From the Bookshelf of Constant Reader…

Mrs. Dalloway

Virginia Woolf

Start date: December 1, 2022

Finish date: December 31, 2022

Discussion: Classics Corner

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Aug 05, 2011 Kenneth P. rated it it was amazing

SPOILERS HERE!

“Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself.”

With her opening sentence Woolf tells us about privilege. “For Lucy had her work cut out for her.” Mrs. Dalloway’s party was to take place that evening and Lucy, along with the rest of the help, would be slammed. Mr. Richard Dalloway was a Member of Parliament and he knew people. Indeed the Prime Minister himself would be there. Everyone would be there. The workload would be immense so Mrs. Dalloway would buy the flowers herse ...more

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Oct 11, 2019 Jane rated it really liked it

Shelves: one-of-a-kind, reading-for-a-second-time, womans-story

This book is remarkable. This is actually the third time I've read it. I love Virginia Woolf and have read her journals, her letters, biographies written by her nephew and others. I went with a friend to visit her home at Rodmell, her sister's home at Charleston, the home where both lived in Bloomsbury. I am a huge fan. While I was reading it this time, I was waiting for a friend at a bakery and restaurant in Philadelphia, Cake. I left it on the table as we ate. A waitress, not ours, must have s This book is remarkable. This is actually the third time I've read it. I love Virginia Woolf and have read her journals, her letters, biographies written by her nephew and others. I went with a friend to visit her home at Rodmell, her sister's home at Charleston, the home where both lived in Bloomsbury. I am a huge fan. While I was reading it this time, I was waiting for a friend at a bakery and restaurant in Philadelphia, Cake. I left it on the table as we ate. A waitress, not ours, must have seen it. She brought over a well used paperback copy of a book about Woolf's novels by David Daiches. I remember reading his literary criticism in 1967 when I was a freshman in college. "This is for you," she said. "For after you read Mrs. Dalloway. "Shall I return it?" "Oh no; I won't read it." I don't know how or why she got it, but it was interesting to read the "Mrs. Dalloway" chapter after I finished the book.

This time I was very aware that Mrs. Dalloway, while the central character, has many characters whose stories reflect and, in a way, comment on her story. Peter Walsh's, her husband Richard's, her daugher and her daughter's forlorn tutor, Sally Seton's, Septimus Smith's. Clarissa Dalloway is very middle class (I'd say upper middle class). She is somewhat shallow, but also smart about what she needs in a marriage--some space for her own life and thoughts, a steady, conventional man. We spend one day with her (but we learn about who she was as a young girl) and during that day, the lives of other people---friends, family, people she loves and people she decidedly dislikes--are a kaleidoscope of mirrors whose experiences reflect on her common sense, her joy, her pettiness, her worries, her frivolous delights and her tender sense that what she loves is not reading or politics or religion...but life itself.

She knows she was right to marry Richard, not Peter Walsh.Yet Richard cannot even speak the words, "I love you," to Clarissa, even thought he thought them, wanted to show her, when he bought the flowers. Peter is a talker, wears his heart on his sleeve, can't bear for Clarissa to have the wrong opinions. He suddenly weeps when he visits her and Clarissa thinks, "If I had married him, this gaiety would have been mine all day." It's because she is so easy with him, talking or weeping. Woolf captures life...Septimus Smith lives out PTSD and kills himself because the doctors are useless and over and over again, his best friend suffers a night of torment before he dies, as Septimus watches across the battlefield. This contrast with Mrs. Dalloway is the reader's torment. Her thoughts are by turns shallow and poetic, deep. As is true of most of us...or they are tortured, like Septimus is. A book to return to over and over again. ...more

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