Mrs. Dalloway

By Virginia Woolf

This masterpiece of modern literature by the author of Orlando is an intimate and probing account of a single day in the life of a London society woman.

It’s the spring of 1923 and Clarissa Dalloway must prepare her Westminster home for the guests she will receive this evening. As the wife of a Parliament Minister, proper decorum is of upmost importance, and she decides to buy the flowers herself. Walking through the streets of London, Clarissa’s entire life swirls through her mind as Big Ben tolls out the passing hours of the day.
 
On her journey, Clarissa will encounter friends and memories; regrets and dreams of what might have been. From her happy youth to the realities of World War I and the very logical reasons for marrying her husband, her stream of consciousness is evoked with lucidity and depth by one of the twentieth century’s most important literary stylists.
 
Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway is “conceived so brilliantly, dimensioned so thoroughly and documented so absolutely that her type, in the words of Constantin Stanislavsky, might be said to have been done ‘inviolably and for all time’” (The New York Times).
 
“Virginial Woolf is one of the few writers who changed life for all of us. Her combination of intellectual courage and painful emotional sensitivity created a new way of perceiving and living in the world.” —Margaret Drabble
 
This ebook has been professionally proofread to ensure accuracy and readability on all devices.
 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Media
• Release date: Sep 24, 2019
• ISBN: 9781504058919

Virginia Woolf

Virginia Woolf was born in 1882, the youngest daughter of the Victorian writer Leslie Stephen. After her father's death, Virginia moved with her sister Vanessa (later Vanessa Bell) and two of her brothers, to 46 Gordon Square, which was to be the first meeting place of the Bloomsbury Group. Virginia married Leonard Woolf in 1912, and together they established the Hogarth Press. Virginia also published her first novel, The Voyage Out, in 1912, and she subsequently wrote eight more, several of which are considered classics, as well as two books of seminal feminist thought. Woolf suffered from mental illness throughout her life and committed suicide in 1941.

Book preview

Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself.

For Lucy had her work cut out for her. The doors would be taken off their hinges; Rumpelmayer’s men were coming. And then, thought Clarissa Dalloway, what a morning—fresh as if issued to children on a beach.

What a lark! What a plunge! For so it had always seemed to her, when, with a little squeak of the hinges, which she could hear now, she had burst open the French windows and plunged at Bourton into the open air. How fresh, how calm, stiller than this of course, the air was in the early morning; like the flap of a wave; the kiss of a wave; chill and sharp and yet (for a girl of eighteen as she then was) solemn, feeling as she did, standing there at the open window, that something awful was about to happen; looking at the flowers, at the trees with the smoke winding off them and the rooks rising, falling; standing and looking until Peter Walsh said, Musing among the vegetables?—was that it?—I prefer men to cauliflowers—was that it? He must have said it at breakfast one morning when she had gone out on to the terrace—Peter Walsh. He would be back from India one of these days, June or July, she forgot which, for his letters were awfully dull; it was his sayings one remembered; his eyes, his pocket-knife, his smile, his grumpiness and, when millions of things had utterly vanished—how strange it was!—a few sayings like this about cabbages.

She stiffened a little on the kerb, waiting for Durtnall’s van to pass. A charming woman, Scrope Purvis thought her (knowing her as one does know people who live next door to one in Westminster); 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 she perched, never seeing him, waiting to cross, very upright.

For having lived in Westminster—how many years now? over twenty,—one feels even in the midst of the traffic, or waking at night, Clarissa was positive, a particular hush, or solemnity; an indescribable pause; a suspense (but that might be her heart, affected, they said, by influenza) before Big Ben strikes. There! Out it boomed. First a warning, musical; then the hour, irrevocable. The leaden circles dissolved in the air. Such fools we are, she thought, crossing Victoria Street. For Heaven only knows why one loves it so, how one sees it so, making it up, building it round one, tumbling it, creating it every moment afresh; but the veriest frumps, the most dejected of miseries sitting on doorsteps (drink their downfall) do the same; can’t be dealt with, she felt positive, by Acts of Parliament for that very reason: they love life. In people’s eyes, in the swing, tramp, and trudge; in the bellow and the uproar; the carriages, motor cars, omnibuses, vans, sandwich men shuffling and swinging; brass bands; barrel organs; in the triumph and the jingle and the strange high singing of some aeroplane overhead was what she loved; life; London; this moment of June.

For it was the middle of June. The War was over, except for some one like Mrs. Foxcroft at the Embassy last night eating her heart out because that nice boy was killed and now the old Manor House must go to a cousin; or Lady Bexborough who opened a bazaar, they said, with the telegram in her hand, John, her favourite, killed; but it was over; thank Heaven—over. It was June. The King and Queen were at the Palace. And everywhere, though it was still so early, there was a beating, a stirring of galloping ponies, tapping of cricket bats; Lords, Ascot, Ranelagh and all the rest of it; wrapped in the soft mesh of the grey-blue morning air, which, as the day wore on, would unwind them, and set down on their lawns and pitches the bouncing ponies, whose forefeet just struck the ground and up they sprung, the whirling young men, and laughing girls in their transparent muslins who, even now, after dancing all night, were taking their absurd woolly dogs for a run; and even now, at this hour, discreet old dowagers were shooting out in their motor cars on errands of mystery; and the shopkeepers were fidgeting in their windows with their paste and diamonds, their lovely old sea-green brooches in eighteenth-century settings to tempt Americans (but one must economise, not buy things rashly for Elizabeth), and she, too, loving it as she did with an absurd and faithful passion, being part of it, since her people were courtiers once in the time of the Georges, she, too, was going that very night to kindle and illuminate; to give her party. But how strange, on entering the Park, the silence; the mist; the hum; the slow-swimming happy ducks; the pouched birds waddling; and who should be coming along with his back against the Government buildings, most appropriately, carrying a despatch box stamped with the Royal Arms, who but Hugh Whitbread; her old friend Hugh—the admirable Hugh!

Good-morning to you, Clarissa! said Hugh, rather extravagantly, for they had known each other as children. Where are you off to?

I love walking in London, said Mrs. Dalloway. Really it’s better than walking in the country.

They had just come up—unfortunately—to see doctors. Other people came to see pictures; go to the opera; take their daughters out; the Whitbreads came to see doctors. Times without number Clarissa had visited Evelyn Whitbread in a nursing home. Was Evelyn ill again? Evelyn was a good deal out of sorts, said Hugh, intimating by a kind of pout or swell of his very well-covered, manly, extremely handsome, perfectly upholstered body (he was almost too well dressed always, but presumably had to be, with his little job at Court) that his wife had some internal ailment, nothing serious, which, as an old friend, Clarissa Dalloway would quite understand without requiring him to specify. Ah yes, she did of course; what a nuisance; and felt very sisterly and oddly conscious at the same time of her hat. Not the right hat for the early morning, was that it? For Hugh always made her feel, as he bustled on, raising his hat rather extravagantly and assuring her that she might be a girl of eighteen, and of course he was coming to her party to-night, Evelyn absolutely insisted, only a little late he might be after the party at the Palace to which he had to take one of Jim’s boys,—she always felt a little skimpy beside Hugh; schoolgirlish; but attached to him, partly from having known him always, but she did think him a good sort in his own way, though Richard was nearly driven mad by him, and as for Peter Walsh, he had never to this day forgiven her for liking him.

She could remember scene after scene at Bourton—Peter furious; Hugh not, of course, his match in any way, but still not a positive imbecile as Peter made out; not a mere barber’s block. When his old mother wanted him to give up shooting or to take her to Bath he did it, without a word; he was really unselfish, and as for saying, as Peter did, that he had no heart, no brain, nothing but the manners and breeding of an English gentleman, that was only her dear Peter at his worst; and he could be intolerable; he could be impossible; but adorable to walk with on a morning like this.

(June had drawn out every leaf on the trees. The mothers of Pimlico gave suck to their young. Messages were passing from the Fleet to the Admiralty. Arlington Street and Piccadilly seemed to chafe the very air in the Park and lift its leaves hotly, brilliantly, on waves of that divine vitality which Clarissa loved. To dance, to ride, she had adored all that.)

For they might be parted for hundreds of years, she and Peter; she never wrote a letter and his were dry sticks; but suddenly it would come over her, If he were with me now what would he say?—some days, some sights bringing him back to her calmly, without the old bitterness; which perhaps was the reward of having cared for people; they came back in the middle of St. James’s Park on a fine morning—indeed they did. But Peter—however beautiful the day might be, and the trees and the grass, and the little girl in pink—Peter never saw a thing of all that. He would put on his spectacles, if she told him to; he would look. It was the state of the world that interested him; Wagner, Pope’s poetry, people’s characters eternally, and the defects of her own soul. How he scolded her! How they argued! She would marry a Prime Minister and stand at the top of a staircase; the perfect hostess he called her (she had cried over it in her bedroom), she had the makings of the perfect hostess, he said.

So she would still find herself arguing in St. James’s Park, still making out that she had been right—and she had too—not to marry him. For in marriage a little licence, a little independence there must be between people living together day in day out in the same house; which Richard gave her, and she him. (Where was he this morning for instance? Some committee, she never asked what.) But with Peter everything had to be shared; everything gone into. And it was intolerable, and when it came to that scene in the little garden by the fountain, she had to break with him or they would have been destroyed, both of them ruined, she was convinced; though she had borne about with her for years like an arrow sticking in her heart the grief, the anguish; and then the horror of the moment when some one told her at a concert that he had married a woman met on the boat going to India! Never should she forget all that! Cold, heartless, a prude, he called her. Never could she understand how he cared. But those Indian women did presumably—silly, pretty, flimsy nincompoops. And she wasted her pity. For he was quite happy, he assured her—perfectly happy, though he had never done a thing that they talked of; his whole life had been a failure. It made her angry still.

She had reached the Park gates. She stood for a moment, looking at the omnibuses in Piccadilly.

She would not say of any one in the world now that they were this or were that. She felt very young; at the same time unspeakably aged. She sliced like a knife through everything; at the same time was outside, looking on. She had a perpetual sense, as she watched the taxi cabs, of being out, out, far out to sea and alone; she always had the feeling that it was very, very dangerous to live even one day. Not that she thought herself clever, or much out of the ordinary. How she had got through life on the few twigs of knowledge Fräulein Daniels gave them she could not think. She knew nothing; no language, no history; she scarcely read a book now, except memoirs in bed; and yet to her it was absolutely absorbing; all this; the cabs passing; and she would not say of Peter, she would not say of herself, I am this, I am that.

Her only gift was knowing people almost by instinct, she thought, walking on. If you put her in a room with some one, up went her back like a cat’s; or she purred. Devonshire House, Bath House, the house with the china cockatoo, she had seen them all lit up once; and remembered Sylvia, Fred, Sally Seton—such hosts of people; and dancing all night; and the waggons plodding past to market; and driving home across the Park. She remembered once throwing a shilling into the Serpentine. But every one remembered; what she loved was this, here, now, in front of her; the fat lady in the cab. Did it matter then, she asked herself, walking towards Bond Street, did it matter that she must inevitably cease completely; all this must go on without her; did she resent it; or did it not become consoling to believe that death ended absolutely? but that somehow in the streets of London, on the ebb and flow of things, here, there, she survived, Peter survived, lived in each other, she being part, she was positive, of the trees at home; of the house there, ugly, rambling all to bits and pieces as it was; part of people she had never met; being laid out like a mist between the people she knew best, who lifted her on their branches as she had seen the trees lift the mist, but it spread ever so far, her life, herself. But what was she dreaming as she looked into Hatchards’ shop window? What was she trying to recover? What image of white dawn in the country, as she read in the book spread open:

Fear no more the heat o’ the sun

Nor the furious winter’s rages.

This late age of the world’s experience had bred in them all, all men and women, a well of tears. Tears and sorrows; courage and endurance; a perfectly upright and stoical bearing. Think, for example, of the woman she admired most, Lady Bexborough, opening the bazaar.

There were Jorrocks’ Jaunts and Jollities; there were Soapy Sponge and Mrs. Asquith’s Memoirs and Big Game Shooting in Nigeria, all spread open. Ever so many books there were; but none that seemed exactly right to take to Evelyn Whitbread in her nursing home. Nothing that would serve to amuse her and make that indescribably dried-up little woman look, as Clarissa came in, just for a moment cordial; before they settled down for the usual interminable talk of women’s ailments. How much she wanted it—that people should look pleased as she came in, Clarissa thought and turned and walked back towards Bond Street, annoyed, because it was silly to have other reasons for doing things. Much rather would she have been one of those people like Richard who did things for themselves, whereas, she thought, waiting to cross, half the time she did things not simply, not for themselves; but to make people think this or that; perfect idiocy she knew (and now the policeman held up his hand) for no one was ever for a second taken in. Oh if she could have had her life over again! she thought, stepping on to the pavement, could have looked even differently!

She would have been, in the first place, dark like Lady Bexborough, with a skin of crumpled leather and beautiful eyes. She would have been, like Lady Bexborough, slow and stately; rather large; interested in politics like a man; with a country house; very dignified, very sincere. Instead of which she had a narrow pea-stick figure; a ridiculous little face, beaked like a bird’s. That she held herself well was true; and had nice hands and feet; and dressed well, considering that she spent little. But often now this body she wore (she stopped to look at a Dutch picture), this body, with all its capacities, seemed nothing—nothing at all. She had the oddest sense of being herself invisible, unseen; unknown; there being no more marrying, no more having of children now, but only this astonishing and rather solemn progress with the rest of them, up Bond Street, this being Mrs. Dalloway; not even Clarissa any more; this being Mrs. Richard Dalloway.

Bond Street fascinated her; Bond Street early in the morning in the season; its flags flying; its shops; no splash; no glitter; one roll of tweed in the shop where her father had bought his suits for fifty years; a few pearls; salmon on an iceblock.

That is all, she said, looking at the fishmonger’s. That is all, she repeated, pausing for a moment at the window of a glove shop where, before the War, you could buy almost perfect gloves. And her old Uncle William used to say a lady is known by her shoes and her gloves. He had turned on his bed one morning in the middle of the War. He had said, I have had enough. Gloves and shoes; she had a passion for gloves; but her own daughter, her Elizabeth, cared not a straw for either of them.

Not a straw, she thought, going on up Bond Street to a shop where they kept flowers for her when she gave a party. Elizabeth really cared for her dog most of all. The whole house this morning smelt of tar. Still, better poor Grizzle than Miss Kilman; better distemper and tar and all the rest of it than sitting mewed in a stuffy bedroom with a prayer book! Better anything, she was inclined to say. But it might be only a phase, as Richard said, such as all girls go through. It might be falling in love. But why with Miss Kilman? who had been badly treated of course; one must make allowances for that, and Richard said she was very able, had a really historical mind. Anyhow they were inseparable, and Elizabeth, her own daughter, went to Communion; and how she dressed, how she treated people who came to lunch she did not care a bit, it being her experience that the religious ecstasy made people callous (so did causes); dulled their feelings, for Miss Kilman would do anything for the Russians, starved herself for the Austrians, but in private inflicted positive torture, so insensitive was she, dressed in a green mackintosh coat. Year in year out she wore that coat; she perspired; she was never in the room five minutes without making you feel her superiority, your inferiority; how poor she was; how rich you were; how she lived in a slum without a cushion or a bed or a rug or whatever it might be, all her soul rusted with that grievance sticking in it, her dismissal from school during the War—poor embittered unfortunate creature! For it was not her one hated but the idea of her, which undoubtedly had gathered in to itself a great deal that was not Miss Kilman; had become one of those spectres with which one battles in the night; one of those spectres who stand astride us and suck up half our life-blood, dominators and tyrants; for no doubt with another throw of the dice, had the black been uppermost and not the white, she would have loved Miss Kilman! But not in this world. No.

It rasped her, though, to have stirring about in her this brutal monster! to hear twigs cracking and feel hooves planted down in the depths of that leaf-encumbered forest, the soul; never to be content quite, or quite secure, for at any moment

Reviews for Mrs. Dalloway

[dorritt_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Reading Mrs. Dalloway almost 100 years after its initial publication is a thought-provoking experience. One understands that Wolfe’s experimentation in modernism – the stream-of-consciousness narration, the deliberate manipulations of time and space – were daringly new at the time of their writing. Since then, however, authors have played with these concepts and taken them in so many new directions, it’s become harder to appreciate the novelty, the literary accomplishment, of those who first set us on this path. (Imagine being expected to pay homage to the guy who invented pagers now, in the era of cell phones.) I found myself asking, as I polished off the last page: “I get why this was a big deal back in the day, but aside from literary context and some passages of lovely, artful prose, what (if anything) does this novel have to offer?”On the one hand, the novel does explore some universal themes. For instance, many of the characters are hiding their true natures behind caricatures that either society or their own choices have forced upon them. (Richard, the politician who would really rather be a country gentleman; Peter, the colonial administrator who would really rather be a radical; Lady Bruton, the society matron who would really rather be a military leader.) It could be argued that Mrs. Dalloway is one of the few characters who doesn’t let others shape her, but instead pursues her own happiness with unusual clarity and determination. (Other reviewers have interpreted her fixation on giving parties as a sign that she is motivated by social position, but I would argue that she gives parties because she finds them interesting to HER – SHE enjoys the challenge of putting people together, of providing a context in which she exposes the true nature of others. Note how unimpressed she is when the Prime Minister shows up at her shindig? She’s far more interested in how her other guests react to his presence.) Many of the novel’s other themes, however, are only very shallowly explored: mental instability (Septimus), the limited roles for women in society (Lady Bruton, Elizabeth, Ellie), homosexuality (Clarissa & Sally, possibly Septimus & Evan), social pretention (Hugh), people who impose their will upon others (Dr. Bradshaw). I constantly found myself referring back to contemporary texts by writers like Greene, Forster, and Lessing that explored these themes in much more comprehensive ways. There are other aspects of the novel that fail to satisfy. I’ve tried to understand how Clarissa and Septimus are “dopplegangers,” but I’m not sure I get it – unless it’s as simple as “some people figure out how to be content with their lives, others don’t.” I’ve tried to understand the novel as a feminist text, but Mrs. Dalloway manages to find her happiness without having to challenge any social, gender, or cultural norms. I gather Wolfe at one time intended Clarissa to commit suicide at the penultimate party. While the final version of the story rejects this ending, Wolfe has left much of the foreshadowing intact (references to Clarissa’s “recent illness,” scenes in which she revisits her past life & decisions – much as authors would have us believe people nearing the end of their lives are wont to do), which feels like narrative carelessness. Finally, Wolfe’s characters – whether defined over the course of pages or paragraphs – rarely venture beyond caricatures. Her most successful character isn’t even Mrs. Dalloway - it is post-war London, the only entity to emerge from the pages vibrant, complex, and fully realized.In summary, I think the argument can be made that Mrs. Dalloway deserves its place on any list of 100 Most Important Works of Fiction. But I’m not ready to nominate it for a spot on 100 Best Works of Fiction – not in a world gifted with 100 additional years of texts that blend literary experimentation AND essential, consequential content.

[skavlanj · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A Book You Started But Never FinishedI read Mrs. Dalloway and The Hours in succession, then watched the movie {The} Hours. I enjoyed Mrs. Dalloway, but struggled with The Hours. I detested the prose and could never tell whether the narrator was omnisciently telling me the story from each readers perspective or describing the characters is his own voice. Two sentences to illustrate: 1. “She could have had a life as potent and dangerous as literature itself.” If this is Clarissa describing herself, good grief; if it's an omniscient narrator, good grief. This reads more like a novel from two centuries ago when a narrator telling the reader what to feel was acceptable. 2. “She has never lied like that before, not to someone she doesn’t know or love.” The word "that" made me stop and reread the sentence, substituting "this" (to stay in the present tense writing style). But then the subordinate clause at the end made me think there was a narrator telling me this story rather than listening in to the characters. I also expected some anecdote on who she had lied to.After finishing reading it, I swore off reading any more Pulitzer Prize winners from this timeframe (Olive Kitteridge was my first foray and I really detested that book; see my review for just how much).Then a funny thing happened: the movie {The} Hours (what do those braces signify?) completely ruined a book I didn't like. Watching the book converted into a vehicle for Meryl Streep (and to a lesser degree Juliette Moore and Nicole Kidman) made me appreciate the way Cunningham was true to Mrs. Dalloway's structure and characters. In the book, it is Louis (as an imitation of Peter) unexpectedly visiting Clarissa (as an imitation of Mrs. Dalloway) and crying. In the movie, the visit is planned and it is Clarissa who cries, who is the focal point of the drama. It is the impact on Clarissa, rather than Louis and Richard, that is significant. So I thought more about the book and, while I still detest the writing style (flamboyant with all that word connotes comes to mind) and don't think the point-of-view was clear or consistent, I am closer to neutral than when I finished reading it.

[lisapeet · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Well wow, that was pretty wonderful. Calling something a tour de force sounds so pretentious, but Woolf was breaking new ground then and it still feels fresh and surprising with every sentence. I love how she accomplishes that POV that swoops and darts, alighting on first one person and place and time and then another, and making it all work narratively. It's both extremely cinematic and also just impossible to imagine as an actual film—I know it's been done, though I've never seen it. And that wonderful weight given to things, objects, without giving them agency—just existence and primacy. "Admirable butlers, tawny chow dogs, halls laid in black and white lozenges with white blinds blowing."The setting resonates too, in these strange social distancing days—not London, but the fact that the characters have just emerged, somewhat shell-shocked, from a World War and a pandemic. They've changed from their ordeal, and at the same time the world has changed out from under them. They are working hard to preserve their respective status quos, yet under the surface they’re stunned, appreciative but disoriented, slightly breathless. And there but for the grace of 100 years go we, I think.I'm kind of surprised I haven't read it before this, but maybe that's reasonable in context:When one was young, said Peter, one was too much excited to know people. Now that one was old, fifty-two to be precise (Sally was fifty-five, in body, she said, but her heart was like a girl's of twenty); now that one was mature then, said Peter, one could watch, one could understand, and one did not lose the power of feeling, he said.

[margaretfield · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

woman plans to kill herself or have a dinner party

[deltaqueen50 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I was quite leery of reading Mrs. Dalloway, my second Virginia Woolf as I wasn’t a fan of my first attempt, Jacob’s Room. Once again the dreaded words “stream of consciousness” arose and I approached the book with trepidation. I chose to listen to the book as read by Juliet Stevenson, and this was an excellence choice as she did a stellar job and made the book come alive.Mrs. Dalloway is a day in the life of Clarissa Dalloway, a high society woman in post WW I England. Mrs. Dalloway’s main concerns revolve around relationships and connections. On this particular day she is preparing to host a party and as she goes through the day getting ready for the evening, she muses on her past relationships and how her life has turned out. One gets the sense that somewhere along the way, she has lost her inner self to the Mayfair hostess she shows to the outside world.We don’t spend the whole book locked in Mrs. Dalloways’ head. There is another storyline that runs parallel to that of Clarissa’s. This one involves a war veteran, Septimus Smith and his wife Lucrezia. Septimus is suffering from post traumatic stress and although he and Clarissa do not meet on this day, his actions are to affect her. We also meet and are given an insight into her past with encounters with her past suitor, Peter Walsh and her childhood best friend Sally Seton.Surprise, surprise! I loved this book. The author was able to place me inside this woman’s head and make me privy to her inner most thoughts. Although some would find her shallow and selfish, I found myself relating to her. I think most everyone thinks about their choices and wonder what life would be like if they had chosen a different path. This is a short book but is packed with unforgettable images and beautiful language and ultimately is a story about wasted potential.

[kristelh_15 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The story told in steam of consciousness takes place in one day. Clarissa Dallaway is having a party that day. The time period is interwar time period. The book addresses women and the restrictions of the milieu has on their activities. Women are restricted politically and must work through men. Ideas are judged on the basis of class and gender. We also have the shell-shocked veteran (PTSD) of WWI who disintegrates, thinks of suicide, and a very astute picture of how doctor's (males) of the time, made decisions without regard to what patient or family really needed. This is another hot issue of the time in which this book is written. There were opinions that it was nothing, malingerers or psychologically unfit. The one doctor is of the opinion that it is nothing and the other takes it seriously and says Septimus must go to home and learn to rest. There is the comparison of Mrs Dallaway to Ulysses (Joyce). Both stories take place in a day. I also would say, that The Garden Party which also occurs in one day and involves a young woman and a death that occurs during a party. For Clarissa, the "continuous present" (Gertrude Stein's phrase) of her charmed youth at Bourton keeps intruding into her thoughts on this day in London. For Septimus, the "continuous present" of his time as a soldier during the "Great War" keeps intruding, especially in the form of Evans, his fallen comrade.More on mental illness; The author is critical of the medical community and is critical of the treatment of depression and PTSD (shell shock). Clarissa and Septimus never meet each other. Their realities are different. It depicts how one person's mental illness never impacts others. And something I didn't know; There are similarities in Septimus' condition to Woolf's struggles with bipolar disorder. Both hallucinate that birds sing in Greek, and Woolf once attempted to throw herself out of a window as Septimus does. Woolf had also been treated for her condition at various asylums, from which her antipathy towards doctors developed. Woolf committed suicide by drowning, sixteen years after the publication of Mrs Dalloway. Septimus is Clarissa's double (according to Woolf).

[lauralkeet · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

The first time I read this book it fell flat. Several years later I read The Hours, which is based on Mrs Dalloway, and thought it was wonderful, which made me think I should re-read the original someday. And this time I appreciated it so much more; in fact, I loved it. From the opening sentence, when Clarissa Dalloway leaves her house to buy flowers for a party she is hosting that evening, I was immediately immersed in the atmosphere of a beautiful London morning. Woolf moves seamlessly from Clarissa to other characters and other places, using events like a passing car to get the reader to “look” in another direction and observe other vignettes in the London scene. This flow continues throughout the novel, as Clarissa prepares for the party and others go about their days. Some characters will attend the party; others have more symbolic dramatic roles. By the end of the party, the characters have all been woven together into a tight and often moving narrative flow.

[amandrake_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Virginia Woolf, like lobster - understandably praised, but not to my taste. I understand it was a fundamental rethinking of the novel, and her writing can be lovely, but it is a bunch of characters in whom I am just not interested. On the plus side, it's easily readable.

[leahmo-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Mrs. Dalloway is a portrait of a day in the life of Clarissa Dalloway, a middle-aged, upper-class British woman. On this particular day, she is preparing for the party she will host in the evening — buying flowers, readying her house, etc. Although on the outside a charming woman with a talent for bringing people together, on the inside Clarissa is an endless stream of memories, longings, and doubts about the choices she has made.We are also transported, at times, into the psyches of some of the people she comes into contact with, including her husband Richard Dalloway, who can’t verbally express his love for his wife, and her old flame Peter Walsh, who has just returned from India. Reading these perspectives and their thoughts about Clarissa give us a deeper, more complex understanding of her – who she is now and who she used to be. We see her horror of death, the joy she takes in throwing parties (a joy considered petty by some), the way she has sacrificed passion for conventionality, and how the passage of time has changed her. Parallel to Mrs. Dalloway’s story is the narrative of Septimus Smith, a suicidal, insane ex-soldier who is unable to translate his experiences into words.I really, really loved the language in this book. There were times that I didn’t even care about what was going on in the plot — just absorbing the lyrical, rhythmic prose was more than enough. I can’t tell you how many passages I underlined, either for their poetic beauty or the way they conveyed a tiny, shattering truth.“The sun might go in and out, on the tassels, on the wallpaper, but he would wait, he thought, stretching out his feet, looking at his ringed sock at the end of the sofa; he would wait in this warm place, this pocket of still air, which one comes on at the edge of a wood sometimes in the evening, when, because of a fall in the ground, or some arrangement of the trees (one must be scientific above all, scientific), warmth lingers, and the air buffets the cheek like the wing of a bird.”Mrs. Dalloway made me feel all the feels. I felt the beauty of a hot June day in London, the vibrant but unsettling mentality of the mentally ill, the melancholy sadness of seeing a wild life become small, the doubt over the value of the life one leads, the impossibility of ever really knowing anyone, the fear (and conversely, the embracing) of death, and the way experience/age deepens feeling.I loved this book, but I don’t feel like I fully understood it. I can tell that some of the symbolism went over my head and that there were many connections I failed to make. And I’m okay with that. This is a book I will definitely return to, and I will enjoy digging deeper in future reads. I really want to read more of Woolf’s work and more about Woolf, herself. I want to know about her life and her themes so that I can understand her writing more fully.Read the full review at Books Speak Volumes.

[xicanti_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

MRS DALLOWAY is a stream-of-consciousness look at one day in the life of a society matron and the people she comes into contact with. While Clarissa Dalloway is at the centre, Woolf devotes equal care to those who surround her. The point of view flits from character to character with the speed of thought, and the result is a beautiful, unconventional novel in which plot takes a backseat to character development.I adore good characterization, and Woolf's is lovely. She gives us a real feel for who each of these people is as she invites us to ride around inside their heads and view the world through their eyes. Over a very short period of time, we learn a great deal about each and every one of them. And we don't just see how they view themselves; Woolf also shows us how those around them perceive them. I'll tell you up front, I'm an absolute sucker for anything that invites me to consider its characters in this way. The contrast between each character's view of herself and the way others see her is one of the novel's strongest qualities.The prose is equally good. Even though Woolf deals with the minutia of everyday life, I found the story strange and dreamlike. I think this is due, in large part, to the sudden shifts in POV. One moment, we're hard into Clarissa's perspective; the next, we're deep in Peter Walsh's mind. From him, we jump to someone else... and then to someone else again... and again... and again... Even though the story is grounded in reality, the storytelling makes it feel as though it isn't. It's nicely done.It does, however, make the book a bit difficult to sink into, especially if you've put it down for a while. I had some troubles in that area, and occasionally found that I just couldn't go back to it. I'd read a few lines and decide I needed another break. It's for this reason, more than anything else, that I've decided to pass it along to someone else. I enjoyed it, and I think I'll likely want to read it again, but I doubt I'll return to it any time soon. And when I do, I'm sure there'll be an obliging library or book market ready and waiting to provide me with another copy.(A slightly different version of this review originally appeared on my blog, Stella Matutina).

[carmenere_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Firstly, this novel is a day in the life of aristocrat/socialite Clarissa Dalloway. She is finalizing preparations for a party she is hosting that evening when she is faced with a couple of unusual circumstances - her husband is attending a luncheon, with another woman, to which she was not invited - her former beau has returned from India after a 30 year absence - and someone has decided to have a bit of a life altering event that disturbs the party. The problem with this novel is I had to be a literary archaeologist to dig through all the verbiage to unearth the story. Stream of consciousness narrative buries the actual story with a multitude of sounds, sights and thoughts.Secondly, not only did I find this book a very difficult read for that reason but also the shifts in time stream of consciousness creates. Often times paragraphs switch from present day thoughts to past events unknowingly. This made for a very uneven read, even annoying.This is not a book to read for pleasure. One needs to be an alert, active reader. It's a lot of work. This book should be read, not for relaxation but for a snapshot of early 20th century life, which is described quite well, when you can see it.

[lydiasbooks · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Finally finished, after nearly two years. I'm not sorry I made the effort to read this, despite it not being my sort of thing. Woolf's writing style is unlike anyone else's, and I have developed my intellect by reading an act nobody can follow. The stream of consciousness technique is intriguing but I found it tiring to read - because it's so different from the usual things-happen way of things, maybe. For me, deciding to read a book like this is a commitment. A decision is taken to read, and not taken lightly. There are all sorts of lighter books I might have spent this time on instead, and although I alternated this reading journey with hundreds of other books, I continued it to its end. Thank you, Ms. Woolf.

[melissalenhardt · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Reading Mrs. Dalloway was a bipolar experience. I hated it. I loved it. It confused me. Its brilliant prose brought moments of clarity. It bored me. It riveted me. It challenged my mind. My mind wandered. I wanted to abandon it. I couldn’t stop reading.

Did I like it? Yes and no. Will I ever read it again. Definitely not. Unless I find a version with one page the text and the page opposite an explanation of what is going on, what Woolf is alluding to, and What It All Means. Would I recommend it? No.

And, yes.

[msaucier818 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I really wanted to love this book but had a really hard time with it. It honestly was a struggle to get through.

The positive: The imagery and the descriptive writing was beautiful. It was a unique story in the sense of being able to get into the minds and thoughts of so many diverse characters.

The negative: There was really no plot to speak of. The entire book was one day about a party being thrown at night. However, the party was simply the backdrop for Woolf being able to look through the thoughts and judgements of her characters.

I really don't know what else to say about this book. I enjoyed the early pages because of the interesting style. However, this wore me down after a while. Also, the idea that most people came across as cynical to me lessened the enjoyment of the story for me.

I will try Woolf again but my expectations will not be as high.

[gabarito-3 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I've never read anything quite like this. At first I found the long, complex sentences to be too much, but I got into the swing of it eventually. By the end I was really enjoying the way the stories almost came together, just glancing, never really involving each other. My friend really loves Woolf and described her writing as lyrical, washing over you like waves. I get what she was saying now.

[hopeevey · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I've been thinking about this book, on and off, since I finished listening to it. It didn't so much end as just stopped... but I may be mistaken about that. It seems so transparent, like clear topical water, but has surprising depth once you step in. Definitely, definitely need to read/listen to this one again.

[terrapinjetta_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Very enjoyable read, I love this book.

[pennwriter · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Woolf goes deep-sea diving into the depths of human character. What is REALLY going on in people's minds? She brings back treasure unlike any I have ever seen.But this book is difficult. The floating points of view, the sentences that must be read VERY carefully, the absence of chapter breaks -- all added up to a serious amount of work for the reader. At times I did not feel up to it, especially at the end of the day.

[beequiet · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A classic example of the stream of consciousness style of writing. We learn more through the silences, the sections when Dalloway thinks that surely she should be happy...so why isn't she? That tell us more than what is spoken directly. Modern society and the demands on 'successful' women is the focus of this piece, with its frivolities hiding the ache resting beneath. A real work of art. Not my type of content really, but the poetic nature of the prose carried me along and made it wonderful to read in its own way.

[wcarter_66 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

The Folio Society edition is a beautifully presented book (one of the best covers of any Folio Society book) with delightful illustrations. The text consists of several thousand superbly crafted paragraphs that circle around numerous perspectives of one day in 1923 and lead - well - absolutely nowhere!

[liivin · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Not the most entertaining book but an interesting writing style. Needs good concentration to not miss a change in the storyline.

[lauriebrown54 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

“Mrs. Dalloway” is a classic, considered by some to be the finest modern novel. That sort of recommendation is enough to make me approach carefully; I’m not educated enough to fully appreciate the great works and I find reading them a chore. But I’m happy to say that, although I found the first bit tedious, it didn’t take me long to get sucked into the story. It’s not that the plot is engaging; there is almost no plot. The book is merely a record of one day in the life of Clarissa Dalloway, and that of a few of her friends, and some people that she passes by. We are given access to their thoughts as they go about their day. Clarissa buys flowers, mends a dress, and gives a party. She hosts a visitor, just back from India. She thinks about a girl from her school days, with whom she had been in love. Septimus Smith, suffering from PTSD from WW I and the loss of a fellow soldier with whom he’d been in love, quietly sinks into a fatal madness. The stream of consciousness leads us seamlessly through the minds of these people; there are no chapters to provide breaking points. Wolff’s prose is simply beautiful; she describes the everyday moments that are usually forgotten or ignored as things of beauty. But the book is not just pretty prose; there is surprising depth to some of the characters. Clarissa and Septimus, in particular, although not directly connected, seem to be two sides of the questions of life and death. Five stars.

[rainpebble_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf; (5*)Extraordinary!This book by Virginia Woolf has been described as the greatest novel of the English language. That may not be an exageration. Some sentences are so beautifully written that they beg to be read again and again. Woolf never fails to put me in this situation. Her writing is sublime. The story is simple. It follows one day in the life of Clarissa Dalloway as she prepares to host a high society party in London that evening. It jumps from Clarissa's story to that of several of the guests. It is a story about their thoughts and reminiscences more than their actions. It is a story about the love between men and women and between women and women. It is a story about the politics of marriage in the early 20th century. Simply put, it is a classic! Woolf was and remains stellar in the world of great literature.

[oataker-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I reluctantly gave it a high mark because I was eventually won over. She has lots of good moments in the writing, starting with her appreciation of 'life', especially in the context of the recent war, and the wonderful description of a June day. There is a note of regret throughout, about her charmed, but naive youth, and turning down an interesting man's marriage proposal, although he turns out to be hopeless. There are no chapters and the mental meanderings are a bit purple and prolonged at times. But the knives come out for poor Miss Kilman, (interesting choice of name), the Christian who is clearly hated by Dalloway and I imagine by Virginia. Ugly sweaty and poor, though principled. Her influence on daughter Elizabeth seems unlikely. And finally what is it about the Love interest, Peter's pocket knife, which he is constantly fiddling with?

[chrystal_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

masterpiece by one of the greatest writers in English literary history, Mrs. Dalloway is both a moving and innovative novel that breaks new ground in the representation of inner experience. A day in the life of a London woman, Clarissa Dalloway, Woolf's novel is a meditation on time, perception, memory and experience. Informed by the great novelists of the previous century as well as contemporary trends in philosophy, art and literature, Mrs. Dalloway is a towering achievement by an extraordinary artist.

[daptolibrary · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This month we ventured into the classics with Virginia Woolf's Mrs Dalloway. We try to include at least two classics a year, believing it enriches our reading experiences, as so many of them are referred to in contemporary novels.As society hostess Clarissa Dalloway prepares for one of her fashionable parties, neighbour Septimus Warren Smith, a World War I veteran, contemplates suicide. Social contrasts and similarities become interwoven in a thought provoking and at times disturbing story.Unlike the Great Gatsby and Wuthering Heights, Dalloway did not score high with our group, but it did produce a lively discussion. One of the best we've had in my opinion!Nancy loved its beautiful prose and clever structure - something we all generally agreed on. This however was not enough for Ann, who found it self-indulgent and just plain boring! She felt she could see how Woolf was compiling the story with clear pointers and was simply out to shock.Denise found it hard going at first but persisted and was awarded with a great book, one she will not forget and would probably not of read outside the book club.Not surprisingly, we found our talk turning towards the social classes of 1920's England and the dos and don'ts of its society. It was mentioned that what was then called 'class structure', (politically incorrect today) is now called 'tradition'. Class distinction has been a common thread in many of our book discussions, which makes one think it is and always will be an endurable theme in popular novels.And of course we eventually found ourselves discussing the film 'The Hours' which is roughly based on Mrs Dalloway, and the book's original title.For those who had seen it, the opinion was of a brilliantly produced film that made one thing absolutely clear - every generation has their own Mrs. Dalloway!

[smiler69 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

All the action within this novel takes place during one day and evening as Mrs Clarissa Dalloway, an upper class woman, is first preparing for, then throws a party in the evening. While still at home before she sets out to run her errands, she is visited by Peter Walsh, a man she's known since she was a young girl and who once asked her to marry him. For the whole of the novel, we wander from one stream of thoughts to another, with Clarissa's mind wandering from the moment's happenings and backwards into the past, then without preamble we are following Peter's thoughts, then Clarissa's husband and so on, with the author's focus wandering between every person encountered in the novel. Clarissa thinks about the life choices she has made. Peter has just come back from India and is seeking a divorce from his wife now that he has fallen in love with a much younger married woman. Clarissa's husband has bought her flowers and intends to tell her he loves her, something he presumably hasn't said in a very long time. There is Doris Kilman, the teacher of Clarissa's daughter Elizabeth, who, while she venerates the young girl to a degree that borders on desire (or as much desire as a religious fanatic will make allowances for), despises her mother Clarissa for all she stands for as a society woman living a life of ease and luxury. We meet Septimus Warren Smith, sitting in the park with his wife; he is a war veteran suffering from a very bad case of shell-shock who is being treated for suicidal depression. His wife is concerned because he talks to himself and to his deceased army friend Evans, who may have been much more than just a buddy, and together they are waiting to meet a psychiatrist who will suggest a course of treatment for the young man. I had a couple of false stars with this book over the years, never making it past the first couple of pages, and must say one needs to be in the right frame of mind to fully appreciate this short, yet very profound novel. Having just finished reading A Room of One's Own I found myself in the right mood for more of Woolf's deep reflections on life and how we are affected by circumstances and the people we are surrounded by, whether by choice or happenstance. Once one gets accustomed to the flow of words, which doesn't follow a traditional narrative style with chapters and commentary, but pours forth in an organic way meant to mimic a real-life experience, one is transported by the portraits Woolf paints of these people, whom we get to know from the inside out, as opposed to the other way round. Because of this, there is a timeless quality to this novel, even though the events it alludes to are very much fixed in the London of the 1920s.

[queencersei · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Mrs. Dalloway relates the day in the life of Clarissa Dalloway, an English high-society matron during post-World War I. The novel deftly weaves together snippets of several characters in a stream of consciousness style as Mrs. Dalloway prepares for a party she is hosting that evening. Some of the characters who flit in and out include Clarissa's old flame Peter Walsh. Peter was jilted by Clarissa in their youth. He had moved to India to pursue a career and several failed love affairs and seems out of step with his peers. Septimus Smith is a WW I veteran suffering from shell shock, who is cared for by his Italian wife Rezia. Elizabeth is Clarissa's 17 year old daughter, who seems destined to follow her mother's footsteps, despite not being all that interested in society. Sally Seton is an old friend of Clarissa's who she may have had a lesbian affair with in their youth.Despite several of the characters coming from vastly different backgrounds and some of them never even meeting Mrs. Dalloway, the author does a very good job of knitting these differing points of view together in a coherent and intelligent way.

[nmhale_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

In her inimitable writing style, Woolf created a novel that beautifully captures the complicated interactions between our mental terrain and the external world always pressing on us. The story begins with Mrs. Dalloway planning for her party that evening, and deciding that she needs to buy the flowers herself. As she walks to the shop, her observations of her surroundings trigger memories and emotions, thoughts that jump from past to present to future in no chronological order, and images that are vague and associative or concrete and embodied stories. Woolf has such mastery in the way she captures a mind. The subconscious and the conscious twining together, the way our thoughts can hop from coherent and functional concentration to light reverie in seconds. How our mind can travel down a chain of thoughts, whilst we are almost unaware of the process, and arrive at a new topic that seems completely unrelated, but actually had a logical progression. I am not actually straying from a plot synopsis, because the majority of the book actually takes place within these interior dimensions. As Mrs. Dalloway prepares for her evening party, we frequently see her thoughts, rather than action or dialogue. Just as the mind nimbly sweeps from one idea to the next, so does the omniscient narrator skillfully move from perspective to perspective. While Clarissa is preparing her party, starting with the flowers and returning home to mend her dress for the night, her old lover Peter Walsh is just returning to England. One of his first stops is at Clarissa's house; he surprises her while she is in the middle of her sewing, and while she clutches her scissors, and he plays with his pocket knife, they have a friendly conversation that contains much more depth in the memories and undercurrents than in what is actually said. (I read a review that pointed out the importance of being armed in this book, having weapons, as this scene eloquently illustrates.) During this interlude, the narrative moves smoothly from Clarissa's mind to Peter's and back again, but eventually leaves when Peter does, and follows him as he walks from Clarissa's house to his hotel. Again, the reader enjoys a long sequence where the outside world is just a vehicle to evoke the more interesting inner thoughts and permutations. Actually, the correlation of physically walking through London and mentally wandering through memories is a trope in the story; we follow Clarissa, Peter, Septimus and Rezia - even Richard and Elizabeth Dalloway for short periods of time - and these journeys occupy the majority of the book. While the characters roam, the reader is invited to occupy their most private mental musings.A narrative with so little action, and so much introspection, may sound like a dull read, but it absolutely is not. I have never read an author who was able to portray in words, in a story, the inexplicable workings of our minds; no, our souls. Woolf's language is gorgeous; the imagery is powerful, moving, strong. She creates extended metaphors that make my writer's heart quiver with delighted admiration. Her grasp of beautiful language rivets the attention. Most writers need action to drive the story forward, but in this case, the fascination is focused inward, and is so compelling that only a minimal plot is needed to contain the characterization that takes place on a grand scale. We learn so much more about the people in this story than in novels of comparable length. They feel like real people, This is a complicated novel.

[karl6steel · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Most astonishing this time round was the anticipation in Woolf of the not-yet-existing Frankfurt school. Famously (so far as I know: I'm boning up on it this summer), the Frankfurt school discovered links between rationalism, positivism, and state violence; WWI and, later, fascism were not (or at least not simply) negations of the Enlightenment, but part of the same. With that in mind, reread Walsh and Richard Dalloway and their civilized, cynical pose toward Empire and its great projects, reread Septimus Smith, sacrificing himself to Shakespeare and crushed by psychology. I'm sure this argument has been made hundreds of times before, but to this medievalist, it's brand new and fun. For my students, perhaps not so much so.

And good lord people who think the novel's boring and hate it because it's plotless: yeah, being plotless is just the point, as this is central to Woolf's critique of the arrogance of narrative teleology. I hate to say ecriture feminine, but, well, there: I said it.

By the way: I chose this edition because: a) used copies are very cheap; b) it includes a map of London with the itineraries of the characters clearly marked. Understanding the order of the novel requires knowing London, so there you go.