Mrs Dalloway summary short analysis book of Virginia Woolf

 

 

 

Mrs Dalloway summary short analysis book of Virginia Woolf

 

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Mrs Dalloway summary short analysis book of Virginia Woolf

 

Part I, Section One:
Clarissa Dalloway decided to buy the flowers for her party that evening. Lucy had too much other work. Clarissa thought of the hush that fell over Westminster right before the ring of Big Ben. It was June and World War I was over. She loved life. Hugh Whitbread walked toward her and assured her that he would attend the party. Clarissa thought of her boyfriend before she married, Peter. She could not stop memories from rushing over her. She knew she had been correct not to marry Peter. Peter would not have given her any independence, but still her refusal bothered her. Clarissa realized her baseness, always wanting to do things that would make people like her instead of doing them for their own value.
Bond Street fascinated her. The same things did not fascinate her daughter, Elizabeth. Elizabeth was fascinated with callous Miss Kilman. Clarissa hated Miss Kilman. She entered Mulberry's florist and was greeted by Miss Pym. Miss Pym noticed that Clarissa looked older. Suddenly, a pistol-like noise came from the street.
Part I, Section Two:
The loud noise had come from a motorcar, likely carrying someone very important. The street came to a stop and Septimus Warren Smith could not get by. Septimus anticipated horror. His wife, Lucrezia, hurried him. She knew others noticed his strangeness. The car was delayed. Clarissa felt touched by magic. A crowd formed at Buckingham's gates. An airplane took to the sky, making letters out of smoke. The plane's trail mystified its observers.
In Regent's Park, Septimus believed the letters were signaling to him. Rezia hated when he stared into nothingness. She walked to the fountain to distract herself and felt alone. The doctor said nothing was wrong with him. When Rezia returned, he jumped up. Maisie Johnson, a girl from Edinburgh, asked the couple directions to the subway. Maisie was horrified by the look in the Septimus' eyes. Mrs. Carrie Dempster noticed Maisie and thought of her younger days. Carrie would do things differently if she had the chance. Flying over many other English folk, the plane's message writing continued aimlessly.
Part I, Section Three:
Clarissa wondered at what everyone was looking. She felt as a nun returning to her habit. Richard had been invited to lunch with Lady Bruton. Clarissa felt snubbed. She withdrew upstairs to the virginal attic room that she had occupied since her illness. She thought back to her old best friend, Sally Seton. She had known what men feel toward women with Sally. Sally taught Clarissa about all the things from which she was shielded at Bourton, her home before marriage.
Clarissa took her dress downstairs to mend. Abruptly, her door opened and Peter Walsh entered. Peter noticed that she looked older. Clarissa asked him if he remembered Bourton. It pained him to remember because it reminded him of Clarissa's refusal. He felt that Clarissa had changed since marrying Richard. Peter mentioned that he was in love with a girl in India. He had come to London to see about her divorce. Peter suddenly wept. Clarissa comforted him. She wished he would take her with him. The next moment, her passions subsided. He abruptly asked if she was happy with Richard. Suddenly, Elizabeth entered. Peter greeted her, said good-bye to Clarissa, and rushed out the door.
Part I, Section Four:
Peter had never enjoyed Clarissa's parties. He did not blame her, though. She had grown hard. He thought the way she had introduced Elizabeth was insincere. He had been overly emotional when he had visited Clarissa. Peter associated St. Margaret's bells with Clarissa as the hostess. He had never liked people like the Dalloways and Whitbreads. Boys in uniform marched by Peter. He followed them for a while. He had not felt so young in years. A young woman passed who enchanted Peter. He followed her until she disappeared
He was early for his appointment. He sat in Regent's Park and felt pride in the civility of London. Thoughts of his past continued to combat him, a result of seeing Clarissa. He settled next to a nurse and sleeping baby. Peter thought that Elizabeth probably did not get along with her mother. Smoking a cigar, he fell into a deep sleep.
Part I, Section Five:
Peter dreamed. The nurse beside Peter appeared spectral, like the solitary traveler. Suddenly Peter awoke, exclaiming, "The death of the soul." He had dreamt of a time when he loved Clarissa. One day they had gotten in a fight and Clarissa went outside, alone. As the day went on, Peter grew increasingly gloomy. When he arrived for dinner, Clarissa was speaking to a young man, Richard Dalloway. Peter knew Richard would marry Clarissa.
After dinner, Clarissa tried to introduce Peter to Richard. Peter retorted insultingly that Clarissa was the perfect hostess. Later, the young people decided to go boating. Clarissa ran to find Peter. He was suddenly happy. Yet, Peter still felt that Dalloway and Clarissa were falling in love. Following that night, Peter asked ridiculous things of Clarissa. Finally, she could take it no longer and ended their relationship.
Part II, Section One:
Rezia wondered why she should suffer. When Septimus saw that Rezia no longer wore her wedding band, he knew that their marriage was over. She tried to explain that her finger had grown too thin, but he did not care. His nerves were stretched thin. Still, he believed that beauty was everywhere. Rezia told him that it was time to go. Septimus imagined Evans approaching. Rezia told Septimus she was unhappy.
Peter Walsh thought of how Sally Seton had unexpectedly married a rich man. Of all of Clarissa's old friends, he had always liked Sally best. Clarissa, though, knew what she wanted. When she walked into a room, one remembered her. Peter struggled to remind himself that he was no longer in love with her. Even Clarissa would admit that she cared too much for societal rank. Still, she was one of the largest skeptics Peter knew. Clarissa had so affected him that morning because she might have spared him from his relationship problems over the years.
A tattered woman's incomprehensible song rose from the subway station. Seeing the woman made Rezia feel that everything was going to be okay. She turned to Septimus, thinking how he did not look insane. When Septimus was young, he had fallen in love with a woman who lent him books on Shakespeare. He became a poet. Septimus was one of the first volunteers for the army in World War I. He went to protect Shakespeare. He became friends with his officer, Evans, who died just before the war ended. Septimus was glad that he felt no grief, until he realized that he had lost the ability to feel. In a panic, he married. Lucrezia adored his studiousness and quiet. Septimus read Shakespeare again but could not change his mind that humanity was despicable. After five years, Lucrezia wanted a child. Septimus could not fathom it. He wondered if he would go mad.
Dr. Holmes could not help. Septimus knew nothing was physically wrong, but he figured, his crimes were still great. The third time Holmes came, Septimus tried to refuse him. He hated him. Rezia could not understand and Septimus felt deserted. He heard the world telling him to kill himself. Upon seeing Holmes, Septimus screamed in horror. The doctor, annoyed, advised that they see Dr. Bradshaw. They had an appointment that afternoon.
Part II, Section Two:
At noon, Clarissa finished her sewing and the Warren Smiths neared Sir William Bradshaw. Bradshaw knew immediately that Septimus had suffered from a mental breakdown. Bradshaw reassured Mrs. Smith that Septimus needed a long rest in the country to regain a sense of proportion. Septimus equated Bradshaw with Holmes and with the evil of human nature. Rezia felt deserted. The narrator describes another side to proportion, conversion. One wondered if Bradshaw did not like to impose his will on others weaker than he. The Smiths passed near Hugh Whitbread.
Though superficial, Hugh had been an honorable member of high society for years. Lady Bruton preferred Richard Dalloway to Hugh. She had invited both to lunch to ask for their services. The luncheon was elaborate. Richard had a great respect for Lady Bruton. Lady Bruton cared more for politics than people. Suddenly, Lady Bruton mentioned Peter Walsh. Richard thought that he should tell Clarissa he loved her. Lady Bruton then mentioned the topic of emigration to Canada. She wanted Richard to advise her and Hugh to write to the London Times for her.
As Richard stood to leave, he asked if he would see Lady Bruton at Clarissa's party. Possibly, she retorted. Lady Bruton did not like parties. Richard and Hugh stood at a street corner. Finally, they entered a shop. Richard bought Clarissa roses and rushed home to profess his love.
Part II, Section Three:
Clarissa was very annoyed, but invited her boring cousin Ellie to the party out of courtesy. Richard walked in with flowers. He said nothing, but she understood. Clarissa mentioned Peter's visit, and how bizarre it was that she had almost married him. Richard held her hand and then hurried off to a committee meeting. Clarissa felt uneasy because of the negative reactions both Peter and Richard had toward her parties. Yet, parties were her offering to the world, her gift.
Elizabeth entered. She and Miss Kilman were going to the Army and Navy surplus stores. Miss Kilman despised Clarissa. Whenever Miss Kilman was filled with sinister thoughts, she thought of God to relieve them. Clarissa despised Miss Kilman as well. She felt that the woman was stealing her daughter. As they left, Clarissa yelled after Elizabeth to remember her party.
Clarissa pondered love and religion. She noticed the old woman whom she could view in the house adjacent. It seemed to Clarissa that the ringing of the bell forced the lady to move away from her window. All was connected.
Miss Kilman lived to eat food and love Elizabeth. After shopping, Miss Kilman declared that they must have tea. Elizabeth thought of how peculiar Miss Kilman was. Miss Kilman detained her by talking, feeling sorry for herself. She drove a small wedge between them. Elizabeth paid her bill and left.
Part II, Section Four:
Miss Kilman sat alone, despondent, before heading to a sanctuary of religion. In an Abbey, she knelt in prayer. Elizabeth enjoyed being outdoors alone and decided to take a bus ride. Her life was changing. She felt that the attention men gave her was silly. She wondered if Miss Kilman's ideas about the poor were correct. She paid another penny so that she could continue riding. Elizabeth thought she might be a doctor or a farmer.
Septimus looked out the window and smiled. Sometimes, he would demand that Rezia record his thoughts. Lately, he would cry out about truth and Evans. He spoke of Holmes as the evil of human nature. This day, Rezia sat sewing a hat and Septimus held a normal conversation with her, making her happy. They joked and Septimus designed the pattern to decorate the hat. Rezia happily sewed it on.
Septimus slowly slipped from reality. Rezia asked if he liked the hat, but he just stared. He remembered that Bradshaw had said that he would need to separate himself. He wanted his writings burned but Rezia promised to keep them from the doctors. She promised no one would separate her from him either. Dr. Holmes arrived. Rezia ran to stop him from seeing Septimus. Holmes pushed by her. Septimus needed to escape. After weighing his options, he threw himself onto the fence below.
Part II, Section Five:
Peter appreciated the ambulance that sped past him as a sign of civility. His tendency to become emotionally attached to women had always been a flaw. He remembered when he and Clarissa rode atop a bus, and she spoke of a theory. Wherever she had been, a piece of her stayed behind. She diminished the finality of death this way. For Peter, a piece of Clarissa stayed with him always, like it or not. At his hotel, Peter received a letter from Clarissa. She wrote that she had loved seeing him. He wished she would just leave him alone. He would always feel bitterly that Clarissa had refused him. He thought of Daisy, the young woman in India. He cared little about what others thought.
Peter decided that he would attend Clarissa's party, in order to speak with Richard. Finally, he left the hotel. The symmetry of London struck him as beautiful. Reaching Clarissa's, Peter breathed deeply to prepare himself for the challenge. Instinctively, his hand opened the knife blade in his pocket.
Part II, Section Six:
Guests were already arriving and Clarissa greeted each one. Peter felt that Clarissa was insincere. Clarissa felt superficial when Peter looked on. Ellie Henderson, Clarissa's poor cousin, stood in the corner. Richard was kind enough to say hello. Suddenly, Lady Rosseter was announced. It was Sally Seton. Clarissa was overjoyed to see her. The Prime Minister was announced and Clarissa had to attend to him. He was an ordinary looking man. Peter thought the English were snobs. Lady Bruton met privately with the Prime Minister. Clarissa retained a hollow feeling. Parties were somewhat less fulfilling recently. A reminder of Miss Kilman filled her with hatred.
Clarissa had so many to greet. Clarissa brought Peter over to her old aunt and promised they would speak later. Clarissa wished she had time to stop and talk to Sally and Peter. Clarissa saw them as the link to her past. Then, the Bradshaws entered. Lady Bradshaw told Clarissa about a young man who had killed himself. Distraught, Clarissa wandered into a little, empty room. She could feel the man, who had been Septimus, fall. She wondered if the man had been happy. Clarissa realized why she despised Sir Bradshaw; he made life intolerable. Clarissa noticed the old woman in the next house. She watched the old woman prepare for bed. Clarissa was glad that Septimus had thrown his life away. She returned to the party.
Peter wondered where Clarissa had gone. Sally had changed, Peter thought. Peter had not, Sally thought. They noticed that Elizabeth seemed so unlike Clarissa. Sally mentioned that Clarissa lacked something. Peter admitted that his relationship with Clarissa had scarred his life.
Richard was amazed how grown up Elizabeth looked. Almost everyone had left the party. Sally rose to speak with Richard. Peter was suddenly overcome with elation. Clarissa had finally come.

 

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Mrs Dalloway summary short analysis book of Virginia Woolf

Mrs Dalloway
by Virginia Woolf  (1925, Hogarth Press)

Originally titled The Hours - the chiming of the clocks provides its time sequence – Mrs Dalloway is a modernist novel in which Virginia Woolf explores new literary techniques.
Like Ulysses which takes place on 16 June 1904, Mrs Dalloway centres on a single day of mid-June 1923. Two crucial events occur in the life of the middle-aged Clarissa Dalloway:

• her former suitor, Peter Walsh, who loved her and wanted to marry her when she was young, visits her after spending 5 years in India;
• Septimus Warren Smith, a young middle-class veteran commits suicide, refusing to submit to the power of doctors. Clarissa happens to hear the news of the suicide from Lady Bradshaw, during the party she organized (which is another unifying element of the novel). Septimus suffered from delayed shell-shock and was mentally unbalanced. Though Clarissa has never known him, she starts thinking about him and feeling compassion for him, his death in a way is her own death.

Both Ulysses and Mrs Dalloway are city novels: Joyce’s is set in Dublin, Woolf’s in post-war London. But to Joyce’s innuendo to the mythical journey of Ulysses (Joyce’s parallel use of the Odyssey has according to T. S. Eliot “the importance of a scientific discovery”), Woolf prefers the family name of an ordinary woman. There is no mythical echo; her characters are failures, people who haven’t been able to fulfil their dreams. The interest does not simply lie in the stories of the individual characters, but rather in the mental processes through which they react to events. It is worth noting that Woolf’s version of stream of consciousness is not a word for word transcription of the characters’ own interior monologue but a narrative, artistic elaboration of the characters’ consciousness, a sort of poetical rendering of their thoughts, in which the narrator still maintains some sense of narrative structure.
The novel is unusual in its plot and structure as well as in characterization. There is no linear or continuous story line. The only coherent thread in this modern maze seems to lead to the party which is to be held at the Dalloways’. And significantly the novel starts with the arrangement for the party - 10 in the morning: Clarissa goes out for flowers -  and ends with it - midnight: the party ends.
The fragmented structure of the book has its own internal unity based on some technical and thematic devices:

• The tunnelling process (defined in her Diary): which means that characters have in their own mind a series of beautiful caves or past experiences; when the characters share the same memories their tunnels interconnect, so that the same event can be rebuilt and described from a different perspective.
• The narration shifts from one character’s point of view to the other, from present to past, through the extensive use of the stream of consciousness style (term coined by William James in his Principles of Psychology, 1890. First instances of it in Sterne’s Tristam Shandy, then examples in Henry James, Dostoievski, Proust). With it sense perceptions mingle with conscious and unconscious thoughts, fantasies, expectations, feelings and random associations, still within a controlled framework of space (London’s streets) and time (chiming of the clocks).
• The journey into the past explains Mrs Dalloway’s solitude and sterility, which derive from her decision to marry Richard, who represents social conformism and psychological protection.
• As they walk in London, whose topography is detailed, all the characters react to the city according to their social and cultural identity. As in Ulysses, Woolf’s purpose is also to give a sense of simultaneity, typical of modern life. Virginia Woolf herself, who set many of her novels in London, was fascinated by its vitality: for her London was the heart of life and of the modern world.
• The Dalloways’ Westminster house is, on the contrary, a place of sterility; an idea which is reinforced by the great number of precious objects constantly cleaned by a servant. Mrs Dalloway is sterile herself, alone, powerless, estranged from her husband and her only daughter.
• The chiming of the hours (Big Ben), that is, objective time, is a reminder of social activity, the presence of a material world totally unconnected with human desires. By contrast, subjective time does not flow regularly; moreover, the concept of time is present in the novel also in the form of historical time: the Great War; and of cosmic time: seen from a Darwinian perspective, and in which death is always victorious.
• The characters are entrapped inside their own sphere (Clarissa, Peter and Richard recall a distant summer in Bourton; Septimus is obsessed with the killing of his friend Evans, an officer, in WW1: for him time has ceased to flow during the war; his hallucinations and suicide condense the hysterical impact of the war in the novel).
• The lives of Mrs Dalloway and Septimus, totally alien to each other, are linked by the same nervous fragility, swings of mood,  frigidity, fear of death. Both struggle to make sense of death, to find a way of thinking about it. Septimus is Clarissa’s double in that he is a picture of what happens if the precarious balance of sanity is dislodged. Sanity in Clarissa is not a stable condition, it is rather the ability to maintain a mask of gaiety and unconcern, it is retaining the capacity to assemble oneself into a public person when hurt inside. With these two characters, Virginia Woolf seems to show that in the novel the mental processes of those whom we recognise to be disturbed do not seem to be fundamentally different from those of the healthy or normal characters. Furthermore, one can detect biographical similarities between Septimus’s madness and her own experiences (several nervous breakdowns, suicidal attempts).
• We perceive the narrator’s straightforward hostility against some characters and themes. The doctors, Mr Holmes and Sir William Bradshaw, who should take care of Septimus, are totally unable to help him and cause, even though indirectly, his suicide. In particular, Clarissa sees Sir William Bradshaw as an intruder, someone who would force or invade other people’s souls. To her, Septimus‘s suicide is a positive act of defiance and self-defence. Miss Killman, Clarissa’s daughter’s tutor, is represented as a blood-sucking tyrant trying to suffocate Elisabeth through her frustrated possessiveness (see the episode when she is eating at the restaurant, symbolic of her greed). Other targets of criticism are nationalism, imperialism, colonialism, socialism, the hypocrisy of the British Establishment and the upper class who seem unaware of the decisive implications of the First World War (and of war in general).
• The experience of WW1 shattered the ruling classes’ assumptions about the British Empire and its civilizing mission, and cast doubts about military values, patriotism and cultural superiority over other races.
• Characters like Sir William Bradshaw represent also a criticism of male self-importance and oppression in personal relationships. Male violence is at work in the mentality and actions of the ruling class, in their military values, imperial rule and racism.

With the unexpected appearance of Sally Seaton, an unconventional friend she was in love with, now respectable mother of 5 sons, Clarissa realises that the evocation of the past does not bring peace, but disillusionment. Mrs Dalloway must accept the flow of life and the bitter challenges of the future: “For there she was”.

Criticism:
Some critics emphasize and agree with Peter Walsh’s verdict that Clarissa suffers from a “death of the soul” and that she makes “a perfect hostess”, which is to say that she is out of touch with life (politics, intelligence, love, sexuality) and only exists as a kind of empty public mask or performance (effusive hypocrisy).
Others emphasise the opposite view, and find that Clarissa is predominantly a courageous woman who, unlike the more superficial characters, does not suffer form self-deception and false pride, and is not blind to the facts of human life. She is aware of the pain, agony, loneliness, grief and illness that people suffer and spends her life attempting to alleviate that suffering in her own way. On this view, the female arts of relationship-building and attentiveness are at the basis of civilization.
As for love and sexuality a similar difference is reported. Is frigidity unhealthy and neurotic or is it a mature preservation of independence? Is it life or death of the soul?

Quotations:

Let us record the atoms as they fall upon the mind in the order in which they fall, let us trace the pattern, however disconnected and incoherent in appearance, which each sight or incident scores upon the consciousness. Let us not take for granted that life exists more in what is commonly thought big than in what is commonly thought small.

Life is not a series of gig-lamps symmetrically arranged; life is a luminous halo, a semi-transparent envelope surrounding us from the beginning of consciousness to the end. Is it not the task of the novelist to convey this varying, this unknown and uncircumscribed spirit, whatever aberration or complexity it may display, with as little mixture of the alien and external as possible? (Modern Fiction, 1919)

• Mrs Dalloway has branched into a book; and I adumbrate here a study of insanity and suicide; the world seen by the sane and the insane side by side.
• I want to give life and death, sanity and insanity; I want to criticize the social system, and to show it at work at its most intense.
• I should say a good deal about The Hours, and my discovery: how I dig out beautiful caves behind my characters: I think that gives exactly what I want; humanity, humour, depth. The idea is that the caves shall connect and each come to daylight at the present moment. (A Writer’s Diary)
• The eyes of others our prisons; their thoughts our cages.
• Mental fight means thinking against the current, not with it. It is our business to puncture gas bags and discover the seeds of truth.
• It's not catastrophes, murders, deaths, diseases, that age and kill us; it's the way people look and laugh, and run up the steps of omnibuses.
• Dearest, I feel certain that I’m going mad again. I feel I can’t go through another of those terrible times again. And I shan’t recover this time. I begin to hear voices and I can’t concentrate. So I am doing what seems the best thing to do. You have given me the greatest possible happiness. You have been in every way all that anyone could be. I don’t think two people could have been happier till this terrible disease came. I can’t fight any longer. I know that I am spoiling your life, that without me you could work. And you will, I know. You see I can’t even write properly. I can’t read. What I want to say is I owe all the happiness of my life to you. You have been entirely patient with me and incredibly good. I want to say that – everybody knows it. If anybody could have saved me, it would have been you. Everything has gone from me but the certainty of your goodness. I can’t go on spoiling your life any longer. I don’t think two people could have been happier than we have been. (From a letter to her husband, Leonard Woolf)

 

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Mrs Dalloway summary short analysis book of Virginia Woolf

THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

       The twentieth century really begins before the end of the nineteenth century. Queen Victoria's Jubilee in 1887 was felt by many to represent the end of an era.
The century was the period of one hundred years that started on January 1, 1901 and ended in December 2000. It was marked by several technological advances, achievements of civilization and dispultas for power. However, this period can be described as the "time of the great massacres", since that was many conflicts and many killed in that period. In many countries of Europe and Asia, the twentieth century was widely dubbed "Bloody Century."
A strong social ethic, continued from the Victorian times of Dickens and Disraeli, began increasingly to influence the political character of the country and its institutions. The Gladstone Parliament of 1880-85 was the 'no-man's land` between the old Radicalism and the new Socialism, but thereafter the aristocracy and upper classes exerted less influence. The state began to organise itself more in the interests of majority community needs. Institutions became more democratic. The Socialist Party grew as Liberalism declined. In 1928 universal suffrage for woman was obtained, paradoxically during a time when growing economic depression and slump appeared to lend increasing weight to Marxist analyses of the inevitable failure of capitalist economic systems.
Culturally too, increasing access to literacy, and to education in general, led to profound changes in the reading public. By the time of the First World War there was a whole new generation of young soldiers, who not only could read but, very important, were able for the first time in the history of war to write letters home describing war in all its unheroic horror. The twentieth century saw more and more of this broadening of artistic trends, extending into the other cultural forms of radio, television, cinema and popular music. Some writers reacted to this situation by concentrating on a narrow, highly educated audience who would understand their alienation from this changing world; thus, the avant-grade era in writing began. This ´intellectualisation` has been criticised as restricting literature by other writers who have made use of popular forms in order to communicate with a wider audience.
A tension in writing between the popular and the esoteric, and the popular an specialised, the commercial and the avant-garden, became a feature of twentieth – century literature. Isolation and alienation, together with experimental forms of expression, came to characterise serious literature, while cinematic techniques and the elaboration of popular genres came to dominate other forms of cultural expression. To some writers, the alienation they felt and depicted was an exploration of the individual sensibility in a world which it was felt was becoming ever more standardised and uniform, an age of the masses.
Looking back on the nineteenth century, it is easy to see it as falling into distinct moments: before and after the defeat of Napoleon in 1815; before and after the accession of Queen Victoria in 1837 (in effect, she gives her name to almost the whole century); and, in intellectual terms, before and after Darwin. Although On the Origin of Species was published in 1859, its ideas had been circulating for some thirty years before then, and their currency and effects define the later years of the century.
It is less easy to define the twentieth century. The First and the Second World Wars( 1914 – 18 and 1939 – 45 respectively) mark , in time and in their effects, momentous changes on a global scale: this kind of worldwide effect is a phenomenon of the century. Before 1914, English literature and ideas were in many ways still harking back to the nineteenth century: after 1918, Modern begins to define the twentieth century. But as literacy increase after the 1870 Education Act and, as a result, many more people could read and write, the effect on literature was to expand its range, to fragment its solidity, to enlarge and profoundly change its audience, its forms and its subject matter.
It is precisely here, between wars, in this interval of time that our writer writes, this period between the end of the First World querra on November 11, 1018 until the beginning of World War II on 1 September 1939.

THE AUTHOR AND HER WORK

 

Virginia Woolf - (London, January 25 of 1882 – Sussex, March 28 of 1941). Was one of the most important writers UK.

On a page of her diary, written between 1915 and 1941, Virginia Woolf refers to "the enemy hiding behind the curtain of everyday life." For her, this enemy was a constant presence. Tormented, living in the midst of a series of depression bouts, attempted suicide three times. But all the terrible difficulties she had, had not been able to prevent it from exercising its creative power and build one of the most innovative works of the twentieth century.
Virginia Woolf was born into a large, talented, upper-class, intellectual family in London. She was the daughter of Leslie Stephen, a famous Victorian biographer, critic, and philosopher. Adolescent health fragile and vulnerable, not regular studying, and has received special attention of Sir Leslie. These precautions were redoubled when, at fourteen because Virginia suffered a mental shock caused by the death of her mother, Julia Duckworth. This time, she suffered another shock when she was almost raped by her half-brother, George and Then, witnessed the madness of Laura, her half sister. However, it happened in the family that Virginia has found a loyal ally, her sister Vanessa.
Her father exerted a  inhibiting power influence over her, and she later confessed that she could never has written her stories and novel while he was alive.
In his house in the neighborhood of Bloomsbury, formed a circle of intellectuals and artists who would influence a renewal in the cultural environment of England. These changes would amount to art, science and behavior at the beginning of the century were the subject of the conversations and discussions within the "circle of Bloomsbury”. During these meetings, including subjects ranging from Freud's theories, to the emancipation of women and the achievements of avant-garde, Virginia was often with the journalist Leonard Woolf, a socialist, whom he married in 1912.
The two lived in Sussex for many years, Virginia has found peace there to write, in 1915, launched its first book: "The Voyage Out", Story of a woman who leaves security home in search of a life more authentic and rewarding and then would have made a series of remarkable works, which will be worth the title of "the Proust English”. During World War II, the "circle of Bloomsbury" broke up temporarily, but after its members met again if deepening the commitment to spiritual freedom, social nonconformity and artistic renewal.
In 1917, Virginia and Leonard founded a publishing house, Hogarth Press, which published the works of Proust, Freud, Katherine Mansfield, T. S. Eliot, Rilke and others.
His second novel, "Night and Day" (1919), is anticipating the essential elements of the narrative structure of the author. The objectivity of the report gives way to deep exploration of movement of the innermost consciousness of his characters. The heroine, Katherine Hilbery, wonders about the value of marriage and the limitations it brings to the independence of women. Although he was aloof to political issues, attended the Virginia League of Working Women. From "The fourth of Jacob" (1922), the use of interior monologue illuminating the immediate presentation of the stream of consciousness is consolidated in the fiction of a writer.
The work of Virginia is classified as modernist. The Stream of consciousness was one of her best-known brands and which is considered one of the creators. Her reflections on the literary art - the creative freedom to the pleasure of reading

Stream of consciousness is a literary technique introduced by James Joyce, where monologue within one or more characters is transcribed. In this technique, the consciousness there is a breakdown of linear narrative, where it is not so clear to distinguish between memories of the character and the situation now narrated.

With the violence and misery of the Second World War, the precarious balance of Virginia psychological collapse, her anxiety and depression becomes unbearable for Virginia, and on 28 March 1941, he threws hermself into the River Ouse
In 1941, left a note for her husband, Leonard Woolf, and her sister, Vanessa. In this note,  she left a message to the people who loved  in her life, and kills hermself triumphantly.
“Dear,
I'm sure to be going crazy again. I feel that we can not pass through new times. I do not want to relive them. I begin to hear voices and can not concentrate. So I am doing what I believe is the best thing to do. You gave me many opportunities to be happy. You were present like no other. I do not think two people can be happy living with this terrible disease. I can not fight. I know I'll be taking a weight from his back, because without me, you can work. And you will, I know. You see, I can not even write. Not read. Anyway, what I mean is it to you that I owe all my happiness. You have been good to me, as no one could have been. I wanted to say this - everyone knows. If anyone could save me, that someone would be you. Everything is gone for me but what will be sure of his goodness, without equal. I can not mess up your life. No more. I do not think two people could have been as happy as we were.”

FULL TITLE – Mrs Dalloway

The life of Virginia Woolf was confused with her work. In Mrs. Dalloway, Virginia has a character like her, that have visions, sees enemies and is plagued by depression bouts  and  at the end also commits suicide.
In this book the plot is almost dissolved, reducing to a minimum wire is a kind of atmosphere that connects the characters. An external event triggers any ideas and sequences of ideas that lead the character to move with freedom of conscience, moving from past to present and vice versa.

 

PLOT SUMMARY

London, 1923. Clarissa Dalloway is a woman of fifty-somethings, married to an influential and wealthy member of British Parliament, Richard Dalloway. She is known for promoting parties for English high society.
One day in June of that year, she was preparing another of her famous receptions, when it hits your door a man named Peter Walsh, recently arrived from India. Walsh is an old friend of more than thirty years whom she had a romance. His arrival makes Clarissa recall the events that occurred during the summer of 1890 and to question whether made the right of choice to prefer the security of a comfortable marriage with a successful politician, instead opting for a life with the adventurer Peter.
In addition, it develops the story of Septimus Warren Smith, a veteran of the First World War , traumatized by the death in front of a friend, and ending by taking him to suicide. Although Mrs. Dalloway has no relation with him, his death is cause for reflection and questioning on her part.

 

AUTHOR – Virginia Woolf

 

GENRE – Modernist; formalist; feminist

LANGUAGE – English

 

TIME AND PLACE WRITTEN –

Woolf began Mrs Dalloway in Sussex in 1922 and completed the novel in London in 1925

PUBLISHER –

Hogarth Press, the publishing house created by Leonard and Virginia Woolf in 1917

NARRATOR –

 Anonymous. The omniscient narrator is a commenting voice who knows everything about the characters. This voice appears occasionally among the subjective thoughts of characters. The critique of Sir William Bradshaw's reverence of proportion and conversion is the narrator's most sustained appearance.

STYLE –

 Point of view changes constantly, often shifting from one character's stream of consciousness (subjective interior thoughts) to another's within a single paragraph. Woolf most often uses free indirect discourse, a literary technique that describes the interior thoughts of characters using third-person singular pronouns (he and she). This technique ensures that transitions between the thoughts of a large number of characters are subtle and smooth.
In this book the plot is almost dissolved, reducing to a minimum wire, a kind of atmosphere that connects the characters. An external event triggers any ideas and sequences of ideas that lead the character to move with freedom of conscience, moving from past to present and contrariwise. What became this narrative important was a result of such experiments that have a sense of the fluidity and flexibility both of time and memory. Virginia Woolf, in particular, utilizes this experiments getting very successfull  the concept of ´Time on the clock and time in the mind'.

 

TONE –

 The narrator is against the oppression of the human soul and for the celebration of diversity, as are the book's major characters. Sometimes the mood is humorous, but an underlying sadness is always present.

SETTING (time) –

 A day in mid-June, 1923. There are many flashbacks to a summer at Bourton in the early 1890, when the Clarissa was eighteen.

SETTING (Place) –

London, England. The novel takes place largely in the affluent neighborhood of Westminster, where the Dalloways live.

CHARACTERS

In Virginia Woolf her character's process is not a direct linear progress from their original feeling, we can see its inside Sally, Clarissa and Peter.
Her character's  thought often seem to contradict their feelings, or their actions and speach are disconected from or contradict their thoughts.
Looking Peter for example , himself is trying to convince his independence on the others people, but he is lying to himself because he depends on his establishment friends such as ´The Dalloways, the Whitbreads, and their set' to provide him a job.
“Though it was true he would have, some thime or other, to see Whether Richard couldn´t help him to some job”.
Peter Walsh´s vagueness about some time or other asking for some job reveals that he is unwilling to admit to himself that he dependes on the Dalloways.

PROTAGONIST –

Clarissa Dalloway,  is the heroine of the novel, struggles to balance her life as a wife with the outside world. She is a woman of high society, but it moves through this world in search of a deeper meaning to the superficial life she lives, the fruit of your choice from the past. Always concerned with appearances, rarely shared her feelings with someone.
"... It was not the thing itself, but for what others thought this or that. As she needed people expressing their satisfaction when it came ..."
Exactly the attitudes of Clarissa is not seen as a modern woman  she fearfull and she was not strong, such as Sally was. For that reason she admired her friend and felt attracted  for Sally. When Clarissa met Sally, he learned that her parents had fought, leaving Clarissa shocked.
The death of Septimus for Clarissa awake her reality, she finally realized that her marriage was in fact a farce. She preferred to marry Richard, opposite to her true feelings, leaving her soul. Already Septimus preserved his soul to choosen the  death. But Why Clarissa had acted in this way? In some ways it was a punishment for Clarissa to see a man sink in that deep darkness and forced her to stay there with her  evining dress. She was never really happy because she simply had "fear".

 

 Sally, is spontaneous, inprevisível. She says descendant of French and one of her ancestors had been with Marie Antoinette. Sally kisses Clarissa in the garden, this kiss wakes Clarissa in a deeper sense in relation to Sally, but it does not do the same by Sally, I believe in Clarissa awake a deeper admiration.
Ultimately, Clarissa and Sally thought that would change the world together, but just like all women of her time fineshed  married and submissive.

 

Peter Walsh, is the most consistent character, middle-aged and had fear that has wasted his life. He is still attracted to Clarissa, even after so many years, however, attempts to have a new love. He is like a storm, completely unpredictable.
He hates the bourgeois lifestyle of Clarissa, and blame Richard. Despite his criticism of others, can not see his faults and does not realize that he was the main guilty for Clarissa had not accepted his marriage proposal. The  critical nature of the distance of the others.
He wakes Clarissa's fear, then with Peter everything had to be shared, and it would choke her. Richard does not require  Clarissa as  Peter requires. With Richard she has a certain independence, otherwise, a "fake independence".
Peter annoyed Clarissa with his lack of manners, his absolute lack of concern about what others think. In short, what Clarissa admired Sally, she criticized in Peter.

Richard, a key feature mentioned by Richard in the book. "... Type of person who did things for themselves ..."

 

Septimus, he is a veteran of First World War, suffered a shock with the death of his friend during the war. Feeling guilty living in a world outside of reality, he sees things and listen things that does not happening, and talk with his deceased friend Evans. Both Clarissa and Septimus have the same feelings, like love, fear and oppression. But Clarissa is a society that preserves the interest of war while Septimus represents the working class, which puts the legitimacy of war and question the true values. Both Clarissa and Septimus are moving between the present and the past for answers to their internal conflicts.

Rezia, a woman in a wide-eyed face thin and pale, an Italian girl. Lucrezia had been married for 4 years with Septimus, had left her home to live in England with Septimus, without friends, she was not happy, was so thin that the alliance slipped on his finger.

 

MAJOR CONFLICT - Existential – Clarissa and other characters try to preserve their souls after the First World War, after that the society became fragmentary.

• Feminism

 

Virginia Woolf, with lucid passion examines the position of women imprisoned by family:
Such as Sally Seton, who Clarissa greatly admired, for look an independent woman when they meet again, Sally became “The type just the perfect housewife” and very happily married with 5 children. With this, our author makes clear how this domination has prevented the development of women. Clarissa highlights the role of women as the proverbial "Angel in the House” and incorporates both sexual and economic repression. She herself is part of that repression.

• Homosexuality

Clarissa Dalloway is strongly attracted to Sally at Bourton and she still considers the kiss they shared to be the happiest moment of her life, but she does not recognize these feelings as signs of homosexuality.
The relationship between Doris Kilman and Elizabeth Dalloway demonstrates that the older may have certain lesbian feelings towards Clarissa's daughter
Evans is Septimus's commanding officer, is described as “undemonstrative in the company of women”. Woolf describes Septimus and Evans behaved together like "two dogs playing on a hearth-rug" who, inseparable, "had to be together, share with each other, fight with each other, quarrel with each other..."

• Mental illness

 

Septimus, operates as a pointed criticism of the treatment of mental illness and depression. Woolf lashes out at the medical discourse through Septimus' decline and ultimate suicide

 

RISING ACTION –

Clarissa spends the day organizing a party that will bring people together, while Septimus Warren Smith eventually commits suicide due to the social pressures that oppress his soul.

CLIMAX –

At her party, Clarissa goes to a small room to contemplate Septiums's suicide. She identifies herself  with him and is glad he did it, believing that he preserved his soul but this time Clarissa perceive that Septimus had committed suicide, but she was there, and continued to live, and the most important is  to continue,  exactly not has afraid of life. "Not fear the heat of the sun ..." She should go downstairs to her friends Sally and Peter and meet the heavy circles that were dissolving in the air, had to meet his friends again and just live.

 

 

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Mrs Dalloway summary short analysis book of Virginia Woolf

Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway is the story of a day in June 1923, as lived by a few London citizens. There is a calm in the air; people are enjoying a sense of peace and remembering their lives from before the long and bitter World War I.
Mrs. Dalloway is a novel about people’s inner lives. It does not possess a vivid plot; the actual events are secondary to what people spend much of their time pondering: memories, regrets, and hopes. Almost all of the main characters wonder about what might have been. The novel is told from the viewpoint of an omniscient and invisible narrator.
Most of the characters are well off financially, and have considerable leisure time. Yet they are quite busy with the business of being alive, which includes asking questions of their internal and external worlds. These questions do not always make them happy. On the contrary, most of the characters are unhappy .In keeping with Woolf’s interest in psychology, sexuality is a theme in the novel. Several of the characters are divided in their feelings towards love, and this contributes to their ambivalence.
The actions of the novel are simple: Clarissa Dalloway is hosting a formal party. She sees Peter Walsh, who has returned from India, and drops in for a visit. This meeting, and many other moments in the day, make Clarissa think about the past and the choices she has made. Clarissa’s husband, Richard, has meetings and lunches, and their daughter Elizabeth has similar plans herself. Another Londoner, Septimus Warren Smith, is having a bad day, and so is his wife Lucrezia. Septimus is obsessed with his memories of Evans, a friend who was killed in the war. He is also convinced that unseen forces are sending him messages. Lucrezia is taking Septimus to two doctors, neither of whom can do much to cure him. Septimus kills himself later in the day, to escape his doctors because he feels he has no other alternative.
Clarissa’s party is a success. The Prime Minister arrives, and this is considered a great honor. In the middle of her success as a hostess, she hears of Septimus’ suicide. Although she never met him, the news moves her to the core of her being.She identifies with Septimus, admiring him for having the courage and for not compromising his soul. She feels, with her comfortable position as a society hostess, responsible for his death. The party nears its close as guests begin to leave. Clarissa enters the room, and her presence fills Peter with a great excitement.

 

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