Mrs. Dalloway

For me this was less a story than an exploration of life and what it means to be human. And, by necessity, how to get the most out of the lives we live, which, as Woolf reminds us, go by in the blink of an eye. Woolf is a superb writer; perhaps one of the greatest of all time. And this may well be her best work, made all the more impressive by the fact that she used the stream of consciousness technique that jettisons many of the rules most readers are familiar with. There are no chapters, for example, and many of the most important sentences are so short and simple, by design, as to be overlooked. I wont say its difficult to read but you do have to get used to it. The storyline has been well documented by other reviewers. Set in London following the First World War, we follow the day of Mrs. Dalloway, hostess extraordinaire to the ruling class, and the wife of an English bureaucrat in the upper crust of the British government but who will never quite grab the golden ring of appointment to the Cabinet. The achievement and the shortcoming both define him in equal measure. There is a long list of characters, many of them quite minor, but to whom Woolf devotes considerable print. That, I believe, is quite by design, because each represents a different representation of the human reality that we each, at some level, accomplish something, but that none of us ever quite realize complete and utter fulfillment. We choose who we are but can never quite choose who we ultimately want to be. It is the duality of human existence and there are no exceptions. Even Mrs. Dalloway, who has devoted her life to living in the present, faces the same existential dilemma. She is admired by some, tolerated by others, and quite disliked by a few. She is, in a word, human and, as a result, she is both defined and burdened by her duality. One of the characters is Septimus Warren Smith, a young veteran of World War I who suffers from what we now call PTSD. He is, in terms of the storyline itself, a minor character, to the point that many have questioned his inclusion. To me, however, he is a central character and the book couldnt exist without him. And even Woolf herself admitted, when challenged on this, that he was the double of Mrs. Dalloway. Smith is central, it seems to me, because if Mrs. Dalloway hides the doubt and ambiguity of her life successfully, he loses himself to the same ambiguity quite obviously. They are quite like yin and yang, the complementary forces of light and dark, fire and ice, the masculine and the feminine. One cannot exist without the other. In the end it would be difficult to describe this work as uplifting. It is life. And life, as Woolf reminds us, despite pockets and moments of glamour, is always a bit messy and dispiriting. Life is a duality. Tragedy occurs alongside grace. Doubt inevitably accompanies hope. Can there be the joy of success without the crush of failure? All told I think this is a superb book and if you have any interest in exploring the duality of our existence there is a great deal here, in what is a relatively quick read.

When I started reading this edition of the book I found myself wondering why I keep finding spelling mistakes and inconsistencies in the tense. At the beginning I thought that it was either just a mistake in the transcription, or that I was missing something essential in the writing style (i.e. that it was on purpose). This, however, began bothering me 5% in so I went through the 1 star reviews for it and found out that I am not the only person with this problem. One review had a great description \”It\’s as though someone took the original and put it through google translate a few times\”. Now I can\’t return it, yet I still want to read the actual book. So now I need to buy a second proper copy 🙁 AMAZON – PLEASE TAKE THIS VERSION OFFLINE, it is not the original book.

Mrs. Dalloway is ostensibly about a woman planning and hosting a party for the upper class of London in the 1920s. However, its stream of consciousness narration is far more than that. Flipping points of view relentlessly, almost organically, through the streets and byways of a few districts in London the book captures the internal monologues of a cross section of society. By the end of the novel, we have seen Mrs. Dalloway through the eyes of her admirers and detractors, as well as the Clarissa Dalloway that is haunted by the choices of her past and the anxieties of her present and future. The fact that these two Dalloways bear very little connection to each other appears to call out a thesis that our understanding of each other is based less on reality than on our own ego and fears. While an interesting meditation, and an insight into the ultimate tragedy of Virginia Woolf herself, it lacks any type of traditional plotting and tends to meander at times, even with the tight page count. I liked it and give it 4 stars.

This book by Virginia Woolf has been described as the greatest English language novel. That may not be hyperbole. Some sentences are so beautifully written that they beg to be read again (and again). 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\’s a story about their thoughts and reminisces more than their actions. It\’s a story about the love between men and women and women and women. It\’s a story about the politics of marriage in the early 20th century. It\’s a classic!

What even IS this???? I was so excited to take this book on vacation with me but it showed up today and is not a typical 4x6ish paperback, but this awkward 8×11 text-bookish manuscript…HATE IT! I wish you had done a better job stating the fact that it is GIANT and uncomfortable to hold! Perhaps you should consider putting the size in the actual title.

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