Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Mrs. Dalloway
Book Review: Challenging and infuriating, but worth it.
Summary: 4 Stars
If you read "Mrs.Dalloway" with an eye to plot it will be slow and its greatness will remain obscure.However, if a reader relaxes and lets herself enjoy the tender prose, and the emotional storm suffered by many characters(especially Septimus and his wife), Mrs. Dalloway will haunt the mind with its insights.
Furthermore, reading "Mrs.Dalloway" is great preparation for its inspired (and there I say superior) contemporary sequel,"The Hours."
Book Review: Clarissa -- why Clarissa?
Summary: 5 Stars
Read as much as you can about Virginia Woolf -- especially the biographies by Quentin Bell, Hermione Lee, and Julia Briggs (2005) before re-reading Mrs Dalloway. In fact, I can't imagine enjoying Mrs Dalloway without "knowing" Virginia Woolf. Some say Sir Walter Scott invented the historical novel. If true, I think one can say Virginia Woolf invented the modern autobiographical novel. Clarissa, Mrs Dalloway, is Virginia. Mrs Dalloway was published in 1925 when VW was 43 years old; Clarissa is 52 and perhaps that's how old Mrs Woolf felt when she wrote her autobiography of middle age. When sane, she is Mrs Dalloway; when mad, she is Septimus. Her descriptions of madness (hallucinations, paranoid delusions) are incredible, especially when written at a time when Freud (whose work Virginia's Hogarth Press had published) was all the rage. Her questioning lesbian love is extraordinarily interesting -- not so much whether it was morally right or wrong but, at a deeper level, what was lesbian love all about and where did it fit in. It becomes a parlour game to correlate details on every page with the corresponding details in Mrs Woolf's life. Her questioning lesbian love in 1925 would have occurred at the height of her involvement with Vita Sackville-West, whom she first met in 1922. Even little references to the fact that an individual would not inherit a family home due to male preference inheritance laws tracks with Vita's predicament. And why "Clarissa"? Where did that name come from? Mrs Woolf's diary entries and letters suggest it was a random choice, but I wonder if it was not a reference to Samuel Richardson's Clarissa?Book Review: Clarissa is you
Summary: 5 Stars
I first read Mrs. Dalloway in 1961. Over the years I have re-read this classic novel more than a dozen times, always with intense pleasure. After her first two less successful attempts at fiction writing, Virginia Woolf surpises us here with a masterful display of her genius. There is barely a story, or a plot here. Even characterization is minimal. Yet the powerful description of the tumult in a human soul during the course of a single day leaves the reader begging for more. Woolf unlike Marcel Proust did not attempt to resurrect the past. Unlike Joyce, she did not try to push tbe use of the stream of consciousnes technique to its limits. Her technique is her own. It allows her to give her readers insightful glimpses into Clarisa's joys and fears, her constant expectation of ecstasy and awareness of the abysses that surround her.
It is a masterpiece that should be enjoyed at the right time and when you are in the right mood.
Book Review: Cumbersome Yet Delightful
Summary: 3 Stars
This modern classic novel is not an easy read but it hides a multitude of reasons to keep reading between its cumbersome lines.
Mrs. Dalloway leaves her upper crust English home one bright morning to buy flowers for her party. In the day that opens up Mrs. Dalloway crosses paths and encounters old friends to the point that she spends her day in contemplation, something it appears she hasn't done for quite some time. Against the backdrop of a ticking Big Ben Clarissa Dalloway remembers her youth, her exuberance and her dislike for societies norms but interestingly finds herself to be all that she distasted as a vibrant young woman filled with a sense of freedom. In her world is the ever moody, Peter Walsh, a man who never quite left his love behind as he watched Clarissa walk away with Richard Dalloway so many years ago and Sally (her long lost best friend) who once contributed to Clarissa's immature whims. Unknowingly Septimus Warren Smith lurks behind the day in his war-torn madness and he becomes a factor in Mrs. Dalloway's delightful day.
Virginia Woolf wrote this novel in 1925 many years prior to her own mental illness and suicide, but within the lines of this novel I sensed a tortured soul and a scattered but calculated mind at work. I admit I struggled with Woolf's writing style and never quite found a fit that felt right. She writes with such stops and starts that one must almost be a literary professor to keep up with her thoughts as they are strung out into extraordinarily long sentences laced with a multitude of punctuations. I found that I was often lost on what character she was delving into and had to go back and re-read entire paragraphs to figure out where I had lost her thought. She is certainly demanding of one's attention! Interestingly enough there are many references to water in this novel and I felt the beginnings of a connection between Woolf's characters and her own suicide method. Don't expect simplicity in Woolf she believed that her style of calculated impressionism would open up the art of the novel. Certainly in one day Mrs. Dalloway experiences what most people search a lifetime for and I found Woolf's explanation of aging quite moving, "But age had brushed her; even as a mermaid might behold in her glass the setting sun on some very clear evening over the waves. There was a breath of tenderness; her severity, her prudery, her woodenness were all warmed through now...."
I recommend watching the film, "Mrs. Dalloway," with Vanessa Redgrave after reading this book once or twice because somehow bringing Woolf's characters to life gives them a less elite meaning and allows for a bit of commonness and intimacy. But to grasp the meaning wrapped in Woolf's prose this novel must be read over and over again. For so fragile a creature as Woolf ended up being she is by far one of the strongest writers to have graced this world and her work is something to spend hours pondering over.
Book Review: Dazzling and idiosyncratic language; whirlwind of thoughts
Summary: 4 Stars
Out of a gnawing curiosity after reading The Hours, I found my way to Mrs. Dalloway. The novel unfolds over one sultry day in London as Clarissa Dalloway is preparing for a party she will give in the evening. Smith has battled against mental illness from his experiences in World War II. Clarissa kicks off the day buying flowers for the party. As the day unravels, narration begins to shift to different characters. Clarissa reminisces of her entangled love relationships at Bourton. During her earlier years, Clarissa caught herself between her fiancé, Peter Walsh, her sensual female friend Sally Seton, and her husband Richard Dalloway. Much to Clarissa's surprise (as well as mine) is when all these old-time lovers reunion at the evening party in the presence of the Prime Minister. Peter Walsh shows up at Clarissa's doorstep right before the party after running off to India for some 25 years. The voluptuous Sally Seton also makes her entrance as Lady Rosseter. Present among the London elite are Sir Septimus Warren Smith and his wife. Smith has struggled with mental illness from his experiences of World War I. Incidents that lead to convergence of these characters is what makes the book a legacy (you have to read and find out).The book overall does not manifest a structure. Virginia Woolf has told the story through the multiple point of views from the different characters. The book also explores the hidden thoughts, feelings, and actions and relies on which to tell the story. At the end the story is seamlessly woven together with the party being the meeting points of all her characters. The pleasure of reading this book stems from seeing how these characters have gone their own separate and unpredictable ways, headed off in their own directions, pinned by memory, and cross path again at the evening party. If you find reading The Hours somewhat confusing, Mrs. Dalloway is even more so, between the shifts of characters. For a tiny book Woolf has written prose that is packed with figurative language, poetic expressions, vivid details and provocative tones. The sensual affair between Clarissa and Sally is hinted at in a stifling manner. Michael Cunningham graciously makes that affair come into fruition by putting Clarissa and Sally in the same bedroom in The Hours. The book is simple in plot, but rich in language. That is, certain level of attentiveness is required for reading. I'm convinced that Michael Cunningham must have inherited Woolf's idiosyncratic language and long sentences! And I think this is what many fellow reviewers refer as the "stream-of-consciousness" approach. But don't let that the big term turn you off and miss this great novel. A crafted work. 4.0 stars.