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Mrs. Dalloway

Virginia Woolf,

Annette Bening (Narrator)

3.79 · Rating details · 206,406 ratings · 8,848 reviews

Mrs. Dalloway, perhaps Virginia Woolf's greatest novel, follows English socialite Clarissa Dalloway as she prepares for a party in post-World War I London. Four-time Oscar nominee Annette Bening (American Beauty, The Kids Are All Right) performs Woolf's stream-of-consciousness style of storytelling brilliantly, exploring the hidden springs of thought and action in one day ...more

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Published September 4th 2012 by Audible Studios (first published May 14th 1925)

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Apr 17, 2011 Jason rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: thrill-me-chill-me-fulfill-me, for-kindle, 2012, reviewed, wine-club

Experiencing Mrs. Dalloway is like being a piece of luggage on an airport conveyor belt, traversing lazily through a crowd of passengers, over and around and back again, but with the added bonus of being able to read people’s thoughts as they pass; this one checking his flight schedule, that one arguing with his wife, the one over there struggling with her cart, bumping into those arguing and checking. For the most part, the ride is smooth as Woolf transitions from one consciousness to another. Experiencing Mrs. Dalloway is like being a piece of luggage on an airport conveyor belt, traversing lazily through a crowd of passengers, over and around and back again, but with the added bonus of being able to read people’s thoughts as they pass; this one checking his flight schedule, that one arguing with his wife, the one over there struggling with her cart, bumping into those arguing and checking. For the most part, the ride is smooth as Woolf transitions from one consciousness to another. But at times, I find myself falling off the conveyor belt. Whether this is a result of my own inabilities or whether Woolf’s dreamy style leads me naturally astray into my own wanderings, I do not know. But I do know that the effort to get back onto her belt are handsomely rewarded.

In short, this novel contains some of the most beautiful writing I’ve ever seen in ~~print~~ e-ink (welcome to the 21st century, Mrs D). But although quoting long passages in a Goodreads review is not usually my modus operandi, I feel I must do so here just to demonstrate my point. Have you ever had your mind so preoccupied with “stuff” that sometimes a passing comment triggers a strange feeling of not quite right–ness, a feeling which stems from the ability of your subconscious to somehow absorb the comment even while the conscious part of your brain has not yet had time to process it? This happens to me all the time, and that nagging feeling persists until I find time to reflect on what has caused it. Here Woolf captures the moment perfectly:

But—but—why did she suddenly feel, for no reason that she could discover, desperately unhappy? As a person who has dropped some grain of pearl or diamond into the grass and parts the tall blades very carefully, this way and that, and searches here and there vainly, and at last spies it there at the roots, so she went through one thing and another; no, it was not Sally Seton saying that Richard would never be in the Cabinet because he had a second-class brain (it came back to her); no, she did not mind that; nor was it to do with Elizabeth either and Doris Kilman; those were facts. It was a feeling, some unpleasant feeling, earlier in the day perhaps; something that Peter had said, combined with some depression of her own, in her bedroom, taking off her hat; and what Richard had said had added to it, but what had he said? There were his roses. Her parties! That was it! Her parties! Both of them criticised her very unfairly, laughed at her very unjustly, for her parties. That was it! That was it!

Besides shedding light on my own strange neurosis, I think this passage also reveals something interesting about Clarissa Dalloway. Why do Peter’s comments about her being the perfect hostess bother her so much? Mrs. Dalloway often claims to be fortunate to have married a man who allows her to be independent, and to be grateful to have avoided a catastrophic marriage to one who would have stifled her. But to me, these are just rationalizations for her decision to marry someone with whom she does not share the kind of intimacy that she might have otherwise had. In a way, her parties have taken the place of that intimacy, though it is an intimacy on her terms—she is able to enjoy the company of her high society friends while still keeping them at a comfortable enough distance to shield them from learning too much about her. When Peter gently mocks her parties, it annoys her because it invariably results in her having to reconcile the sacrifices she has made in exchange for her current lifestyle.

Another noteworthy aspect of Woolf’s writing is her acute description of post-traumatic stress disorder. PTSD was not formally recognized until the 1970s, and even though documentation of symptoms was common in the 1940s when World War II veterans were being treated for “mental disturbances,” the fact that Woolf delves into this subject as early as 1925 is pretty profound. Back then, shell shock meant that you were suffering from a form of “exhaustion,” as if veterans of the Great War were no worse off than Britney Spears after a few too many nights out. In this regard, Septimus is a truly tragic character, a victim of a time and place without the resources to help him. His mental anguish seems also to mirror the sufferings of the unrelated Mrs. Dalloway. In fact, despite crossing paths in only the most abstract of ways, Clarissa and Septimus have quite a bit in common. They both struggle to balance their private lives against the need for social inclusion, they both internalize their emotions at the expense of personal relationships, and they both end up having to make difficult choices (albeit with drastically different outcomes) about their respective futures.

It’s true. Mrs. Dalloway offers remarkable insight into its characters and is certainly worth the effort. My only question is: does this conveyor belt stop here, or will it take me To the Lighthouse?

[September 2012 Update]
A recording of me reading this review can be found here. ...more

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Jan 06, 2017 Kenny rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: classics, desert-island-books, brits, author-author, queer-lit, virginia-woolf, top-11

What does the brain matter,” said Lady Rosseter, getting up, “compared with the heart?”
Mrs. Dalloway ~~ Virginia Woolf

I didn't realize, until the final page, at its heart, MRS. DALLOWAY is a love story. I absolutely loved this book.

Mrs. Dalloway is a complex, compelling novel. It is wrongly described as a portrait of a day in the life of Clarissa Dalloway; this is not correct. Mrs. Dalloway is the hub that connects the spokes, the characters of Woolf's novel, but there is no main character. ...more

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Aug 02, 2015 Jeffrey Keeten rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

“So on a summer’s day waves collect, overbalance, 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 ...more

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Nov 30, 2009 Bram rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: 2009

While reading her works, I get the impression that Virginia Woolf knows everything about people and that she understands life better than anyone, ever. Is there a single hidden feeling or uncommon perspective with which she is not intimately acquainted? And does anyone else draw forth these feelings and perspectives with more grace and empathy, and impart them to us in such a lush, inimitable fashion? Perhaps. But you’d never think that while immersed in her exquisite, adult dramas. In Mrs. While reading her works, I get the impression that Virginia Woolf knows everything about people and that she understands life better than anyone, ever. Is there a single hidden feeling or uncommon perspective with which she is not intimately acquainted? And does anyone else draw forth these feelings and perspectives with more grace and empathy, and impart them to us in such a lush, inimitable fashion? Perhaps. But you’d never think that while immersed in her exquisite, adult dramas. In Mrs. Dalloway, Woolf’s able to achieve complete well-roundedness for a half-dozen people in a smattering of pages; where each person is valuable and each is misguided, where disagreements truly have two (or more) reasonable sides, where issues of right wrong black white are utterly absent, dismissed as child’s play, uninteresting. Woolf allows her characters to hate as well as to love, and everyone must expose their private, raw feelings to the reader.

I want to get to know Virginia Woolf; I want to absorb her wisdom and to see the world through her eyes, with her soul: wise, beautiful, understanding. She’s one of the few authors whose writing is so evocative and filled with human beings so well-drawn that I frequently drift into thoughts of my own life, comparing myself to Peter Walsh or Clarissa Dalloway or Hugh Whitbread or Sally Seton, ferreting out my own shortcomings as I see them gently spread out in Woolf’s oh-so-real characters. Many people who’ve read Woolf’s shorter works admit surprise at how long it takes to finish them, even if one is fully engrossed. I think this is why: her writing invokes open-ended reverie that’s profoundly personal and inescapable.

Woolf’s prose is fantastic, although I prefer that of To the Lighthouse, which has a haunted, ethereal beauty that’s better-fit for the Isle of Skye than for London’s busy streets. Still, she has a poetic way with descriptions that I find so aesthetically pleasing. First a warning, musical; then the hour, irrevocable. Is there a better (better-sounding, at least) description of Big Ben’s tolling? In many passages, the stops and starts feel abrupt, strange to the reading mind. But for whatever reason, it simply feels right; always just enough and never more.

It’s difficult to discuss or sum up the plot of this book, which moves fluidly from the streaming conscious of one character to the next. This passing of the story-telling baton is so subtle, however, that I can’t remember a single transition. None. These moments would likely deserve study and genuflection in an inevitable rereading. I suspect that Mrs. Dalloway is one of those books you can not only reread and enjoy at different stages in life, but one that will offer distinct new pleasures and wisdoms at each stage. In other words, it’s the best kind of book.

Mrs. Dalloway ultimately builds toward the title character’s dinner party, but I actually found this finale to be somewhat less interesting than the parts that came before. We’re introduced to many new characters in the final 25 pages, which, despite the fact that each one gets no more than a paragraph of time (and some must share), is something of a nuisance after becoming attached to five or six major players. She wraps things up well with the mainstays though, and the ending manages to be both understated and stirring, providing the readers with the pain and relief that comes with confession.

Upon finishing, the first thing that popped into my mind was Radiohead: Everything. In its right place.
...more

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Oct 05, 2016 Sean Barrs the Bookdragon rated it did not like it · review of another edition

Shelves: classics, 1-star-reads, modernist-movement

Virginia Woolf I hate you.

There I said it. Some authors you just don’t get on with, and Woolf is right down the bottom of my shit list. I’ve got quite a few reasons why:

Artistic slaying

So there’s a trend with each and every new artistic movement which involves pissing all over the one that came before it. The newness asserts its dominance by destroying the old; it’s happened many times over history in all forms of artifice, whether it be literature, music, paintings or media in today’s society. ...more

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May 25, 2007 Sarah rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Mrs. Dalloway is one of those books one is supposed to adore for its disruption of convention and innovative use of time, sound, parallel narrative structure etc. While I respect and admire the literary advances VW makes with this novel, I just can't get into it. I've read it three times over the course of my reading life, once at 17 then at 21, and finally just a few months ago. I find it sleepy like dozing in a warm insect filled garden, which is not a bad way to spend an afternoon (as long as ...more

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Mar 05, 2016 Jim Fonseca rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Virginia Woolf set out to write an unconventional novel and succeeded, although since she wrote, we have read so many unconventional novels that it seems tame. In her introduction to the edition I read, Maureen Howard writes: “If ever there was a work conceived in response to the state of the novel, a consciously modern novel, it is Mrs. Dalloway.” She may have been influenced by Ulysses because all the action occurs in one day. Church bells mark significant events. In turn this marking of the Virginia Woolf set out to write an unconventional novel and succeeded, although since she wrote, we have read so many unconventional novels that it seems tame. In her introduction to the edition I read, Maureen Howard writes: “If ever there was a work conceived in response to the state of the novel, a consciously modern novel, it is Mrs. Dalloway.” She may have been influenced by Ulysses because all the action occurs in one day. Church bells mark significant events. In turn this marking of the day influenced The Hours, a book based on Woolf’s life, by Michael Cunningham.

But unlike in Joyce’s work, this is not an ordinary day. True, it centers on what we would now call a cocktail party – Mrs. Dalloway lived for those and hosted them frequently – but it’s also the day when a former flame of hers (the fire on his part, not hers) returns from five years in India. And it’s also a day when one of the characters we follow commits suicide. His doctor arrives at the party and announces this to everyone as soon as he’s inside the door – now there’s a downer!

Through her reflections and that of several other characters we learn the details of Mrs. Dalloway’s life. She’s 52, pale, a bit sickly, attractive enough but not beautiful. We learn of her husband, a nice man, a government bureaucrat whose career has peaked – he will never be a Minister. She worries about him having a business lunch today with another woman friend of hers and Mrs. Dalloway was not invited. Of her daughter, she worries that she is being “unduly influenced” by the religion of her female tutor (Catholicism?). And of course she worries about meeting the old flame – he still loves her after 30 years, a marriage and various affairs. True love or arrested development?

The book, published in 1925, is also a time capsule of daily life in London in the early post-war years. (WW I of course.) A time when horses had been replaced by cars. As we follow her around town in her preparations we see the hustle and bustle of the city, the grocers, the shop girls, the crazies in the park.

A good book. It makes you think about life and death. You can’t ask for more than that. Her language is also fun. When is the last time you were “whelmed?” Not overwhelmed – just plain old whelmed. What’s a Holland bag? Even on the web, apparently no one knows.
...more

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Feb 20, 2014 s.penkevich rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Recommends it for: Everyone

Shelves: death, europe, war, the_perfect_sentence, woolf

‘Moments like this are buds on the tree of life.’

Our lives are an elaborate and exquisite collage of moments. Each moment beautiful and powerful on their own when reflected upon, turned about and examined to breath in the full nostalgia for each glorious moment gone by, yet it is the compendium of moments that truly form our history of individuality. Yet, what is an expression of individuality if it is not taken in relation to all the lives around us, as a moment in history, a drop in a ...more

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Feb 18, 2014 Violet wells rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: faves, london

It’s been a while since I last read Mrs Dalloway. I’d always had it down as her third best book, but falling a fair way short of The Waves and To the Lighthouse. Therefore I was surprised by just how much I loved and admired it this time round. It’s probably her most popular novel – because it’s more intimate, more personal and sprightly and warm than her other novels. What’s most brilliant about it is the easy fluid way she makes of each passing moment a ruffled reservoir of the inner life of It’s been a while since I last read Mrs Dalloway. I’d always had it down as her third best book, but falling a fair way short of The Waves and To the Lighthouse. Therefore I was surprised by just how much I loved and admired it this time round. It’s probably her most popular novel – because it’s more intimate, more personal and sprightly and warm than her other novels. What’s most brilliant about it is the easy fluid way she makes of each passing moment a ruffled reservoir of the inner life of her characters. Every moment alters the composition, the ebb and flow of memory and identity. And everything, very subtly, is experienced in relation to the inevitability of death. It’s a deeply elegiac novel and one of the finest celebrations of the beauty to be gleaned in the passing moment I can think of.

She does, now and again, get carried away with her metaphors. Extending them until they bear little relation with their starting point, like shadows that have no source. In fact so epic and sweeping are her metaphors sometimes – usually when she’s writing about/making fun of men - that you think she might have had a copy of The Iliad on her desk while writing this. And men get a pretty rough deal on the whole.

There’s probably no richer book about London in the history of literature. I remember when I was a skinny nineteen year old thing walking about London and how Woolf’s presence, through her prose, was almost like a medium permeating the squares of Bloomsbury, the bridges and churches and parks of the city. She added an entire layer to my experience of the hidden riches of London. At one point Clarissa muses, “It ended in a transcendental theory which, with her horror of death, allowed her to believe, or say that she believed (for all her scepticism), that since our apparitions, the part of us which appears, are so momentary compared with the other, the unseen part of us, which spreads wide, the unseen might survive, be recovered somehow attached to this person or that, or even haunting certain places, after death. Perhaps - perhaps.” Well, no question, Virginia still haunts certain places –pretty much every London location she writes about in this novel. ...more

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May 20, 2017 İntellecta rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: classics

England in 1923. A land between world wars, between tradition and modernity. Virginia Woolf's fourth novel, "Mrs Dalloway"

This book offers many partial even very modern approaches, reflecting the role of woman in society, the importance of marriage, the mental illness as a sign of our time, the consequences of war, the power of medicine and much more ..."

Ps:If you like the technique "Stream of consciousness "the book is suitable for you.

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Jan 24, 2013 Paul Bryant rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: novels

THE TERMINATOR 2 OF DOILEYS

I can see why people hate Mrs-Dalloway-the-book (there are a fair few this-is-so-boring-I-lit-myself-on-fire kind of one/two star reviews) because Mrs Dalloway-the-book is the Terminator 2 of doileys, ribbons, and fetching hats, the Die Hard 4 of a sunny day in London, 1923, the Apocalypto of curtains and place mats and memories of moonlight boating parties; and the Transformers of wondering if you married the right person.

You have to get into Mrs Woolf’s style, which ...more

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Sep 18, 2017 Henry Avila rated it really liked it · review of another edition

"What does the brain matter compared with the heart?"so states one of the last lines in this short brilliant novel, a thought -provoking book life is temporary after all. This phrase is about Mr. Richard Dalloway who works for the government in the early 1920's in London, England. Clarissa Dalloway's nice steady husband rather ordinary, he will never be a member of the prestigious cabinet, nevertheless she loves him, he reciprocates that emotion...she knows but he's much too embarrassed to "What does the brain matter compared with the heart?"so states one of the last lines in this short brilliant novel, a thought -provoking book life is temporary after all. This phrase is about Mr. Richard Dalloway who works for the government in the early 1920's in London, England. Clarissa Dalloway's nice steady husband rather ordinary, he will never be a member of the prestigious cabinet, nevertheless she loves him, he reciprocates that emotion...she knows but he's much too embarrassed to verbalize , showing it by giving wonderful flowers yet there is something missing in her existence, she has a great husband a beautiful dutiful daughter Elizabeth 18, devoted to her father, a good home. She while not pretty at 52 but attractive , gives glamorous grand parties to her many friends and relatives, important people in society mostly. The movers and shakers in the nation, the perfect hostess elegant, calm, sophisticated always says the right thing to others, still she feels bored, needing excitement. Clarissa's mind constantly wanders, thinking and pondering has she chosen the right path. The happy memories of the past, thirty years ago...of the frightening Peter her first love, wild Sally Seton the best friend Clarissa ever had so fearless, outrageous and amusing everyone liked, Peter Walsh is coming back from India, a man she could have married nothing dull about him, an unstable but always vibrant, her former lover will be at the party ( not very successful), rich Sally also, Mrs . Dalloway is uneasy. The narrative of the book takes place in just one day, the ubiquitous giant Big Ben clock sounds the alarm, striking often every hour, and more as time flows by reminding her not only the party is near but life is limited, should not waste it in idle dreams, live in the present be content, in this crazy unpredictable, cold world...
will not continue forever, not last. Virginia Woolf's most popular novel, still has dark aspects the trying to forget , not possible...set a few years after the end of hostilities. A classic from another era, the vast sufferings of World War 1 soldiers is vaguely mentioned ( by one character) the English... ...more

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Jan 24, 2011 Fabian rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: favorites

I first read Mrs. Dalloway sometime between "The Hours" film was released & college (2002-2003), knowing pretty well what it aimed at--to chronicle life as it is lived, with plenty of characters to populate the sphere that’s immediately around the titular protagonist, the nucleus, the hopeless hostess of parties; all their thoughts at once made clear and later muddled with the novel’s own moving train of consciousness. This time around I found that the most difficult portion of Mrs. Dalloway I first read Mrs. Dalloway sometime between "The Hours" film was released & college (2002-2003), knowing pretty well what it aimed at--to chronicle life as it is lived, with plenty of characters to populate the sphere that’s immediately around the titular protagonist, the nucleus, the hopeless hostess of parties; all their thoughts at once made clear and later muddled with the novel’s own moving train of consciousness. This time around I found that the most difficult portion of Mrs. Dalloway is its middle section, after the Warren Smiths meet with the physician & Lady Bruton is introduced, & then there is this cavalcade of characters along with all of their inner musings. Sometimes Virginia Woolf uses “he” & “she,” & one knows not who on the stage she is precisely referring to. (It could be said that the emotion within each individual defies exactly who that character is. It is the emotion that’s important--the melancholic mood which at times may strike us all.)

The all-knowing narrator in Mrs. Dalloway is like the great revolving eye which transcendentalists like Emerson and Thoreau often mention. It knows all, but it also rides the collective wave of thought and feeling itself (in Woolf that feeling often deals with growing older, dying).

Difficult to put into words, it is clear what it was that (the overrated) IAN MCEWAN tried (& failed) to emulate: Woolf’s sense of impending devastation (In Saturday, another day-long narrative, an Englishman is surprised to see a fallen aeroplane alight in the morning sky… just as the denizens of England receive a fiery emblem: that of the Royal figure inside the coach in the streets of London) and in that grand English tradition: the utmost repression of the individual’s wants (in On Chesil Beach Mc Ewan’s thesis is not unlike the following: “Not for years have they spoken of it; which, he thought… is the greatest mistake in the world. The time comes when it can’t be said; one’s too shy to say it... ‘I love you.’”).

Confusing--it is meant to be like a wave washing over you as you stand alone; a delicate little flower before the awesome tide. ...more

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Dec 18, 2018 Fergus rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Is this amazing book the archetype for present-day feminine TV Soap Operas?

If you said that, I, and so many others who’ve been utterly charmed by Virginia Woolf’s disarmingly ‘unrehearsed’ slice-of-life prose in this incredible book, would take bitter umbrage!

No, this little book is MUCH more than that...

It’s a radiant hymn to the power of momentary, personal Epiphanies in our rapidly-moving, seemingly impersonal, and largely unconscious lives.

You know those magical Chicken-Soup-for-The-Soul ...more

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Jul 04, 2014 Michael rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: favorites

My full review, as well as my other thoughts on reading, can be found on my blog.

Although famous for focusing upon a single day in the life of one woman, Mrs. Dalloway in fact ricochets from one interior life to the next, collapsing the present into the past as it does so. The novel is far less interested in defining Clarissa Dalloway as an individual than in exploring the many-sided effects she has on an assortment of others; by the end of the narrative, Woolf has offered her readers not a neat ...more

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Oct 06, 2016 Luís C. rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: favourites, on-my-own, female-writers, uk-and-related, livros-do-brasil, reading-the-world, 20th-century, 1001-done-books

There's nothing going on in this book.
That is to say, to be honest, it does nothing happening. The fact is that we are prepared there and participates in a vague social evening. This is not insignificant, perhaps, but still we admit that it is not too far from it.
Yet it is in complete disregard of the emptiness of the romantic frame of this masterpiece, because what happens there really worth, it's a real literary revolution!
It is because there has already been a time when women did not have the ...more

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Oct 18, 2012 Kalliope rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction-english, literary-classics, britain

I love travelling by train, and this is one of the best environments for reading. Luckily I got a seat for myself and the coach is pleasant. There is so much light. How enjoyable!

What a funny way to start the book. Someone says that Clarissa Dalloway is setting off to buy the flowers. But here is the famous quote What a lark!, what a plunge!, but it is not quite at the beginning of the book and cannot quite join other iconic beginnings like Call me Ishmael.. or Longtemps je me suis couché de ...more

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Oct 24, 2012 Joseph Spuckler rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: british, bloomsbury

Essay on book

Clarissa, Septimus, and Virginia: Mental Health in Interwar Literature
Joseph G. Spuckler, Jr

The aftermath of World War I created significant changes in society. The industrialized war not only left the continent in tatters, but it also shook society. Virginia Woolf captured the post-war changes in society in her work. Although Woolf does not write about the war itself, its effects are felt. In Jacob’s Room, an idealistic young man goes to war and does not return. In To The ...more

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May 30, 2008 Kelly rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Recommended to Kelly by: Elizabeth

Shelves: favorites, fiction, brit-lit, 20th-century-early-to-mid, examined-lives, vita-virginia-violet-and-kindred, grande-dames, mawwiageiswhatbringsustogethertoday, londonreadinglist

Virginia Woolf made me feel like a drunken gardener, a diver on the verge of the bends, a foot stamping child, a foal tripping over its own legs trying desperately to get to its mother. And you know, I really don’t like feeling like any of these things. What is worse, she set up a buffet of champagne, mimosas, fruit and jam, white table cloths fluttering on a patio in the sunshine and light breezes, let me settle myself down to watch a perfectly civilized game of tennis between old pals from ...more

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Mar 06, 2011 Darwin8u rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: 1001-ante-mortem, 2014

It is late and I will want to think about this a bit more before I finish my review, but there is something almost perfect about Virginia Woolf's modernism. Her stream of conscious writing seems to be more aromatic than Proust (if that is possible) and goes down easier than Joyce. While she didn't write the massive 'Remembrance of Things Past' or the revolutionary 'Ulysses', her short novels seem - pound for pound - to stand up to these greats. Mrs Dalloway is a Madeleine that bites back and ...more

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Oct 30, 2017 Matthew rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: classic, library, audio, completist-book-club, 2017

A few introductory comments on my rating and review:

My rating is reflective of my experience with this book and not the actual impact this book has had on literature and other people over the years. Sometimes when I read a book I don’t like, I cannot understand why others like it either. That is not the case here – it is very easy for me to tell why others would like this book and I think it was very interesting at its core; it is just the delivery that did not work for me.

I hesitate to actually ...more

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Jan 15, 2012 Traveller rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: modernism, 1001-books, gilmore

I apologize for writing so much; but there was just so much to write about...

On the surface, this appears to be a boring little account of a boring woman getting ready for throwing a boring snobbish party at the end of the depicted day, with various interludes and people wandering around London during the course of the day, thinking all sorts of freeflowing thoughts and having flashbacks to their pasts. ...but every time you examine this novel to try and critique it, something new about the ...more

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Nov 08, 2012 Ian "Marvin" Graye rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: reviews, reviews-5-stars, read-2013, woolf

Of Life and Death, Verbs and Nouns

I expected this novel to be difficult. However, it wasn't difficult at all. It was an enormous pleasure.

I was struck by the preponderance of verbs .

The novel might happen in the head of Clarissa Dalloway or the other characters, but they are observing activity and their thoughts reflect it.

It is more dynamic than passive or self-conscious or self-reflective.

It was less a stream of consciousness, than a consciousness of life as a stream or a number of streams, ...more

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Jul 23, 2013 Paul rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: bloomsbury

How to review a novel like this. I remember Evelyn Waugh’s comment about having to review/critique P G Wodehouse; “like taking a spade to a soufflé”. There has been a little debate recently about who to put on the back of the new 10 note in this country. Jane Austen seems to have won; I would have voted for Virginia Woolf!
Stream of consciousness and set in a day, but definitely not Ulysses; this, for me, is one of the great novels. Not only is it beautifully written, it is beautifully How to review a novel like this. I remember Evelyn Waugh’s comment about having to review/critique P G Wodehouse; “like taking a spade to a soufflé”. There has been a little debate recently about who to put on the back of the new £10 note in this country. Jane Austen seems to have won; I would have voted for Virginia Woolf!
Stream of consciousness and set in a day, but definitely not Ulysses; this, for me, is one of the great novels. Not only is it beautifully written, it is beautifully constructed and Woolf switches the types of narration as quickly and easily as she switches characters around twenty of them in all. Clarissa Dalloway is the main character; a woman in her early 50s who is preparing for her party in the evening and looking back to a particular time in her youth. She shares the stage with Septimus Smith a young married man who fought in the war and who is suffering from what was then called shellshock and would now be called Post Traumatic Stress Disorder; he is quite seriously ill and haunted by Evans, a close friend who died. There are so many strands running through this book that it’s difficult to know where to start.
The relationship of the past with the present is vital; having recently read “The Go-Between” there is an interesting parallel. Hartley’s “The past is another country” is similar to Woolf’s technique of bringing the past into the present, but making it almost alien and unknowable. I think you can say that for a number of the characters; for Clarissa and Peter, for Sally, especially for Septimus and Rezia.
Sexuality is a background flavour almost, but distinct. For Clarissa and Septimus there is a looking back to what is almost portrayed to be a gay relationship; Clarissa with Sally and Septimus with Evans. This is the past intruding into and ruffling the present again.
Mental ill health is another theme. I am aware that the original plan was to have Clarissa take her own life at the party, and Septimus was not part of the story. I think perhaps Woolf separated two parts of herself into the two characters, in an almost bi-polar way. The two characters never meet; I wonder if they met within Woolf. But this is also suggestive of the way society keeps mental health separate. The psychiatric establishment in the form of Bradshaw comes out of it very badly; the approach being worse than useless.
Inevitably, feminism is part of the mix. Clarissa has some independence because her marriage gives her space. The women who try to be independent by different routes do much worse. Sally, so daring and independent in her youth, becomes a very conventional mother of five and loses that spark. Miss Kilman, who has a degree in history, is lonely, bitter and born again. It is almost as though Woolf is saying the best way for her is a marriage that makes few demands and gives space, because at the moment the other ways lead to despair because of society.
Then there are all the literary references, the wonderful minor characters, the descriptions of the day. A great novel. ...more

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Mar 30, 2013 Aubrey rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Recommended to Aubrey by: Madeleine

Shelves: 5-star, reviewed, prose-prose-prose, reality-check, life-after-life, 1-read-on-hand, shorty-short, pure-power-of-gr, r-2013, 500-wm-added

Finding an author who tilts and swerves and stares into the light as you do is a difficult matter. Half of it is politics, for what we are not on the power scheme of things is all the easier to ignore, and half of it is heart, the blood by which we scheme and thrive and fall. Some authors crop up in classrooms in accordance to popular decree and dance along the usual line of theory and of form. Others, not only one and the same but first, have by happenstance of coin and sex and homicide have ...more

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Sep 29, 2007 Jessica rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Recommends it for: broke, book-loving teenagers and anyone else looking for a cheap high

Shelves: happyendings

Okay, so this is very fabulous novel and in my opinion one of the Greatest, despite the fact that for me it was not exactly a breeze to get through. I mean, it wasn't painful or anything, but nor was it one I just sat down and plowed through like a maniac until I was through. I carried the thing around with me for awhile and poked at it in fits and starts over a period of time. I think Virginia Woolf is a genius, but there's something kind of inaccessible about her to me, maybe because I'm not a Okay, so this is very fabulous novel and in my opinion one of the Greatest, despite the fact that for me it was not exactly a breeze to get through. I mean, it wasn't painful or anything, but nor was it one I just sat down and plowed through like a maniac until I was through. I carried the thing around with me for awhile and poked at it in fits and starts over a period of time. I think Virginia Woolf is a genius, but there's something kind of inaccessible about her to me, maybe because I'm not a genius, or because I'm not British, or severely mentally-ill.

Anyway, the last page of this novel is among the most brilliant passages ever written in the English language. I still remember where I was when I read it: on the One train, headed downtown, somewhere in the seventies, I think. When I read the very end of this novel, I got an incredible head rush which raced down my spine and spread a glorious, speedy, tingling sensation throughout my central nervous system. YES! Finishing this book actually got me HIGH! It really, really DID!

I don't want to talk it up too much, and I can't promise *Mrs. Dalloway* will have the same effect on you. However, it is a Great book, and everybody should read it. Plus, I'm pretty sure there's a special loophole in the Important Book rules that says people who read *Mrs. Dalloway* don't have to finish *Ulysses,* *especially* if you are a girl (hey, I know that's not fair, but I don't make the rules). If time is an issue for you, this is a great deal to take advantage of, as *Mrs. Dalloway* is not only a great deal shorter, but also more accessible. Plus you will be spared the image of Leopold Bloom's penis floating in his bath water, which, let's face it, is pretty gross and will indelibly mark your fragile psyche.

And for the rest of your life, whenever you are having a party, bustling about your neighborhood obtaining flowers, beer, etc., thinking about your life, you can pretend to be Mrs. Dalloway. And this is a fun thing to do, for me, anyway. ...more

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Jun 10, 2017 Vanessa rated it liked it · review of another edition

Well I don't think I was quite ready for Virginia Woolf. It's my first novel by Woolf so I've finally broken my Virginia virginity. The writing is razor sharp, very witty in parts but mostly there's an energy to her writing it's slightly manic and I felt my mind racing through along with her thoughts. But did I enjoy this book? In parts. I found the pacing although the words were written beautifully a little too frenetic like she's throwing everything at you and hoping you keep up. I think this ...more

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Nov 20, 2012 Fionnuala added it · review of another edition

Shelves: woolf-and-related, woolf-reviews

Reviewed in November 2012
Mrs D is just so eloquent that I've decided to let her do the talking - via Virginia, of course: She was not old yet. She had just broken into her fifty-second year. Months and months of it were still untouched. June, July, August! Each still remained almost whole, and, as if to catch the falling drop, Clarissa (crossing to the dressing-table) plunged into the very heart of the moment, transfixed it, there - the moment of this June morning on which the pressure of all Reviewed in November 2012
Mrs D is just so eloquent that I've decided to let her do the talking - via Virginia, of course: She was not old yet. She had just broken into her fifty-second year. Months and months of it were still untouched. June, July, August! Each still remained almost whole, and, as if to catch the falling drop, Clarissa (crossing to the dressing-table) plunged into the very heart of the moment, transfixed it, there - the moment of this June morning on which the pressure of all the other mornings, seeing the glass, the dressing-table, and all the bottles afresh, collecting the whole of her at one point (as she looked into the glass), seeing the delicate pink face of the woman who was that very night to give a party; of Clarissa Dalloway; of herself.

How Mrs D reasons: Those ruffians, the Gods, shan’t have it all their own way - her notion being that the Gods, who never lost a chance of hurting, thwarting and spoiling human lives, were seriously put out if, all the same, you behaved like a lady.

Mrs D as art critic: ‘Dear Sir Harry!’ she said, going up to the fine old fellow who had produced more bad pictures than any other two Academicians in the whole of St John’s Wood (they were always of cattle, standing in sunset pools absorbing moisture, or signifying, for he had a certain range of gesture, by the raising of one foreleg and the toss of the antlers, ‘the Approach of the Stranger’ - all his activities, dining out, racing, were founded on cattle standing absorbing moisture in sunset pools).

Mrs D on fashion: Nancy, dressed at enormous expense by the greatest artists in Paris, stood there looking as if her body had merely put forth, of its own accord, a green frill.

And finally, Mrs D’s effect on others: Brief, broken, often painful as their actual meetings had been...the effect of them on his life was immeasurable. There was a mystery about it. You were given a sharp, acute, uncomfortable grain - the actual meeting; horribly painful as often as not; yet in absence, in the most unlikely places, it would flower out, open, shed its scent, let you touch, taste, look about you, get the whole feel of it and understanding, after years of lying lost...She had influenced him more than any person he had ever known.

Edit - 26/05/2015: From A Writer's Diary, 1924, VW wrote : 'Mrs Dalloway' (short story) has branched into a book; and I adumbrate here a study of insanity and suicide; the world seen by the sane and the insane side by side--something like that. Septimus Smith? is the a good name?...
But now what do I feel about..this book, that is, 'The Hours', if that’s its name? One must write from deep feeling, said Dostoievsky. And do I? Or do I fabricate with words, loving them as I do? No, I think not. In this book I have almost too many ideas. I want to give life and death, sanity and insanity; I want to criticise the social system, and to show it at work, at its most intense. But here I may be posing…Am I writing 'The Hours' from deep emotion? of course the mad part tries me so much, makes my mind squirt so badly that I can hardly face spending the next weeks with it…I should say a good deal about 'The Hours' and my discovery: how I dig out beautiful caves behind my characters: I think that gives exactly what I want; humanity, humour, depth. The idea is that the caves shall connect and each comes to daylight at the present moment...It is a disgrace that I write nothing, or if I write, write sloppily, using nothing but present participles. I find them very useful in my last lap of Mrs D. There I am now—at last at the party, which is to begin in the kitchen, and climb slowly upstairs. It is to be a most complicated, spirited, solid piece, knitting together everything and ending on three notes, at different stages of the staircase, each saying something to sum up Clarissa. Who shall say these things? Peter, Richard, and Sally Seton perhaps: but I don't want to tie myself down to that yet. Now I do think this might be the best of my endings and come off, perhaps...--the last words of the last page of Mrs D...I did them a week ago yesterday. 'For there she was,' and felt glad to be quit of it, for it has been a strain the last weeks, yet fresher in the head; with less I mean of the usual feeling that I've shaved through and just kept my feet on the tight rope. I feel indeed rather more fully relieved of my meaning than usual--whether this will stand when I re-read is doubtful...The reviewers will say that it is disjointed because of the mad scenes not connecting with the Dalloway scenes. And I suppose there is some superficial glittery writing. But is it 'unreal'. Is it mere accomplishment? I think not. And as I think I said before, it seems to leave me plunged deep in the richest strata of my mind. I can write and write and write now: the happiest feeling in the world. ...more

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Nov 21, 2019 Jennifer rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: western-canon-starter-kit

I was so afraid I wouldn't "get" this book (as if anyone fully "gets" Mrs. Dalloway in one reading, lulz). But it's goooorgeous and I've been a self-defeating, self-denying fool. That is all.

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Jan 01, 2013 Candi rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: classics-shelf, book-i-own, winter-mini-challenge-2015-2016

"She felt very young; at the same time unspeakably aged. She sliced like a knife through everything; at the same time was outside, looking on. She had a perpetual sense, as she watched the taxi cabs, of being out, far out to sea and alone; she always had the feeling that it was very, very dangerous to live even one day. Not that she thought herself clever, or much out of the ordinary."

Virginia Woolf takes us through a single day in 1923 in post-World War I London. She does so with gorgeous prose "She felt very young; at the same time unspeakably aged. She sliced like a knife through everything; at the same time was outside, looking on. She had a perpetual sense, as she watched the taxi cabs, of being out, far out to sea and alone; she always had the feeling that it was very, very dangerous to live even one day. Not that she thought herself clever, or much out of the ordinary."

Virginia Woolf takes us through a single day in 1923 in post-World War I London. She does so with gorgeous prose and a stream of consciousness writing that takes us directly into the very minds of both Clarissa Dalloway herself as well as those to whom she comes in contact. It is as if one could hear every little musing and wandering thought process of each person we encounter in any ordinary day. Imagine hearing all this – it could get a bit busy and confusing as all these thoughts crowd in on us! Indeed, sometimes it was a bit disorienting as a reader to jump from one mind to the next; one must truly be patient to follow the flow of thoughts within this novel in order to be rewarded.

As Clarissa makes preparations for an evening party, she reflects on her past, her present and her future. Time itself plays a large role in this novel. "The clock was striking. The leaden circles dissolved in the air." When a former lover, Peter Walsh, returns to England from India, Clarissa contemplates her own identity. She examines her view of her inner self in relation to the scrutiny of Peter Walsh and what she believes he thinks of her. She perceives that he thinks of her as being empty and only interested in social concerns, prosperity and parties. She feels there is so much more to her than meets the eye. Can one ever really know the innermost workings of another human being? She frequently ponders death and what her own death would mean in the context of the life she has lived.

"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? but that somehow in the streets of London, on the ebb and flow of things, here, there, she survived, Peter survived, lived in each other, she being part, she was positive, of the trees at home; of the house there, ugly, rambling all to bits and pieces as it was; part of people she had never met; being laid out like a mist between the people she knew best, who lifted her on their branches as she had seen the trees lift the mist, but it spread ever so far, her life, herself."

Ms. Woolf introduces us to another haunted individual within this book. A young veteran of The Great War, Septimus Warren Smith has survived the war but at great cost. Suffering from what appears to be post traumatic stress disorder, Septimus is in a downward spiral and is not able to obtain the proper psychological help needed to reverse the effects of the horrors he has witnessed. His young wife, displaced from her own country and family following her marriage, is a victim in her own right. She is not equipped to handle the trauma her husband suffers. She desires children and a stable life that Septimus is not able to provide given his illness. Unknown to one another, Septimus Smith and Clarissa Dalloway's stories are fundamentally linked together in a way which will become apparent to Clarissa on the evening of her party.

Undeniably, Virginia Woolf is a brilliant writer. I have adored two of her previous works, The Voyage Out and A Room of One's Own. Mrs. Dalloway is one I certainly respect as well. However, I found the flow of thought a bit more difficult in this compared to the others I have read thus far. Essentially, depending on within whose psyche I happened to be meandering at any given moment, I was either completely submerged or floundering to get a grasp. This affected my overall enjoyment of the book but not my admiration for the beautiful language and the talent of Ms. Woolf. I will continue to read her work and perhaps come back to this another day when I can more fully immerse myself and hopefully gain even further insight.

3.5 stars
...more

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About Virginia Woolf

Virginia Woolf

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(Adeline) Virginia Woolf was an English novelist and essayist regarded as one of the foremost modernist literary figures of the twentieth century.

During the interwar period, Woolf was a significant figure in London literary society and a member of the Bloomsbury Group. Her most famous works include the novels Mrs. Dalloway (1925), To the Lighthouse (1927), and Orlando (1928), and the book-length ...more