Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
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Book Reviews of Mrs. Dalloway
Book Review: Great Book
Summary: 5 Stars
What inspired me to read this book was the movie "The Hours," which is a story of three women in three different eras, whose lives are connected by Virginia Woolf's book, Mrs. Dalloway. The movie portrays Virginia Woolf as she is writing this book. She did seem to have a perfect life. She had connections; a loving husband, that entire one could wish for, but she was not happy, and her quite depressed way of life was reflected in this book.
It all begins with that one sentence: "Mrs. Dalloway decided that she would buy the flowers herself." And that is the first sentence in a capturing series of sentences that make you want to read the book all in one go. Follow the life of Clarissa Dalloway and surrounding persons as they go through one day of their lives, in utmost emotion and thoughts. Experience madness, arrogance, jealousy, and doubts, and how a gauzy veil of poise and grace covers up these feelings. The story is of Mrs. Dalloway, who is holding a party. As she is mending her dress, preparing the silver, and making sure that all the guests know about the party, she thinks about life. She thinks about Peter Walsh, her teenage lover and about her husband, Richard. She thinks that she was right not to marry Peter, who is back from India for the divorce of the woman whom he loves. She thinks of Lady Bruton, who has invited Richard to lunch, but not her. While she is thinking this, Mr. Septimus Warren Smith, a war veteran, is avoiding the great brute with the red nostrils, or in other words, the doctor who is putting him in a mental institution. An institution where his madness could be cured. Watching this scene is Septimus' wife, Lucrezia, who worries about her husband, and is scared of his insane words. In the end, he ultimately kills himself. All of these lives, entwined together into one whole web of insecurity and uncertainty.
This book definitely isn't very easy to read, as it is written in "stream of thought," but once you, the reader, is wrapped up in its pages, it's quite hard to put the book down, because it reflects the deepest and darkest emotions that we feel, and it proves that we are not alone in those feelings. And thus, the book ends with the reader still entranced by its ironic truth.
Book Review: Into the Characters' Minds -- Woolf Delivers the Readers [46][T]
Summary: 5 Stars
This novel depicts much of early 20th century Britain as others did - but in a very different manner.
This is a detailed reflection of one person's ideas whose ideals are influenced and among the upper crust society of early 20th century England. Unlike Evelyn Waugh, Woolf does not stride with succinct and pernicious dialogue (but I find similarities between Clarissa in this book to Brenda Mast in "Handful of Dust"). Unlike Max Beerbohm, Woolf does not overly state how cutely atrocious British society can behave. Unlike E.M. Forster, Woolf does not engage in panoramic writing. Each is great. Woolf is unique and magnificent.
Moving about in an undulating fashion, her ability to have the characters' thoughts zig and zag throughout each sentence of contemplation is unrivaled. She moves within their thoughts so quickly that within the confines of this less than 200-page novel, we know a tremendous amount about Clarissa and almost as much about her dumped early lover, Peter Walsh, and her old friend Sally Seton.
Dialogue exists, but it is the characters' thoughts that speak so vividly. We learn what it is or was that Clarissa did to Peter Walsh that has made him upset or even mad at her. We learn a little about the depression funk of the war-damaged Septimus Warren Smith (Interestingly, as Woolf too was a depressed person who followed Smith in suicide, I wonder why more of his angst was not described or detailed). And, we discover that even one hundred years ago, mothers and daughters (Clarissa and Elizabeth) had problems with one another, in a fashion reminiscent of the "rebellious" years of today's teens.
I have not read all of the great writers, but among those I have read, none can enter the thoughts and perceptions as well or as vividly as Woolf. This is a great skill by an unmistakenly great writer, who may have shined most with this novel or its contemporary - "To the Lighthouse."
I add that I read this AFTER I read "The Hours." I would recommend to others to do the opposite. And, I would add a recommendation to sandwich those two books with "To the Lighthouse" -- as the three would make a great trilogy of exquisite reading.
Book Review: 'fear no more the heat of the sun'
Summary: 5 Stars
I just finished the Hours after reading Ms. Dalloway, and while both are excellent books, I can't help but feel that there is something seriously wrong with the conclusions of the books.
The protagonist females in both books focus on singular events as the locus for happiness in life, a secret kiss and a moment by the sea, and the unimpeachable quality of those moment in youth, leads to self doubt and pining for what might have been; As the hours drip by, one at a time.
There is a quite obvious tint of mental illness to most of the main characters in both books, a sense of dread and foreboding of the horrors each passing hour might bring, of the steadying drum of moment upon moment upon moment eating away at some fundamental sense of self, to the extent that death, the cessation of the present, begins to sound like sweet relief. This is an intriguing but terrible perspective. Life often offers up obstacles that appear insurmountable, yet these obstacles are only ever truly insurmountable if we choose not to climb them, if we turn away from the promise of the future, our prior experiences or neuroses filling us with bilious dread of what could pass, allowing the siren song of death's quiet to lull into the dreariest of complicacy.
Life is a vivid array of opportunities, each hour of each day could offer a wonderful moment, or it could just be enjoyed for what it is. 5pm on a Tuesday in October may not offer a moment in which everything will make sense and be good, but it may offer a phone call from a friend you haven't seen in a while, or a red tailed hawk swooping down in the brush by the road as you drive home to grab a vole, or anything small but meaningful that tells you, that your life, all life, has purpose.
The quality of the book is unimpeachable, but the quality of the message can be called into question.
"...fear no more the heat of the sun. She must go back to them. But what an extrodinary night! She felt somehow very like him-- the young man who had killed himself. She felt glad that he had done it; thrown it away while they went on living. The clock was striking. The leaden circles dissolved in the air"
Book Review: Universal Love
Summary: 5 Stars
"To the Lighthouse" was my first experience in reading Virginia Woolf, and from that dense text I (like many other readers) developed a view of her as an eccentric and unnecessarily difficult writer of the modernist avant-garde. However, this book changed my mind.
Quite simply, "Mrs. Dalloway" is one of the most complex, intricate, revelatory, intelligent, and beautiful books ever written. The story unfolds on a hot day in June, 1923, as the wealthy Clarissa Dalloway prepares to throw a party for her friends in the elite social world of aristocratic London. Meanwhile, a parallel series of events unfolds in which the shell-shocked World War I hero Septimus Smith teeters on the edge of sanity, and society itself. Throughout the day, other intriguing characters also enter the narrative through Woolf's characteristic stream-of-consciousness style. While that basic summary may sound rather unremarkable, there is so much more to "Mrs. Dalloway" than I could possibly discuss here. Woolf turns the everyday observances and events of urban life into a complex imagistic web of social critiques, intense memories, historical traumas, and subtle discussions of the arbitrary nature of language, nationality, class, sanity, and identity.
Now, I won't deny that this book is on the difficult side. Because of this, I would advise anyone embarking on their first journey into Woolf's world to purchase the Oxford World's Classics edition of "Mrs. Dalloway". Read the introduction carefully, and check the explanatory notes as you read through the text. While you won't catch everything on the first read, the introduction will help you understand some of the major images and themes of the text, and make your reading experience far more enjoyable. Don't worry if you sometimes forget who is talking, or encounter a strange digression. Those are the things that make books like this so rewarding to return to again and again.
So, to summarize, if you want to have your eyes opened to some of the major issues of literary modernism, and experience a beautiful and entertaining book, I highly recommend you give "Mrs. Dalloway" a chance.
Book Review: I finally get it. Mrs. Dalloway revisited.
Summary: 5 Stars
I first read Mrs. Dalloway in high school. It was the first Woolf that I ever attempted to read. I have a very clear memory of literally wrestling with the text one night while I was babysitting. I made notes in the margins and kept lists and tried all kinds of ways to figure out what Woolf was doing and what she was saying. It was frustrating, because she is such a beautiful writer that I really wanted to understand it more than I did.
Over the years since that time, I have read a number of other Woolf novels, and loved them. I have always been a little bit nervous about going back to Mrs. Dalloway. I had some time recently, so I finally decided to give it a go.
I am not sure if the difference is age, or familiarity with her prose, but I had no trace of the same difficulty that I had experienced 20 years ago. If you let go and simply enjoy the writing, then the book is just lovely and stunningly clear.
Some people kill themselves. Other people survive and give parties. Both choices carry with them their own moral consequences. The world is beautiful, and full of flowers, but also and impossibly full of separation and isolation. I think that part of the difference in understanding is truly age. At 16 I could (dimly) understand Septimus and the young Sally. But I had no perspective to understand Clarissa Dalloway herself. It had not occurred to me yet that living to give parties is also a choice, and one as awful in its own way as the option Septimus takes.
It has been suggested that this book makes a good companion to reading or screening The Hours. I second that notion. I actually think that it particularly illuminates the film, but it goes well with both if you have not read it. I suppose that it goes without saying that this is not the place that I would recommend beginning with Virginia Woolf. But then again, you never know. It is such a lovely work and there are bound to be people who are more successful than I was reading it the first time around.