Mrs. Dalloway
by Virginia Woolf
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Book Summary Information
Author: Virginia WoolfNarrator: Virginia Leishman
Edition: Audio Cassette
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Format: Unabridged
Published: 2003-04
ISBN: 1402557566
Publisher: Recorded Books
Book Reviews of Mrs. Dalloway
Book Review: stream-of-consciousness done right!
Summary: 4 Stars
The style and execution of Mrs. Dalloway is of necessity a departure from her famous essay, A Room of One's Own, and even from the smattering of the short stories of hers I've read, and normally the comparison many make of it to James Joyce's Ulysses would have turned me right off. I'm glad I gave it a go, though, because in my opinion Woolf takes the stream-of-consciousness writing style and does it right, threading the narrative together in a wandering but coherent and meaningful way.
The story spins itself out over just one day, as Clarissa Dalloway occupies herself with the planning of a party she's hosting that evening. Throughout the course of the day we jump around from her point of view to a few other characters she comes in contact with, namely Peter Walsh, an old friend who has been living away from England for decades, mostly in India, and has now returned to try and work out divorce plans so he can marry a woman back in India. In their youth Peter and Clarissa were a couple whom most thought would marry, but she ended up marrying Richard Dalloway instead, an event that Peter has never really gotten over. When he comes to see Clarissa the day of her party they reminisce about old times, particularly about a specific weekend they and another friend of Clarissa's, Sally Seton, had spent together at Clarissa's family estate. This is where we get the most informative glimpses into Clarissa's youth and what has formed her over the years, including her romantic but not entirely understood feelings for her friend Sally.
Two other significant points of view we get are from the loosely connected character of Septimus Smith and his Italian wife Lucrezia as they're out and about in town. Septimus, a WWI vet, is clearly mentally disturbed and distraught over something he can't quite clarify, even to himself, and although it's never known if he's suffering post-traumatic war stress or is perhaps schizophrenic, the passages following his rambling, tormented thoughts are intense. His wife Lucrezia is desperately worried about him and unsure what to do, and feeling like a displaced foreigner dropped in a strange town, has no one to turn to. When she finally calls upon the local doctor and he tells her Septimus will have to be taken away, she is horrified and frightened, both for him and herself.
Mrs. Dalloway was actually the combination of two short stories, "Mrs. Dalloway in Bond Street" and "The Prime Minister". Generally I don't find a lot of literature that looks at the social aftermath, even peripherally, of WWI (Hemingway stands out as an exception, of course, but he focuses more on the war itself) since that conflict tends to be overshadowed by the events of WWII. The impact of the first world war, though, was significant, given the incredibly high death toll and economic impact. "This late age of the world's experience had bred in them all, all men and women, a well of tears," the narrative goes at one point, speaking volumes in those few words.
It's masterfully done and has a delicacy and eloquence about it that makes each word important. Woolf's vision and unique perception of the world around her is extraordinary: "It was a sudden revelation, a tinge like a blush which one tried to check and then, as it spread, one yielded to its expansion, and rushed to the farthest verge and there quivered and felt the world come closer, swollen with some astonishing significance, some pressure of rapture, which split its thin skin and gushed and poured with an extraordinary alleviation over the cracks and sores! Then, for that moment, she had seen an illumination; a match burning in a crocus; an inner meaning almost expressed. But the close withdrew; the hard softened. It was over -- the moment."
In the end I was left wondering what the events of the day would signify for Clarissa, as she looks down the path at impending old age and is vaguely, uncomfortably aware that the years she has lived, rather than forming her more clearly and definitively as a person, have seemed to somehow make her less; that her sense of self has been watered down, as if essential parts of herself have been allowed to erode and disappear, rather than crystallize and build some crucial inner self. The image remaining is one of death, when at the end of life a person eventually returns to the original state one is born in: soft, embryonic and unformed. Disturbing!
That's just my own interpretation, mind you. At any rate, it's a compelling read from a woman I can't help but think must have tormented herself with her own thoughts and questions, so much so that she eventually committed suicide. Like Sylvia Plath, she obviously had a brilliant mind and it's a shame the world was robbed of it too soon.
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