Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
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Book Reviews of Mrs. Dalloway
Book Review: Mermaid
Summary: 5 Stars
"The leaden circles dissolved in the air" as Big Ben and other clocks toll life in Virginia Woolf's splendid novel Mrs. Dalloway "all sorts of little things came flooding and lapping and dancing in on the wake of that solemn stroke which lay flat like a bar of gold on the sea." Clarissa Dolloway steps out on a fine June day to get flowers for her evening party and sees a plane writing in the sky. Crowds stare upwards to decipher the message while the plane turns and loops, leaving off one letter, picking up another. Septimus Smith sees it too and believes the message, whatever it is, meant for him. He is shell shocked from the war and suffers from mental problems and at times experiences a mystical ecstasy. He receives messages from the dead and writes them down on pieces of paper like "Universal love: the meaning of the world" Septimus hears sparrows singing in the trees in greek and everything has meaning for him. "Sounds made harmonies with premeditation; the spaces between them were as significant as the sounds. A child cried. Rightly far away a horn sounded. All taken together meant the birth of a new religion.'' Clarissa who is a kind of doppelganger to Septimus feels and sees beauty deeply and has the ability to live very intensely in the present moment appreciating whatever life brings. "What she loved was this, here, now, in front of her; the fat lady in the cab.'' "she loved; life; London; this moment of June." As the plane loops inditing an unknown message and Big Ben strikes the hours other lives brush against Clarissa on this day in June. Peter Walsh who she had spurned years ago is back from India and her friend Sally Seton shows up at her party as the past bleeds into the present. Miss Kilman is Clarissa's daughter's angry teacher and Sir William Bradshaw is a renowned London psychiatrist who sees Septimus Smith. Miss Kilman dreams of felling Clarissa in the name of religion, and Sir William would like to subdue all those who challenge his conception of the world. Both wish to convert the world to their belief systems in order to gain power and dominate others. In fact as the pressures of mental conformity close in on Septimus he decides on suicide even though he thought "Every power poured its treasures on his head" and that "Life was good" he could not fit in the mental box of societal expectations. Clarissa at the party in her silver-green mermaid's dress hears news of this and thinks of the brevity of life and can see death at the end of it all "even as a mermaid might behold in her glass the setting sun on some very clear evening over the waves."
Book Review: A Great and Masterful Modern Novel
Summary: 5 Stars
Marcel Proust's "In Search of Lost Time" and James Joyce's "Ulysses" stand, to this day, as the two great classics of modern literature. In Proust, the stunning use of memory and sense perception, as well as the stream of consciousness narrative of the great "roman fleuve", marked the auspicious beginnings of a modern sensibility and technique in fiction. Similarly, Joyce's difficult, blasphemous and similarly streaming novel, set in the course of a single day and emanating from the perceiving mind of its narrator, carried forward this sensibility and technique. It is not surprising, then, that Virginia Woolf, while writing her brilliant and innovative "Mrs. Dalloway", was reading these two authors at the time, for Woolf's novel stands as yet another masterful work of modern sensibility and technique, a classic in its own right."Mrs. Dalloway" is set entirely during a single bright beautiful day in June, when Clarissa Dalloway is occupied by last minute preparations for a party she is having that evening. The wife of Richard Dalloway, a member of Parliament, Mrs. Dalloway is someone who is skilled, like an artist, at creating the perfect party. But the resemblances to a character and a narrative from Jane Austen or Anthony Trollope end there, for Woolf's fictional agenda is consciously modern and her technique is entirely that of interior monologue, omniscient description and, most markedly, a stream of consciousness narrative. Thus, Woolf's text gracefully and imaginatively moves from the interiority of Clarissa Dalloway's thoughts, perceptions and memories to those of the her former lover, Peter Walsh, who has just returned from India, to those of Septimus Warren Smith, a kind of literary doppelganger to Clarissa, a broken young man who served in World War I and suffers the horrible psychological effects of that conflict. It is, in particular, Septimus who darkly hovers over the gaiety of Mrs. Dalloway's day and, ultimately, brings that psychological darkness to Mrs. Dalloway's party.
Continually challenging the reader, Woolf's difficult, stream of consiousness narrative technique brings the reader into the minds of the characters, the language on the page telling a coherent and deeply sensitive story by describing sensations, memories, feelings. But it is worth the effort, for "Mrs. Dalloway" is truly one of the great works of Twentieth century English literature, a modern novel that can stand comfortably, albeit diminuitively, next to The Great Marcel and the creator of Bloom's Day.
Book Review: A Masterful Modern Novel
Summary: 5 Stars
Marcel Proust's "In Search of Lost Time" and James Joyce's "Ulysses" stand, to this day, as the two great classics of modern literature. In Proust, the stunning use of memory and sense perception, as well as the stream of consciousness narrative of the great "roman fleuve", marked the auspicious beginnings of a modern sensibility and technique in fiction. Similarly, Joyce's difficult, blasphemous and similarly streaming novel, set in the course of a single day and emanating from the perceiving mind of its narrator, carried forward this sensibility and technique. It is not surprising, then, that Virginia Woolf, while writing her brilliant and innovative "Mrs. Dalloway", was reading these two authors at the time, for Woolf's novel stands as yet another masterful work of modern sensibility and technique, a classic in its own right."Mrs. Dalloway" is set entirely during a single bright beautiful day in June, when Clarissa Dalloway is occupied by last minute preparations for a party she is having that evening. The wife of Richard Dalloway, a member of Parliament, Mrs. Dalloway is someone who is skilled, like an artist, at creating the perfect party. But the resemblances to a character and a narrative from Jane Austen or Anthony Trollope end there, for Woolf's fictional agenda is consciously modern and her technique is entirely that of interior monologue, omniscient description and, most markedly, a stream of consciousness narrative. Thus, Woolf's text gracefully and imaginatively moves from the interiority of Clarissa Dalloway's thoughts, perceptions and memories to those of the her former lover, Peter Walsh, who has just returned from India, to those of Septimus Warren Smith, a kind of literary doppelganger to Clarissa, a broken young man who served in World War I and suffers the horrible psychological effects of that conflict. It is, in particular, Septimus who darkly hovers over the gaiety of Mrs. Dalloway's day and, ultimately, brings that psychological darkness to Mrs. Dalloway's party.
Continually challenging the reader, Woolf's difficult, stream of consiousness narrative technique brings the reader into the minds of the characters, the language on the page telling a coherent and deeply sensitive story by describing sensations, memories, feelings. But it is worth the effort, for "Mrs. Dalloway" is truly one of the great works of Twentieth century English literature, a modern novel that can stand comfortably, albeit diminuitively, next to The Great Marcel and the creator of Bloom's Day.
Book Review: Avant-garde yet timeless
Summary: 5 Stars
Like many recent reviewers, I came to "Mrs Dalloway" via the movie adaptation of "The Hours". When I visited my local book exchange in search of a second-hand copy, I was chided by the proprietor for succumbing to popular culture. The book was no longer in stock, but I was assured that prior to the release of "The Hours", Mrs Dalloway had long sat unloved and forgotten on the shelf. Now, having read it, I know why Mrs Dalloway is so unpopular most of the time. This book is a challenging, and at times confusing read!
But is "Mrs Dalloway" an historical curiosity, or a timeless masterpiece? My vote goes with "timeless masterpiece" (and that's having perservered with the book through several episodes of wanting to put it down and forget about it).
I believe that Woolf exhibited ground-breaking style in "Mrs Dalloway". But I'm sure I'm not alone in feeling relief that her style isn't widely emulated today. I had absolutely no idea what to expect when I opened "Mrs Dalloway", so the style (multiple streams of consciousness) came as something of a shock to me. Creating social commentary out of streams of consciousness must be the *ultimate* form of "showing, not telling". Woolf doesn't tell us how it is ... she lets us take a peek and see for ourselves. This book is dense with insight.
Indeed, I found Woolf's social commentary, expressed by a somewhat bewildering array of characters, to be painfully accurate and timeless, but certainly not heart-warming.
The story itself is dated as a direct result of rich detail (we encounter glove shops, parisols, painful formality, and colonialism - the Indians, for example, are "coolies").
I can't resist adding that, in light of all that painful formality, I was more than a little bit surprised to find a homosexual encounter described as "the most exquisite moment of [Clarissa's] whole life" (p.34).
Woolf beat Madonna onto the lesbian pop-culture bandwagon by several decades! (Although I suspect Woolf's motives were somewhat more sincere than Madonna's).
Nevertheless, it took me a long time to warm to "Mrs Dalloway". It wasn't until I got to the description of the "ugly, clumsy, odious" Doris Kilman ("whom Heaven knows Clarissa would have liked to help") on p.127 that Woolf totally won me over. Woolf depicts the life of an unloved woman with devastating acidity. In my opinion, it is verbal illustrations like these that make "Mrs Dalloway" a timeless masterpiece.
Now I feel inspired to have another crack at "Orlando" ...
Book Review: Frankly, Virginia Woolf was/is a KNOWING book editor
Summary: 5 Stars
with "Hogarth Press." One has respect and gratitude for her entertwined characters lives and plot lines...if one has a sensibility. As to the man who favours Joyce. Joyce's sensibility it typically masculine, I favour Woolf's, being a woman. Both were experimenting. I don't see the reason to bash Joyce in a review on Virginia Woolf and I hardly think you're debunking good ole Ginny so much as bashing the "feminine aesthetic."
The (ahem) person meanwhile who called for a better editor, I am a writer, and I have friends that are writers...NOT hack writers, writers of some merit and the "butchery" committed by many editors has been notorious throughout history. Editors, like "Hollywood Producers" are often not on the creative but on the $$$ end. That said, this is NOT always the case, I am also an editor myself, and...when it's for love of literature and not the market place you don't find formulaic interpretations which could be written into a scriptable software (and already have)!
DO THIS DON'T DO THIS.
This is not a recipe for the imagination, for invention, but for the repression "editor" who called "Portrait" names as well, descried.
In the name of "Freedom of thought" you should bless this book as an eloquent tome to the imagination. Mrs. Dalloway's party is significant to HER in a way that another person may find significance in another mundane event which somehow, in the carrying out of it, is magnificently or horrificly "transformed" within our minds, our hearts, our souls.
Septimus intrigues. He weaves with his wife into Clarissa's life. Septimus' so called "Shell Shock" is now known as PTSD. It is significant that Virginia Woolf knew and wrote of it.
Living in an increasingly "pathologized" age where "psychiatrists" and "psychologists" must make their bread and butter by making up diseases of the week and haute "pharmaceutical" du jour, Clarissa's indictment of THAT profession, and of so called "charities" hoping to "expel" unwanted displaced populations could not be more timely.
Mrs. Dalloway is a challenging, golden, interesting, lovely, and "naturally sapphic" (as we are in our adolescence) read.
Go for it!!!