intellectual light-weight Richard, most of the men are pretty unpleasant. As such, women will probably enjoy this book more than men. Casual readers be forewarned: the stream-of-consciousness technique makes for a very difficult read, particularly in the early pages, before we know who's who. There's not a lot of plot; this book is primarily a character study of some fairly unhappy people. For devotees of great literature, this novel is essential to understanding the author and the untold numbers of lost souls like her. For everyone else, this is a very challenging novel about how we perceive others and ourselves, and not exactly a light entertainment.
Novel vindicated at the end
My initial response of hostility, sustained through much of the book, mellowed some at the end. It is a sensitive story of love and madness, apparent mostly on afterthought. Still, I thought more of Faulkner than of this.