Mrs. Dalloway/ A Room of One's Own

by Virginia Woolf

In Mrs. Dalloway, Virginia Woolf details Clarissa Dalloway€™s preparations for a party of which she is to be hostess, exploring the hidden springs of thought and action in one day of a woman€™s life. Paired here with A Room of One€™s Own, a masterful and provocative essay on women€™s role in society, this beautiful hardcover edition will be a welcome addition to the library of any Woolf scholar or fan.

Genres: Classics, Fiction, Essays, Feminism, Queer Lit, School, Literature

320 pages, Hardcover

Published November 15, 2010

About the author

(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 essay A Room of One's Own (1929) with its famous dictum, "a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction."

Reviews

[Susan's Reviews · Rating 4 out of 5]

Slice of life story anyone?
Another high school and U of T book that had me scratching my head. As an avid reader, I was intrigued by the stream of consciousness style, but did I like it? Nope.
The first time I read this in high school, I was totally confused. Someone actually PUBLISHED this?!! Then, in University, the stream of consciousness technique was more fully fleshed out. The penny finally dropped and I enjoyed it the second time around. This is the type of book that requires a really good English teacher to pave the way for it. Virginia Woolf was a gifted and daring writer, but I was never a great fan of her fiction. Her prose - namely, A Room of One's Own - I have reread many times over the years.

[Kirsty · Rating 5 out of 5]

Luminous, sparkling, enlightening, and unforgettable. Both of these works are seminal with regard to Woolf, and I cannot recommend them highly enough.

[Sarah McMullan · Rating 5 out of 5]

There were a lot of things I didn't like about my super strict girls' school, but having us us read this at a very iimpressionable age was not one of them.
My manifesto for life is covered in these two pieces.

[Realini Ionescu · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf is one of the two novels, the other is To The Lighthouse, that are included on The Bokklubben World Library (Norwegian: Verdensbiblioteket) Best 100 Books of All Time list, also part of The 1,000 Novels Everyone Must Read compilation, and it is ranked 34th on The Greatest Books of All Time site – hundreds of books from those realms are reviewed on my blog, albeit quite a few are not part of my favorite file, ergo, my views are unorthodox, and sadly, irrelevant, however, this is the best I have to offer https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/20...







7 out of 10



Strangely, I have enjoyed much more The Hours https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/20... The Pulitzer Prize Winner by Michael Cunningham, where Virginia Woolf, her work, characters are present, than the volumes of the interesting, modern, complex author, who disliked Ulysses



‘I feel as I do with Virginia Woolf I want to keep saying 'No, he didn't', No it didn't happen as you describe it', No, that isn't what he thought…No, that's just what she didn't say’ this was Magister Ludi Kingsley Amis complaining about the acclaimed author, who, in her turn, saw Joyce as nothing but an irksome distraction from her reading of Marcel Proust



To the Lighthouse https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/20... is also part of the most prestigious lists, alas, not mine, in that it failed to impress me, indeed, all the Virginia Woolf magnum opera (it has to be emphasized that they are established masterpieces) makes the same impact on me Kinglsey Amis wrote about, in The Letters that I read and enjoy so much these days

To be in The Zone, one needs to look at these rules: you are in control, nothing else matters, you have constant and instant feedback, it is an autotelic experience (and Woolf does not give this to me), time gets to be shorter or you feel it has stopped, but in this case, it is just that it changes in the wrong way, for this reader at least



Penelope Lively https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/20... writes in her magnum opus According to Mark ‘the novelist has an infinity of choices, He chooses what is to happen, to happens, and in what way he will relate what happens, the picture he constructs is complete on its own terms…when he says this is the story and the whole story we must accept it…perhaps novelists are the only people telling the truth’ concluding hence that the writer is god, which is so insightful



- This made me think ‘wait a minute’ what about the reader?



The obvious conclusion is that the reader is also God, if not the only one, which is so obvious, he/she/they could be like the gods of Olympus, or going down the ladder, some demigods, fairies maybe, in that they can reject some of those personages created by the novelists, or else exit the world of Mrs. Dalloway

‘Mrs. Woolf, I hate her so much 😒 she is guilty 😔 most of the time of a forcing of Sensibility what we get is a kind of intellectual melodrama, 😤 👏 the exacerbation of totally fictitious states of feeling into a Sentimental pipe- dream untouched by discipline and disagreeable primness of the sentence structure, and the images themselves are importunately tedious and unreal, exciting the response 'I don't believe a word of it'



This was another passage from Magister Ludi Kingsley Amis https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/20... and there is this fact: if one likes an author as much as I admire Kingsley Amis, then it is more than likely that, if he has so much criticism about other writers, one has the same opinions, the style of Virginia Woolf is very different from the way Amis wrote, it might be the ‘stream of consciousness’ – another unconnected aspect that made the writer interesting was ‘Virginia Woolf’s (not so) secret lesbian relationship – ‘After their first meeting at a rather disastrous dinner party in 1922, Virginia and Vita exchanged fascinating, flirty, lyrical letters all the way through to the Second World War, and Virginia’s suicide, nearly 20 years later. And what could be more revealing than a letter? Vita writes to Harold, a week after telling Virginia that she loves her, "I have gone to bed with her (twice), but that’s all."



Now for my standard closing of the note with a question, and invitation – maybe you have a good idea on how we could make more than a million dollars with this https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/20... – as it is, this is a unique technique, which we could promote, sell, open the Oscars show with or something and then make lots of money together, if you have the how, I have the product, I just do not know how to get the befits from it, other than the exercise per se



There is also the small matter of working for AT&T – this huge company asked me to be its Representative for Romania and Bulgaria, on the Calling Card side, which meant sailing into the Black Sea wo meet the US Navy ships, travelling to Sofia, a lot of activity, using my mother’s two bedrooms flat as office and warehouse, all for the grand total of $250, raised after a lot of persuasion to the staggering $400…with retirement ahead, there are no benefits, nothing…it is a longer story, but if you can help get the mastodont to pay some dues, or have an idea how it can happen, let me know



As for my role in the Revolution that killed Ceausescu, a smaller Mao, there it is http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/03/r...



Some favorite quotes from To The Hermitage and other works



‘Fiction is infinitely preferable to real life...As long as you avoid the books of Kafka or Beckett, the everlasting plot of fiction has fewer futile experiences than the careless plot of reality...Fiction's people are fuller, deeper, cleverer, more moving than those in real life…Its actions are more intricate, illuminating, noble, profound…There are many more dramas, climaxes, romantic fulfillment, twists, turns, gratified resolutions…Unlike reality, all of this you can experience without leaving the house or even getting out of bed…What's more, books are a form of intelligent human greatness, as stories are a higher order of sense…As random life is to destiny, so stories are to great authors, who provided us with some of the highest pleasures and the most wonderful mystifications we can find…Few stories are greater than Anna Karenina, that wise epic by an often foolish author…’

[Marla · Rating 3 out of 5]

I barely liked it. I get talked into reading books by my girls, who are reading them for class. And I do love classics. So daughter #2 starts out with saying she has to watch the movie The Hours (based on Mrs. Dalloway) and compare it to the book. I'm pretty sure I'm the only one of the two of us that actually read the book and I'm completely certain that when daughter #2 was asking my opinion, she was looking for fodder for her paper. Mama ain't no fool.

That being said, I feel for her. The book was dry and slow. It was very deep with many layers. On the surface, it's just about one day in the life of Mrs. Dalloway. But of course it's much more than that. A commentary on life and death, just a little light reading. Knowing a little of the life of Virginia Woolf...her ongoing depression, her eventual suicide...made the book that much more tragic. It was easy to see her mental illness in her writing.

But, if this is your first foray into Virginia Woolf, I HIGHLY recommend doing this same exercise of watching The Hours and reading the book. The movie really does make the book all that much more fascinating and is really very good.

She thinks she's going to talk me into James Joyce next. I've had a go at him at least a dozen times. No way. Not doing it.

[Anita · Rating 5 out of 5]

My FitBit does a little double buzz ten minutes before each hour, reminding me to walk 250 steps before the next; in the living room our family has an old (Swarovski, check it) clock that plays tinkly modulated versions of Hey Jude, Pachelbel’s Canon, or a Mozart Sonatina in C, on the :00. Without fail each hour I think about whether I've exercised today, and also whether I should practice piano or violin, or maybe if I should check on my parents who are baking bread or washing clothes, or if I should catch up on work emails, or try to write Grandpa a postcard, or if I’ve called (and I never have) Manhattan Mini Storage yet. I feel alarming kinship w/the late clock in Dalloway, who, toddling in Big Ben's wake, "[comes] shuffling in with its lap full of odds and ends, which it dump[s] down as if Big Ben were all very well with his majesty laying down the law, so solemn, so just, but she must remember all sorts of little things besides."

If only there were more time to do all the things I wanted to do! Then I would be Someone! But weirdly it seems a lot of my friends do have the time to do all the things they want to do. In the end I guess everyone wants to be someone and everyone is someone but we (or maybe just I) scarcely remember this truism[1] because I'm busy polishing my inbox, adorning my calendar, watering the dahlias, etc. Maybe everyone is too (but often everyone’s adventures seem Grander than mine).

The most terrifying prophecy: “She would marry a Prime Minister and stand at the top of a staircase; the perfect hostess he called her (she had cried over it in her bedroom).”

Woolf’s claim in Room is that there’s some point on space-time-money continuum that you must occupy in order to write a novel e.g. Dalloway. As a result of having only common rooms to write in, "'women never have an half hour...that they can call their own.'" But oh Man sometimes it feels like so much more than the room and the time? “If I was always gone / Let the sun beat me home” sang our lady Ciara when she imagined what it would be Like [to be] A Boy and it is the worst when I am on the couch and hear the "the leaden circles dissolve[] in the air" and my lap overfloweth w/whatnots and baubles (do the dishes, take in the laundry, find a workout video, cut your nails, order sunscreen) and I’m like, Does Everyone Else's Day Go Like This Or Am I Wasting My Time. Idk, maybe it doesn’t have to do with Girlhood, and has more to do with Expectations run amok. Por que no los dos (PQNLD)! But when I catalog the activities to which I dedicate all my dissolving leaden circles they feel in service of things I have never consciously wanted but to which I feel inexplicably bound: hostessness, filial daughterness, career wifeness, etc.

Woolf never had kids; she notes that Austen, Bronte, and Eliot didn't either; and she ultravioletly illumines all my lemon juice fears when she conjures wild Sally Seton at Clarissa's party, who has now five boys, but "her voice was wrung of its old ravishing richness; her eyes not aglow as they used to be."

Woolf writes in Room that "books continue each other, in spite of our habit of judging them separately," as if she already knew that approx. 1 century later we would finally mount the arrangement of twigs from which she could spin her final Radiant web![2] How infuriating was it, I want to know, to have written cathedrals of prose and still need to write another entire book suggesting that women could write. Woolf also suggests that women need to write more books, even if just to wood more thickly the female literary forest, and to that I say, who has time for that! The garden needs weeding, the flowers need getting, and the stairs need someone to stand atop!

[1] "for, she admitted, she knew nothing about them, only jumped to conclusions, as one does, for what can one know even of the people one lives with every day? ... Are we not all prisoners? She had read a wonderful play about a man who scratched on the wall of his cell, and she had felt that was true of life--one scratched on the wall."

[2] "fiction is like a spider's web, attached ever so lightly perhaps, but still attached to life at all four corners. Often the attachment is scarcely perceptible; Shakespeare's plays, for instance, seem to hang there complete by themselves. But when the web is pulled askew, hooked up at the edge, torn in the middle, one remembers that these webs are not spun in midair by incorporeal creatures, but are the work of suffering human beings, and are attached to grossly material things, like health and money and the houses we live in."

[Leabelle · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ahh.. to be one of the Bloomsbury set, writers with life experience and no need of a paying job. Both these novels are worth reading, Woolf brings life to Dalloway as a soul hovering between worlds but constrained by her place in English society. In Room of One's own, her classic autobiographical essay, she brings insight to herself as a writer, the moods of her illness as she portends its final dramatic conclusion, art in her case preceding life. The many challenges she faced as a woman writer of her era (there were many women writers, including her good friends in her time - at least Britain and Europe had progressed past the point of having to use a male pen name by the time Woolf wrote her books even if she did have to be accompanied by a male to enter the university library). While she could never be described as the one of the great English novelists, she was a very good writer, superb in her own way.

[J.M. Johnson · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've already read Mrs. Dalloway a few times, and I believe I will always find something new with each read. Woolf never comes out and tells us things, she leaves it up to the readers to grasp their own meaning. She trusts our intelligence enough that we'll find answers. This book takes place over the course of one day and within this day, Woolf is able to tell us so much about her characters and about the human existence.
A Room of One's Own - A must read if you want to begin to understand Virginia Woolf. I'm not sure I would enjoy reading this if I were a man, but I feel that ever woman writer should read this.

[Pam · Rating 4 out of 5]

i haven't read mrs. dalloway yet, i tried and i just couldn't do it, but i did read and really enjoy a room of ones own, i heard that it was a good place to start and ease into her writing style and i'd agree with that statement bc although most of it was stream of consciousness it was much more structured than i've found mrs. dalloway (in the few pages i read of it), i'm feeling a little discouraged about mrs. dalloway but my brain just can't follow it right now and i'm only a few pages in so i'm going to move one to something else, maybe i'll come back to it later when the time is right and love it, i hope i will

[Tippy · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this one backwards- I started with A Room of One's Own because the Diversity in all forms group was reading it. I wanted to stop and take notes from this one before reading Mrs. Dalloway.

So far so great! I loved this essay. Here are a few of my favorite gems:

"Thought-to call it by a prouder name that it deserved- had let its line down into the stream. It swayed, minute after minute, hither and thither among the reflections and the weeds, letting the water lift it and sink it, until- you know the little tug-the sudden conglomeration of an idea at the end of one's line: and then the cautious hauling of it in, and the careful laying of it out? Alas, laid in the grass how small, how insignificant this thought of mind looked; the sort of fish that a good fisherman puts back in the water so that it may grow fatter and one day be worth cooking and eating...But however small it was, it had, nevertheless, the mysterious property of its kind-put back into the mind, it became at once very exciting, and important; and as it darted and sank and flashed hither and thither, set up such a wash and tumult of ideas that it was impossible to sit still."

"No force in the world can take from me my five hundred pounds. Food, house, and clothing are mine for ever. Therefore not merely do effort and labour cease, but also hatred and bitterness. I need not hate any man; he cannot hurt me. I need not flatter any man; he has nothing to give me."

After reading sections on the position of women in the History of England: "Not being a historian, one might go even further and say that women have burnt like beacons in all the works of all the poets from the beginning of time-Clytemnestra, Antigone, Cleopatra, Lady Macbeth, Phedre, Cressida, Rosalind, Desdemona, the Duchess of Malfi, among the dramatists; then among the prose writers: Millamant, Clarissa, Becky Sharp, Anna Karenina, Emma Bovary, Madame de Guermantes-the name flock to mind, nor do they recall women "lacking in personality of character." Indeed if woman had no existence save in the fiction written by men, one would imagine her a person of the utmost importance; very various, heroic and mean; splendid and sordid; infinitely beautiful and hideous in the extreme; as great as a man, some think even greater. But this is woman in fiction. In fact, as Professor Trevelyan points out, she was locked up, beaten and flung about the room.

A very queer, composite being thus emerges. Imaginatively she is of the highest importance; practically she is insignificant. She pervades poetry from cover to cover; she is all but absent from history. She dominates the lives of kings and conquerors in fiction; in fact she was the slave of any boy whose parents forced a ring upon her finger. Some of the most inspired words, some of the most profound thoughts in literature fall from her lips; in real life she could hardly read, could scarcely spell and was the property of her husband...

History scarcely mentions her. And I turned to Professor Trevelyan again to see what history meant to him. I found by looking at his chapter headings that it meant - 'The Manor Court and the Methods of Open-field Agriculture... The Cistercians and Sheep-farming... The Crusades...The University...The House of Commons...The Hundred Years' War... The War of the Roses...The Renaissance Scholars...The Dissolution of the Monasteries...Agrarian and Religious Strife...The Origin of English Seapower...The Armada...' and so on. Occasionally an individual woman is mentioned, an Elizabeth, or a Mary; a queen or a great lady. But by no possible means could middle-class women with nothing but brains and character at their command have taken part in any of the great movements of which, brought together, constitute the historian's view of the past."

"Suppose for instance, that men were only represented in literature as the lovers of women, and were never the friends of men, soldiers, thinkers, dreamers; how few parts in the plays of Shakespeare could be allotted them; how literature would suffer! We might perhaps have most of Othello; and a good deal of Antony, but no Caesar, no Brutus, no Hamlet, no Lear, no Jaques-literature would be incredibly impoverished, as indeed literature is impoverished beyond our counting by the doors that have been shut upon women."

Personally, I loved learning about the context in which early female authors had to write. Jane Austen hid her work whenever someone walked in the room. I'm a little disappointed that this context wasn't discussed in my high school when we read some of her books. To be honest, I never really thought about early female writers and what it must have been like for them. I'm happy to rectify that :-)

I also liked how she used the idea of Shakespeare's sister to illustrate her point and round out her discussion.

So I started Mrs. Dalloway and found that I wasn't really enjoying it. I loved A Room of One's Own, but not this story. As our group was only reading A Room of One's Own I decided to move on to other books.

[Shanti Banda · Rating 3 out of 5]

The enjoyment I experienced watching ‘the hours’ heavily inspired me to read Mrs Dalloway. It’s not only my first read of a Virginia Woolf novel but classic literature in general. The entire concept of the story; seeing a day in their lives through multiple perspectives. She perceptually shifts from perspective and tense which by nature requires intentional and slow reading. I unfortunately found myself getting lost multiple times especially in the middle section of the book. However, the unique way she describes her imagery makes perfect sense in my mind & her wordplay often poetic always managed to snap me out of the trances of confusion I would experience when reading. 3/5

Moving on, I definitely found myself enjoying the written essay of ‘the rooms of one’s own’ way more. Which is surprising considering I tend to lean towards fiction more. It’s a beautifully curated and cohesive essay and similar to Mrs Dalloway all the points are perfectly tied in at the end; nothing was missing. One of the many thought provoking extracts Virginia includes is a quote from a lady named Margret that stuck with me “Women live like bats and owls, work like beasts and die like worms.” I have to include this one as well - “That is why Napoleon and Mussolini both insist so empathetically upon the inferiority of a woman for if they were not inferior, they would cease to enlarge.” 4/5

[Amy · Rating 2 out of 5]

Note that I only read A Room of One's Own (NOT Mrs. Dalloway) but I had to force myself to trudge through it. And by the end, I didn't really feel I had gained anything. It was a unique, partially fictionally, look at women authors and the lack thereof. She made some valid points about why there weren't women authors in the 19th and early 20th centuries, but I felt it took sitting through a lot of tangents to get to those points. And mixing fictional authors with real ones was sometimes distracting. Maybe someone who has a greater appreciation for essays would appreciate this more, but it's not my cuppa.

[Lori · Rating 1 out of 5]

I do not remember the last time I gave up on a book. Usually I keep plowing through it, and something does spark my interest. As I tried to get through this one, with its endless sentences that make up one gigantic paragraph after another, I kept saying keep going, keep going, it's got to get better. Halfway through I gave up. There are too many truly enjoyable books to read instead of drudging through this one. Sorry, I tried.

[Bookswithchristina · Rating 2 out of 5]

Boring.
Really. No storyline in this book. It does not touch me as well - really sad :(

[Nrzagaray · Rating 4 out of 5]

A classic for a reason

[Gina · Rating 3 out of 5]

For my first time reading Woolf, I was incredibly disappointed. Mrs. Dalloway might be inventive in its structure, but it involves the same boring upper class people and their social lives that so many novels have covered already. A Room of One's Own is notable for its thesis that female cultural production is dependant on financial resources, but as much as the position is understandable for its time, I hated the insistence on the supreme genius of Shakespeare and the viewpoint that art that involves anger or political commentary is impure. I found it ironic that Woolf talks about the wider range of social material available to writers (so not just upler class people), but her focus for what is art is so narrow and explicitly ties cultural production to those who have means. It's true even now that it's almost a necessity to have the independent income to be an artist without starving, but there's more to art than thedetached consideration of social relations at parties.

[anolinde · Rating 3 out of 5]

Three stars balances out Mrs. Dalloway (two stars) and A Room of One's Own (four stars). I just read Mrs. Dalloway this time for a reading challenge (a book set in the 1920s), and I remembered disliking it in college but thought that maybe I'd understand it better this time around... and guess what, I do but I still don't care for it. Should have trusted my college self!

Characters weave in and out of homes, time, and London landmarks in a way that's certainly impressive as a feat of writing, but no one has anything very interesting to say or think about, and it's such a slog to get through, and then literally nothing happens at the end.

A Room of One's Own was much better.

[Laura · Rating 3 out of 5]

I did not like this novel. It was used for one of my writing classes and I just couldn't get into the novel. I wasn't impressed with the writing style or the main character...actually, I didn't like any of the characters, for that matter. I know some people who absolutely adore Woolf's writing style, but I'm not one of them. It was interesting to hear my classmates discuss the imagery and descriptions throughout the novel, but I just didn't like it. Nope, definitely not a fan.

*Taken from my book reviews blog: http://reviewsatmse.blogspot.com/2011...

[Brittany Clough · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wish I could say I loved it--I really wanted to--but I didn't. At times it was maddening because I would read twenty pages and all that happened was Mrs. Dalloway walked to the flower market and thought about something. It wasn't terrible and I am fascinated with Woolf's life so I am praying her other works are more entertaining.

[Sylvia Sarno · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read A Room of One's Own in college and it made a big impression on me. I highly recommend it for women who want to write. Mrs. Dalloway likewise is memorable - visual with great characterization. Mrs. Dalloway herself is hard to forget.

[Sarah Koppelkam · Rating 5 out of 5]

There's really no review of "A Room of One's Own" that can say something this foundational essay/lecture doesn't say. Whenever I read Woolf, I am shocked by how contemporary her criticism feels, and by how deeply hilarious she is. Woolf = queen of the dry, sarcastic roast.

[Charmaine Vannimwegen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved it! Every woman should read this book. It's acerbic at times, witty most of the time, and just an entertaining discussion about a woman's place in literature and education in general.

[Cassie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm calling it chick lit, even though it predates the genre, lol! I'd love to have a room of mine own, but with texting and facebook, I still probably wouldn't be able to write a novel. :)

[Tatia · Rating 3 out of 5]

It begins well and then I got lost... I was a little bored and a little disappointed by the middle of the book.
I chose 3 stars because it gave me some thoughts to reflect on though.

[Talyah]

I'm only here for "a room of ones own"

[Kari Ni · Rating 3 out of 5]

I should read it again.

[Ebru · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bilinç akışı tekniğiyle yazılmış ve benim okuduğum ilk Virginia Woolf kitabı. Eğer bilinç akılı tekniğiyle daha önce tanışmadıysanız okuması zorlayabilir.