Brain Pain discussion
This topic is about
Mrs. Dalloway
Mrs. Dalloway - Spine 2014
>
Questions, Resources, and General Banter - Mrs. Dalloway
date
newest »
newest »
Mod
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1918_flu...
Clarissa supposedly had suffered from the flu outbreak and was permanently weakened by - probably by the pneumonia associated with the pandemic.
By contrast, WWI reported 16 million killed and 20 million injured. Wikipedia entry here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Wa...
I only just started the book, but this seems to be a spoiler?
By the way, I saw in the invite message that Woolf's books had become public domain. I was wondering about that as soon as I saw Amazon has Mrs. Dalloway editions from many publishers at a low price. However, it's not yet in the collections at Gutenberg or Manybooks... I was thinking maybe only the writings of her earlier years were there. So, the root question is: where's the freebies?P.S. I'm asking this selfishly, or perhaps idly, as I won't be keeping pace with y'all on this one... but may join late or may face the same question if I join for Joyce.
I looked this up in my phone - so I have no idea if this is complete (it appears to be), or how the formatting looks printed or on an actual monitor, but this appears to be the full text:
http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/w/woolf...
I believe, based on the whole Public Domain thing, that it is alright for me to post that link. If not let me know and I'll remove it.
http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/w/woolf...
I believe, based on the whole Public Domain thing, that it is alright for me to post that link. If not let me know and I'll remove it.
Mod
In this case, no. Her health is mentioned briefly a few times in the book, and the influenza pandemic is the supposed cause, but this is not a plot point of any consequence.
Certainly almost anyone who has researched their genealogy can find a relative struck down by the pandemic; my great-grandmother was a victim, one of the early casualties of the very deadly "2nd wave" mutation of it. There are a score of fascinating stories and books related to it. As for the copyright, books published before 1923 are in the public domain in the US (generally...depending on when/if renewed and such it gets complex.. http://copyright.cornell.edu/resource... ). So having been published in 1925, depending on us rights holders, it could quite possibly still be under copyright. Australia used Life+50 as the rule until 2005, when the US forced them to extend rights to Life+70 as part of a free trade agreement. This did not apply to expired by 2005, however. So there are a great many things legal there that are not here. This would probably explain the issue some have had finding it.
That said, this is one of the easiest and cheapest books to find you could possibly imagine, so I doubt anyone will have a hard time finding a copy.
It's also one of the seminal works of the century, one of the most written about, and considered one of the high-watermarks of modernism, along with The Waste Land and Ulysses. It's also quite short, and quite good! So read it!
To add to the secondary reading as requested by Jim, a two part article on the impact of Ulysses/Joyce on Woolf: http://modernism.research.yale.edu/wi...
http://modernism.research.yale.edu/wi...
This is more than a bit of reading, but Hermione Lee's biography is brilliant (from the 200 pages I've read) Virginia Woolf
and the definitive bio of Woolf.
Bill wrote: "This is more than a bit of reading, but Hermione Lee's biography -- it ain't short -- is brilliant"Wonderful! Thanks Bill.
Jim wrote: "Iselin wrote: "I only just started the book, but this seems to be a spoiler?"In this case, no. Her health is mentioned briefly a few times in the book, and the influenza pandemic is the supposed ..."
Alright. I'm still only about 30 pages in, so I don't know too much about Clarissa's health ;)
Mod
Like many things in this book, her health is mentioned in small comments here and there, rather than as a scene unto itself. First mention is on page 2, when her neighbor, Scope Purvis, notices her in the street:
...a touch of the bird about her, of the jay, blue-green, light, vivacious, though she was over fifty, and grown very white since her illness.
There is a lot of repetition in the book so that things like her health and appearance become known to us by this accumulation of small mentions.
There's an insightful essay available online about the "ambivalence of identity" in two of Woolf's novels, Mrs. Dalloway and Street Haunting. As a newcomer to Woolf's novels, it really helped to elucidate her response and contribution to the evolution of the modernist movement and SOC writing.
Tia wrote: "There's an insightful essay available online about the "ambivalence of identity" in two of Woolf's novels, Mrs. Dalloway and Street Haunting. As a newcomer to Woolf's novels, it really helped to el..."Tia -- thank you for the suggestion. I had not considered the novel from the perspective of the impact of the modern city on individual (nor collective) identity.
(I found the availability of several sources by searching for: "ambivalence of identity Mrs. Dalloway and Street Haunting".)
Will wrote: "To add to the secondary reading as requested by Jim, a two part article on the impact of Ulysses/Joyce on Woolf: http://modernism.research.yale.edu/wi......"
Thanks, Will. I haven't gotten to the second link yet, but the first one seems to be by the person who teaches the (excellent) James Joyce's Ulysses Teaching Company course, i.e., James Heffernan, Dartmouth.
In the process of looking at background material today, I came across a term, new to me, memento mori," which translates from the Latin as "remember you will die." Its application to our read does seem appropriate, as death and awareness of death is interwoven with life throughout. And very much a part of the awareness of Britain at the end of the Great War.
Hominem te esse memento.
Jonah Lehrer in his book Proust was a Neuroscientist has a chapter on Woolf, and shows how along with other modernist writers, she got the workings of the brain right. However, the chapter does contain spoilers...https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonah_L...There's more than that, but I will decline to say more on the grounds that he'll complain.
Edit: This does not, by the way, reflect poorly upon you at all for having mentioned him. I just thought anyone who might not be aware, should be.
Oh well. He's very post-modernist in the appropriation and quotation of his own work ;-)
Indeed! Lol! Good way of putting it.
Wow. I'm sad to learn that, Will. I loved Proust Was a Neuroscientist. Meh!
http://www.todayinliterature.com/stor...A little tit-bit about Virginia and the voices in her head (perhaps not unlike Septimus' voices). Her journals ran into 24 volumes, the first thing she rescued from her bombed-out house in London.
Joni wrote: "http://www.todayinliterature.com/stor...A little tit-bit about Virginia and the voices in her head (perhaps not unlike Septimus' voices). Her journals ran into 24 volum..."
Joni -- your comment leads me to wonder to what extent dealing with "the voices in her head" prompted VW to use stream of consciousness in her writing -- almost like getting internal "voices" out there on paper where they could be observed or scrutinized.
Yes that's interesting isn't it Lily? Like expunging (carthasis). Jung called it active imagination, while the Surrealists called it automatism - a way to access the unconscious. Leonard Woolf claimed in his biography that while Virginia was interested in psychoanalysis in a ‘vague’ and general way, she never read anything by Jung or Freud, though she did meet Freud apparently. But I think that while she may have used automatic writing/stream of consciousness to free herself from voices (there’s an aspect of containment and control in using the page), at some point the writer/artist would have to kick in and rework the material. It must have been hell – whether they end up being characters in the book, they all start off being characters in her head. Perhaps she drew a lot from her own experience to write about Septimus who’s an aspiring writer and who seems to write what the voices say.
That’s what makes me think that activities like sewing, making the hats (and when Septimus makes a hat with his wife, he gets a brief reprieve from the voices to the extent that Rezia thinks they’re an ordinary couple) are a much better way to deal with anxiety or other forms of mental illness. Maybe Dr Bradshaw should have prescribed making something instead of a ‘sense of proportion’, bed rest and isolation which would only increase the chatter of voices (but I’m speaking as an artist-therapist).
Modern Critical Interpretations Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway edited by Harold Bloom.Stopped by the library Wednesday and checked out the book above. Spent a fair amount of time this evening perusing it. The several essays added greatly to the things I noticed/remembered about reading our novel. (One was by Hermione Lee, VW's biographer named @13.)
A few tidbits:
Mrs. Dalloway first appeared as a published character for VW in The Voyage Out (1915). At that time, she and her family were treated ironically and satirically. A family friend of VW, Kitty Maxse, is cited as the model for Clarissa.
Further transformation occurred from the short story "Mrs. Dalloway in Bond Street" to create the figure we experience from both the outside and the inside in MD. That story did not include Septimus.
Most of these commentators seem to consider Mrs. D and Septimus the critical relationship treated in the novel, even though they never meet. (Not much surprise there, although there are several other interesting relationships, including the Miss Kilman/MD one, which occupies several pages in this relatively short novel.)
The original working title was "The Hours." Supposedly "The Life of a Lady" and "A Lady of Fashion" were also considered before settling on Mrs. Dalloway.
Although the story is set in the present time of a single day, past, present and future are brought together in the narration. An easy example: as Peter prepares for the party in his hotel room, he thinks about his fiancee still back in India and forward to his possibilities at Oxford. Others abound.
After Tia's question about the Friends (Quakers), I tried to figure out why Woolf comments on Kilman's ancestry: "...It was true that the family was of German origin; spelt the name Kiehlman in the eighteenth century; but her brother had been killed..."
Woolf, Virginia (2012-06-06). Mrs. Dalloway (Illustrated Edition) (p. 111). Dead Dodo Vintage. Kindle Edition.
I didn't succeed (e.g., had Doris's fore-bearers possibly been Jewish; was such relevant given the story has a WWI, not WWII, setting; can the reader presume Mrs. Dolby's school was in England and that her brother was killed fighting for their apparently adopted country, ...), but I did come across this rather interesting article (20 pages) by Vereen Bell, "Misreading Mrs. Dalloway" where he takes a crack at what he considers "misreadings" by other critics:
http://flight307.wikispaces.com/file/...
(Not certain Vereen M. Bell from Goodreads description is the same as the author of the article cited.)
See Jim's note @34 below!
The notes I have read indicated Woolf struggled greatly when writing the sections describing Septimus's angst and descent into self destruction. (Is "descent" too prejudicial a choice of words? "Path" would have been more neutral, but somehow, "descent" still feels appropriate.)
Mod
I think this is the correct Bell:
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show...
Jim wrote: "Lily wrote: "(Not certain Vereen M. Bell from Goodreads description is the same as the author of the article cited.) .."I think this is the correct Bell:
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/26..."
Thanks, Jim. I've added a note @32.
Joni wrote: "That’s what makes me think that activities like sewing, making the hats (and when Septimus makes a hat with his wife, he gets a brief reprieve from the voices to the extent that Rezia thinks they’r..."Joni, People diagnosed with anxiety are advised to busy themselves with cleaning... I even read somewhere that people suffering from seasonal depression can "distract themselves" with the repetitive motion of gift wrapping.
Tia wrote: "...Joni, People diagnosed with anxiety are advised to busy themselves with cleaning..."LOL! Think I need to add that one to my toolkit! Two things at once!
Lily wrote: "After Tia's question about the Friends (Quakers), I tried to figure out why Woolf comments on Kilman's ancestry: "...It was true that the family was of German origin; spelt the name Kiehlman in t..."
Great link!
Tia wrote: "Joni wrote: "That’s what makes me think that activities like sewing, making the hats (and when Septimus makes a hat with his wife, he gets a brief reprieve from the voices to the extent that Rezia ..."That would mean 4 months of gift wrapping for me... I should make a business out of it ;)
Tia wrote: "...Joni, People diagnosed with anxiety are advised to busy themselves with cleaning..."Maybe this is why I knit so much.
@ Tia and Lily, when I was training as art therapist, we were advised that activities like sweeping the house was good if we were working with people with depression - because it grounds you in the ordinary. I think I've always had art (the making, or the looking at someone else's work which I found calming) and when I wasn't working with art as a container to hold other people's experiences, I became burnt out very quickly. I've always been fascinated with how for some artists, like Virginia for instance - the art isn't enough to keep them in life...for the page, whether you're using it to write or draw, can hold the worst as well as best of human experiences.
https://www.facebook.com/cory.remsbur...http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/p...
I'll leave it to other readers to decide whether this is relevant relative to MD. It may be only soc.
Mod
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/p...
I'll leave it to other readers to decide whether thi..."
Were you bored and posting random stuff, or do you see a connection?
Jim wrote: "... do you see a connection? ..."Oh, dear, when I go back, the WP link has changed. But, I presumed--obviously, I saw a similarity between Cory Remsburg and Septimus in MD of the human individual damage left behind in the aftermath of war. In MD, which we know was followed by WWII, and last night, I felt a rather eerie tragic sense of will we ever be able to find ways to minimize such human losses. MD had a party where a Prime Minister circulated; the scene last night had military leaders, legislators, et al, but either felt dwarfed in terms of ability to stem a future Septimus or Cory. Melodramatic? Crude analogy? Yes, I understand. That's why I said maybe only (my) soc (stream of consciousness).
Mod
De nada! It's only a brief sketch, but hits the highlights of her life.
I'm currently reading Moments of Being as a supplement to my reading of Hermione Lee's biography, Virginia Woolf. It's been profitable to read the bio along with Woolf's own autobiographical writing.
Brain Pain
Books mentioned in this topic
Moments of Being: A Collection of Autobiographical Writing (other topics)Virginia Woolf (other topics)
Virginia Woolf's Mrs Dalloway (other topics)
The Voyage Out (other topics)
Ulysses (other topics)
More...
Authors mentioned in this topic
Vereen Bell (other topics)Virginia Woolf (other topics)
Wikipedia link for Virginia Woolf:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia...
Wikipedia link for Mrs. Dalloway:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mrs_Dall...
Feel free to use this thread to ask questions and post links to resources for Virginia Woolf and Mrs. Dalloway
Also, if you’ve written a review of the book, please post a link to share with the group.