Listen to Michael Cunningham read the prologue.
Watch the opening of the film.
Research Virginia Woolf and michael Cunningham links.
Continue reading to pg. 48.
From wikipedia
Mrs Dalloway (published on 14 May 1925) is a
novel by
Virginia Woolf that details a day in the life of Clarissa Dalloway in post-
World War I England. It is one of Woolf's best-known novels.
Created from two short stories, "Mrs Dalloway in Bond Street" and the
unfinished "The Prime Minister", the novel's story is of Clarissa's
preparations for a party of which she is to be hostess. With the
interior perspective of the novel, the story travels forwards and back
in time and in and out of the characters' minds to construct an image of
Clarissa's life and of the inter-war social structure.
Plot summary
Clarissa Dalloway goes around London in the morning, getting ready to
host a party that evening. The nice day reminds her of her youth at
Bourton
and makes her wonder about her choice of husband; she married the
reliable Richard Dalloway instead of the enigmatic and demanding Peter
Walsh and she "had not the option" to be with Sally Seton. Peter
reintroduces these conflicts by paying a visit that morning.
Septimus Warren Smith, a veteran of
World War I
suffering from deferred traumatic stress, spends his day in the park
with his Italian-born wife Lucrezia, where they are observed by Peter
Walsh. Septimus is visited by frequent and indecipherable
hallucinations, mostly concerning his dear friend Evans who died in the war. Later that day, after he is prescribed
involuntary commitment to a psychiatric hospital, he commits suicide by jumping out of a window.
Clarissa's party in the evening is a slow success. It is attended by
most of the characters she has met in the book, including people from
her past. She hears about Septimus' suicide at the party and gradually
comes to admire the act of this stranger, which she considers an effort
to preserve the purity of his happiness.
Characters
Clarissa Dalloway The fifty-one-year-old ("She had just broken into her fifty-second year" p. 31)
[1]
protagonist of the novel. She is the wife of Richard and mother of
Elizabeth. She spends the day organizing a party that will be held that
night while also reminiscing about the past. She is self-conscious about
her role in London high society.
Richard Dalloway The disconnected and haughty husband of Clarissa. He is immersed in his work in government.
Elizabeth Dalloway Seventeen-year-old daughter of Clarissa and
Richard. She is said to look "oriental" and has great composure.
Compared to her mother, she takes great pleasure in politics and modern
history, hoping to be either a doctor or farmer in the future.
Septimus Warren Smith A World War I veteran who suffers from
"shell shock" and hallucinations of his deceased friend, Evans. Educated
and decorated in the war, he is detached from society. He is married to
Lucrezia from whom he has grown distant.
Lucrezia "Rezia" Smith The Italian wife of Septimus. She is
burdened by his mental illness and believes that she is judged because
of it. During most of the novel she is homesick for family and country,
which she left to marry Septimus after the Armistice.
Sally Seton A love interest of Clarissa. She had a strained
relationship with her family and spent much time with Clarissa's family
in her youth. Sally is married to Lord Rosseter and has five boys. She
can be described as feisty as well as a youthful ragamuffin.
Hugh Whitbread The pompous friend of Clarissa. Like Clarissa,
he places much importance on his place in society. He holds an
unspecified position in the British Royal household. Although he
believes himself to be an essential member of the British aristocracy,
Lady Bourton, Clarissa, Richard, and Peter find him to be obnoxious.
Peter Walsh He is an old friend of Clarissa. In the past, she
rejected his marriage proposal. Now he has returned to England from
India and is one of the guests at Clarissa's party. He is planning to
marry Daisy.
Sir William Bradshaw Septimus is referred to the famous
psychiatrist, Sir William Bradshaw, by his physician, Dr. Holmes.
Bradshaw notes that Septimus has had a complete nervous breakdown and
suggests spending time in the country as a cure.
Miss Kilman Miss Kilman is Elizabeth's history teacher, who
has a degree in history and was fired from a teaching job during the
war. She has a German ancestry. She wears an unattractive mackintosh
coat because she does not care enough to dress to please others. She is a
born-again Christian. She dislikes Clarissa intensely but she loves to
spend time with Elizabeth.
Style
In
Mrs Dalloway, all of the action, except
flashbacks,
takes place on a day in June. It is an example of free indirect
discourse storytelling (not stream of consciousness because this story
moves between the consciousnesses of every character in a form of
discourse): every scene closely tracks the momentary thoughts of a
particular character. Woolf blurs the distinction between direct and
indirect speech throughout the novel, alternating her narration with
omniscient description,
indirect interior monologue,
direct interior narration follows at least twenty characters in this
way but the bulk of the novel is spent with Clarissa Dalloway and
Septimus Smith.
Because of structural and stylistic similarities,
Mrs Dalloway is commonly thought to be a response to
James Joyce's
Ulysses,
a text that is often considered one of the greatest novels of the
twentieth century (though Woolf herself, writing in 1928, apparently
denied this
[2]). In her essay 'Modern Fiction', Woolf praised
James Joyce's
Ulysses, saying of the scene in the cemetery, "on a first reading at any rate, it is difficult not to acclaim a masterpiece".
[3] The Hogarth Press, run by her and her husband
Leonard,
had to turn down the chance to publish the novel in 1919, because of
the obscenity law in England, as well as the practical issues regarding
publishing such a substantial text.
Woolf laid out some of her literary goals with the characters of
Mrs Dalloway while still working on the novel. A year before its publication, she gave a talk at Cambridge University called "
Character in Fiction," revised and retitled later that year as "Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Brown."
[4]
Themes
The novel has two main narrative lines involving two separate
characters (Clarissa Dalloway and Septimus Smith); within each narrative
there is a particular time and place in the past that the main
characters keep returning to in their minds. 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 comrade.
Mental illness
Septimus, as the
shell-shocked war hero, operates as a pointed criticism of the treatment of
mental illness and
depression.
[5] Woolf lashes out at the medical discourse through Septimus' decline and
suicide;
his doctors make snap judgments about his condition, talk to him mainly
through his wife and dismiss his urgent confessions before he can make
them. Rezia remarks that Septimus "was not ill. Dr Holmes said there was
nothing the matter with him".
[6]
Woolf goes beyond criticizing the treatment of
mental illness.
Using the characters of Clarissa and Rezia, she makes the argument that
people can only interpret Septimus' shell-shock according to their
cultural norms.
[7]
Throughout the course of the novel Clarissa does not meet Septimus.
Clarissa's reality is vastly different from that of Septimus; his
presence in London is unknown to Clarissa until his death becomes idle
chat at her party. By never having these characters meet, Woolf is
suggesting that mental illness can be contained to the individuals who
suffer from it without others who remain unaffected ever having to
witness it.
[8] This allows Woolf to weave her criticism of the treatment of the
mentally ill
with her larger argument, which is the criticism of society's class
structure. Her use of Septimus as the stereotypically traumatized man
from the war is her way of showing that there were still reminders of
the
First World War in 1923
London.
[7] These ripples affect Mrs. Dalloway and readers spanning generations. Shell shock or
post traumatic stress disorder is an important addition to the early 20th century canon of post-war British Literature.
[9]
There are similarities in Septimus' condition to Woolf's struggles with
bipolar disorder (they both
hallucinate that birds sing in
Greek and Woolf once attempted to throw herself out of a window as Septimus does).
[5] Woolf eventually committed suicide by drowning.
Woolf's original plan for her novel called for Clarissa to kill
herself during her party. In this original version, Septimus (whom Woolf
called Mrs. Dalloway's "double") did not appear at all.
[2]
Existential issues
When Peter Walsh sees a girl in the street and
stalks
her for half an hour, he notes that his relationship to the girl was
"made up, as one makes up the better part of life." By focusing on
characters' thoughts and perceptions, Woolf emphasizes the significance
of private thoughts rather than concrete events in a person's life. Most
of the plot in
Mrs Dalloway is realizations that the characters subjectively make.
[5]
Fueled by her bout of ill health, Clarissa Dalloway is emphasized as a
woman who appreciates life. Her love of party-throwing comes from a
desire to bring people together and create happy moments. Her charm,
according to Peter Walsh who loves her, is a sense of joie de vivre,
always summarized by the sentence "There she was." She interprets
Septimus Smith's death as an act of embracing life and her mood remains
light even though she hears about it in the midst of the party.
Feminism
As a commentary on inter-war society, Clarissa's character highlights the role of women as the proverbial "
Angel in the House" and embodies sexual and economic repression and the
narcissism
of bourgeois women who have never known the hunger and insecurity of
working women. She keeps up with and even embraces the social
expectations of the wife of a patrician
politician but she is still able to express herself and find distinction in the parties she throws.
[5]
Her old friend Sally Seton, whom Clarissa admires dearly, is remembered as a great independent woman:
[5]
She smoked cigars, once ran down a corridor naked to fetch her
sponge-bag and made bold, unladylike statements to get a reaction from
people. When Clarissa meets her in the present day, she turns out to be a
perfect housewife, having married a self-made rich man and given birth
to five sons.
Homosexuality
Clarissa Dalloway is strongly attracted to Sally at
Bourton
— 34 years later, she still considers the kiss they shared to be the
happiest moment of her life. She feels about women "as men feel",
[10] but she does not recognize these feelings as signs of
homosexuality.
Similarly, Septimus is haunted by the image of his dear friend Evans.
Evans, his commanding officer, is described as being "undemonstrative
in the company of women". The narrator describes Septimus and Evans
behaving 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..."
Jean E. Kennard notes that the word "share" could easily be read in a
Forsteran manner, perhaps as in Forster's
Maurice
which shows the word's use in this period to describe homosexual
relations. Kennard is one to note Septimus' "increasing revulsion at the
idea of heterosexual sex", abstaining from sex with Rezia and feeling
that "the business of copulation was filth to him before the end."
[11]
