“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.”
Mrs. Dalloway by, Virginia Woolf is considered to be a literary masterpiece. I’ve avoided Woolf in the past because, for some reason, I did think I’d get on with her. I initially planned to read this book with a companion reader discussing the themes and imagery, but I decided to just go for it and see what I picked up organically.
Mrs. Dalloway is a short novel and it only covers the span of one day. It takes place in London, with Clarissa Dalloway leaving her house to “buy the flowers herself” for her party that evening. As Clarissa runs her errands and goes about her day, the narrative transitions between the thoughts, feelings and goings on of other characters, such as Peter Walsh, Septimus and his wife Lucrezia, and Clarissa’s daughter Elizabeth.
To me, the heart of this novel is about memory, remembrance, nostalgia; how people recall the past and how spaces evoke memory. People leave remnants of themselves in the spaces they once inhabited.
“… 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 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.”
Peter Walsh, in particular, permeates Clarissa’s thoughts, as her previous love interest. She reflects on the decision she made to marry Richard Dalloway and wonders what her life may have been like had she chosen to marry Peter. The narrative also lends ear to Peter’s thoughts on this as well. This really is a testament to the impact relationships have a person’s life, even decades later.
“When one was young, said Peter, one was too much excited to know people. Now that one was old, fifty-three to be precise … now that one was mature then, said Peter, one could watch, one could understand, and one did not lose the power of feeling…”
As Clarissa and Peter are thinking over their lives and the choices they’ve made, Elizabeth’s life is just starting. She’s young, attractive and her whole life is ahead of her. Clarissa ponders her daughter, who is quite unlike her, coming of age in the aftermath of World War I. Elizabeth is unhampered by marriage, she can aspire to become a professional woman and not be defined by marriage to another person, like her mother.
“…this being Mrs. Dalloway; not even Clarissa any more; the being Mrs. Richard Dalloway.”
Another woman gravely considering the decision she made in marriage is Lucrezia, who married Septimus and moved from Italy to England. To me, their narrative is the saddest. Lucrezia thinks about how excited she was to move to England with her new husband, however WWI took it’s toll on Septimus’s mental health. Lucrezia (and the doctors) do not understand that Septimus is suffering from PTSD; one could even argue that the hallucinations he deals with could be schizophrenia. Today, we know that traumatic events can actually trigger some mental illnesses.
“He lay on the sofa and made her hold his hand to prevent him from falling down, down, he cried, into the flames! And saw faces laughing at him, calling him horrible disgusting names, from the walls, and hands pointing around the screen.”
There is this tension between men who have been permanently effected by the horror of war and their domestic lives, when they return. There is a lot of bird imagery, especially when describing the female characters and to me, this brought to mind the idea that the war created a large disparity between men and women. Coming back home and not being understood by one’s wife. The wife distressed and frustrated because the man she married is different - she doesn’t understand the gruesome reality of the war, and feels like a trapped bird. Though, like a caged bird, she will sing and flap around trying to chirp happily while attempting to make the most of the pieces of her husband that are left.
“She was like a bird sheltering under the thin hollow of a leaf, who blinks at the sun when the leaf moves; starts at the crack of a dry twig. She was exposed; she was surrounded by the enormous trees, vast clouds of an indifferent world, exposed; tortured; and why should she suffer? Why?”
Another common image in this novel is Big Ben. Periodically, Big Ben is mentioned, noting that a few minutes or an hour has passed. If one were to read this novel and really pay attention to this, they would be able to tell how much time has elapsed in the novel, leading up to Clarissa’s party. However, this also conjures up the concept of time that has passed for these characters. They, with the exception of Elizabeth, have made their beds and they must lie in them. Time is a non-renewable resource and once it’s gone, it’s gone. It reminds one of one’s own mortality.
Woolf’s writing is stunning; descriptive and evocative. There is so much imagery that it’s impossible to capture it all in just one reading. I had to really slow down and read this at a slower pace to enjoy the prose. Some people have commented that they found this novel hard to follow because its a bit “stream of consciousness.” Once I got in the groove of the style, I didn’t find this difficult to follow; it was like reading the natural progression of thought. Thought is not a linear process, it wanders and deviates, based on what the senses are processing. Think about how your mind wanders when your driving or just walking around the house completing chores - that’s how this novel reads. I found it oddly comforting.
Overall, I really enjoyed Mrs. Dalloway and can’t wait to read more of Woolf’s novels.
Rating: 4/5
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