Goodreads | Mrs. Dalloway (Annotated)

Jason rated it:

(review of isbn 0151009988)

04/28/08

Read in April, 2008

(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted here illegally.)

The CCLaP 100: In which I read for the first time a hundred so-called "classics," then write reports on whether or not I think they deserve the label

Book #15: Mrs Dalloway, by Virginia Woolf (1925)

The story in a nutshell:
For those who don't know, most artis...more

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Martine rated it:

(review of isbn 0151009988)

04/04/08

bookshelves: british, film, modern-fiction, modernism, psychological-drama

Read in March, 2003

recommends it for: people to whom the words 'death in life' actually mean anything

I feel odd reviewing Mrs Dalloway just days after writing a lecture-length review of The Hours, which touches upon much the same themes. Yet I think I'll give it a try.

Mrs Dalloway portrays a day in the lives of various people living in London in 1923. At the heart of the novel is Septimus Warren Smith, a WWI veteran who is suffering from shell shock and schizophrenia. Septimus' descent into madness (clearly modelled on Virginia Woolf's own) and relationship with his sp...more I feel odd reviewing Mrs Dalloway just days after writing a lecture-length review of The Hours, which touches upon much the same themes. Yet I think I'll give it a try.

Mrs Dalloway portrays a day in the lives of various people living in London in 1923. At the heart of the novel is Septimus Warren Smith, a WWI veteran who is suffering from shell shock and schizophrenia. Septimus' descent into madness (clearly modelled on Virginia Woolf's own) and relationship with his spouse are juxtaposed with those of Clarissa Dalloway, a 52-year-old upper-class lady who is about to throw a large party for her MP husband and other more or less illustrious personages. An unexpected encounter with her former suitor Peter Walsh, whom she hasn't seen for many years, leaves Clarissa musing about the past -- about the people she used to know, the people she used to love, and the decisions she has taken over the years. At various points Septimus' and Clarissa's stories intersect, as do several other characters' stories. In exemplary stream-of-consciousness style, Woolf takes us inside the heads of all these characters, sharing with us their thoughts, emotions and impressions of each other. What ensues is less a plot-driven story than a barrage of memories, associations and epiphanies, often tinged with regret and nostalgia. The emphasis is on individual persons' responses to the passage of time and other sources of unhappiness, but in depicting these, Woolf shows the mores and manners of society at large, thus presenting the reader with a microcosm of life, all wrapped up in a single day in the lives of some fairly self-absorbed but reasonably likeable people.

I can see why young and callous readers might dislike Mrs Dalloway, as I've been told many do. The book contains very little dialogue and even fewer exciting plotlines. Yet it would be woefully wrong to state that nothing happens in it, as the internal drama that goes on is ferocious. Take Septimus, for instance, who goes from feeling completely numb to being completely overwhelmed by both society and his own demons. Septimus is a startling character -- the kind of character who very seriously says 'Now we will kill ourselves' in the middle of what his wife thinks is a perfectly happy picnic. For her part, Clarissa Dalloway is hardly less conflicted. She may not be insane (quite the contrary -- to the other characters in the book she seems perfectly in charge of her own life and at ease in society), but she feels like she is suffocating and is torn between various aspects of herself, which prevents her from really making her mark in any significant way. If her day pans out less dramatically than Septimus', it is not for lack of internal fireworks. Like Septimus, Clarissa has to take some major decisions -- decisions that go considerably farther than what kind of flowers to buy for her party.

Woolf's prose is wonderfully fluid. She effortlessly links her characters' stories by means of symbols and metaphors, drawing her strands ever tighter until all the characters meet at Clarissa's party. Moreover, her prose has a marvellously cinematic quality. Her descriptions of people, places and the 'exquisite moments' that brighten up her characters' lives are so vivid that you can easily picture them in your mind's eye, including the cuts that a film director adapting this story to the screen would use. I can think of few more vivid fictional portrayals of London than Mrs Dalloway. As for the characters, they're not all as instantly likeable as mad Septimus and his poor, suffering wife, but in their own quiet, snobbish, understated ways, they're just as real. Woolf knows exactly when to draw them in bold, satirical strokes and when to go for the finer detail. The result is a wonderfully varied slice of life that may not have much action but does touch upon some pretty major themes. The death of the soul, anyone?

I could say more about Mrs Dalloway, but I think Woolf herself said it best when she wrote in her journal before getting started on the book: 'I want to give life & death, sanity & insanity; I want to criticise the social system & show it at work, at its most intense.' In her own inimitable way, she did just that, and then some.
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