I'm so glad I joined this group because now I have finally read a novel that has sat on my shelf, unread, for years and years. I've a feeling I'll be thinking about this one for a long time. One thing I have to say, is that I did not find it all an easy read. So many people have told me they loved this book and as i read i wondered if they, like me, loved having read it as opposed to the moment of actually reading--which took effort. But now that I am done, I feel the book was glorious. And I know i will read it again and the next time it will be so much easier to read. Anyway, you ask what we think the book is about? And I hesitate to attempt an answer as i think I will find that the book was about so many things. But in this moment, i will say that I think the book is about how each life is important, how we don't know what anyone else is going through at any time, how a so-called small life is not small at all, how time and memory fool with us, how we struggle to think clearly, to see clearly, to see outside of ourselves, how we are all bundles of emotion, how time beats on, terrible things happen, love is elusive, there's always mending to do. etc.
Oh I'm glad you were finally able to read it! Yes, I think that is certainly a central element of the book - we get to look inside such a wide range of minds and see that each contains multitudes, each a vibrant inner life. For that reason, I always find VW's writing very humane.
And yes, VW is difficult. If you look at the first thing I published on substack, you'll see that my first experience reading Mrs Dalloway was rather an unhappy one! But it's a novel that rewards rereading - as you anticipate. Sometimes I dip in randomly and reread a single page and it's like reading poetry - crammed with vivid, convoluted life, crammed with signs and symbols, joy and despair, and beautifully dignifying the ephemeral.
I actually read the first half of the book three times! And then, finally, continued on and read the rest. This is because, each time I read the first half, I then put the book down until the next day or so, and when I returned, I felt I couldn't continue unless I re-read what I'd already read. I just could not hold onto all of it with that break in reading. To me, it feels like a book that must be read in one big gulp (which is what I finally did--and yes, it wasn't easy to do). It needs the continuity that comes from reading all the way through without stopping. (To me, anyway.) I like Tash's thought of picking it up and reading a page every now and then. And I know I will re-read all of it and find new things each time the more familiar i become with the story. Also, I'm revising a novel and oh boy, the things I learned from Mrs. Dalloway!
I think I had the same experience, picking up and putting down a few times before getting through. And I finally got through by letting myself to go back and rereading paragraphs and pages as needed to (a) figure out what was going on and (b) figure out how she accomplished the telling. And (c) yay on revising your novel! I'll buy the flowers for your book party.
I also started the book three or four times, which wasn't a great reading experience frankly. After reading fifty pages, wouldn't it be nice to remember something and feel some connection to the writing? Or is this book about learning to read another way? I don't know. I finished and still wasn't satisfied. I don't care much for the party-goer crowd, rather a superficial lot. Who cares? Meanwhile a veteran impales himself on a fence. VW peers through a microscope at London Town and gives us tons of details. I'm not sure what it all means, or if I care. But I've been blind before.
It sounds like this might not be your cup of tea, Tod, which is perfectly ok!
Perhaps you are with Lytton Strachey - the only one of VW's friends not to like the novel and particularly the portrait of Clarissa. VW noted down that Lytton 'thinks she is disagreeable & limited, but that I alternatively laugh at her, & cover her, very remarkably, with myself.' There have of course been differing viewpoints on the novel. Marxist: This is just a portrait of a privileged woman written by a privileged woman. Feminist: This is a portrait of a feminine life force that endures and creates. Literary: This is an experiment in the modernist style in which the life of the mind is more significant than the life of the body.
Tod, for me some books are the kind I love having read once I'm done. But reading them--the first time, usually--can be a rough go. (So yes, I think a person has to, sometimes, learn how to read another way, as you say.) At times, reading Mrs. Dalloway I thought to myself, wait, isn't the first rule of reading that I should be enjoying it? And so i had to change my definition of enjoyment with this one, the same way I have to do time and again when we read some of the stories in Story Club. I'm reading them to discover what it is about them that others have discovered, and to see if I can maybe find clues myself as I'm reading. I'm reading them as an exercise in slow reading--something I'm not that great at. i'm reading them as though I'm reading a poem. Unlike you, i didn't think anyone was superficial. I felt, at times, that I was watching a movie that moved from person to person, in and out, like a magic trick--someone was able to read everybody's mind at once. I kept thinking maybe this book needs to be read One Page a Day! Instead of quickly (as i finally did), maybe i should have read it super slowly. I don't know. I feel I do know what you are saying. I heard myself say to my husband several times as I read, "man, this book is so dense." And a dense book is not my favorite. But now that I'm done, the book is resonating. I'm eager to hear what others have to say so i can soak up more. Michael Cunningham wrote this about the book: "Woolf was among the first writers to understand that there are no insignificant lives, only inadequate ways of looking at them." And I think this book looks at everyone and gives every life its moment. Not to get too over the top, but to me that means that my life is also not insignificant, though i often feel it is. I matter, like Clarissa matters, like Septimus matters.
She's writing about a thin slice of English life. Not quite Downton Abbey perhaps, but the class of people at a party the prime minister attends. A couple of people from the help class, and a veteran. So from this we derive that "all lives matter?" I don't get that from this book and I tend to get cynical around parties of this sort, where who's going and who's not is important and where nothing worthwhile transpires except noting who attended. I felt some energy around the portrayal of Peter Walsh, but the rest were boring. What about the book makes us understand there are no insignificant lives, a quote oft repeated?
Did you happen to see Girls when it came out? People said, "oh four privileged white girls in Brooklyn, who cares?" But i loved that show. I was okay with the thin slice of life it portrayed, in the same way that I'm fine with Mrs. Dalloway and her circle (though Septimus and his wife aren't in her circle). Like Tash says, this one may just not be for you. As for me, I'm still thinking about the book, days after i finished. i keep thinking about Clarissa not marrying Peter Walsh. I think about Peter Walsh and the mess of his life and him breaking down in tears. (I really want to hear what others think of that.) And Clarissa kissing a woman. And her daughter so eager to be away from her mother, and falling in with that bitter woman. And the sadness of Reiza, dealing with her husband. Sally, wild Sally, no longer wild. The park, the people, that dumb party, the flowers she bought herself, the dress she wanted to wear--all of it runs through my mind again and again. Time presses on, things don't go the way you wish they would, everyone carries sadnesses... Parties, parties, parties, and the sad people who attend, talking about god knows what. I mean, this book covers so much. And quietly, steadily, with very little plot. Yes, from all of it we derive all lives are significant--we hear from everyone!, that the choices we make determine our lives... Well, i won't go on. I'm sure you get my drift. Different strokes, Tod!
Clarissa seems to be caught off guard and momentarily disconcerted when the Bradshaws arrive at her party, bearing with them, in a sense, the mangled body of Septimus Smith. From one of Peter’s earlier reveries, we learn that Clarissa has a “horror of death”, which she copes with by indulging in a “transcendental theory” that something—“the unseen part of us”—survives death and attaches “to this person or that, or even haunting certain places, after death. Perhaps—perhaps.” This is the psychological defense mechanism that allows Clarissa to entertain thoughts of her death occasionally throughout the novel, but on her own terms and at times of her own choosing.
Clarissa is unprepared, however, when Mrs. Bradshaw greets her with news of Septimus’s suicide, and she has to retreat to a small private room to absorb the news, and with it, the sudden reminder that “there was in the depths of her heart an awful fear”; that is, the fear of her own death. But in a moment, Clarissa rebounds: “Odd, incredible; she had never been so happy.” The beauty of the evening sky viewed out a window has a restorative effect upon her spirits, particularly because, “[i]t held, foolish as the idea was, something of her own in it, this country sky …”
Septimus shares Clarissa’s appreciation of beauty, whether expressed in the works of Shakespeare or manifested in the wonders of the natural world. The critical difference between them, I think, is that the experiences of the war have taken a coarse grit belt sander to Septimus’s psychological defenses and shorn away his ability to sleepwalk through daily life without being paralyzed by the fear of his own inevitable death in the way that Clarissa is able to; or, for that matter, that I’m able to, sitting here pecking away at the keyboard, knowing full well that when I’m lying on my deathbed—assuming I have one—it’s highly unlikely that my last thoughts will be, “Oh, if only I’d spent more time online!”
Septimus’s sensibilities are fully exposed to and totally overwhelmed by the beauty and terror of the world—'beauty and terror'; I think I may have read that phrase somewhere—and he kills himself when he is unable to withstand the unbearable effect they have upon his thoughts and feelings.
Wow, a really powerfully worded bit of commentary, Tom. Particularly - the Bradshaws 'bearing with them, in a sense, the mangled body of Septimus' and also the war having 'taken a coarse grit belt sander to Septimus's psychological defenses.' Exactly right.
I like also how you draw attention to Clarissa and Septimus's shared appreciation of beauty. I'm reminded of a note VW made to herself when writing the novel of - 'Mrs D seeing the truth. SS seeing the insane truth.' - and whether those visions are very different in the end.
Thanks, Tash, for your kind words. Actually, it was Ronald’s reference to “Cymbeline” below that put me in mind of Shakespeare’s plays, such as “Julius Caesar” or his history plays, which often feature the dead body of a noble Roman or English king at centre stage. And I was puttering around in my garage yesterday afternoon and noticed that the sanding belt on my belt sander was becoming unsutured.
There’s a scene late in the novel where Peter gives his thoughts on Clarissa, which help explain why she is able to see “the truth” and not be overwhelmed by it in the way that Septimus is. Peter speaks of Clarissa’s “indomitable vitality … there being in her a thread of life which for toughness, endurance, power to overcome obstacles, and carry her triumphantly through he had never known the like of.” This may very well be true, but then Clarissa didn’t serve in the war.
How I'm loving all these erudite comments, and the repartee. I did love Mrs Dalloway -- I surprised myself -- and I'm gaining a much deeper understanding from reading these pages. Thanks to all! But ... from the big picture to the small ... the scene where Septimus and Rezia are trimming the hat, then he leaps to his death at the prospect of facing Bradshaw again, well, it totally undid me. Septimus, for all his mental and emotional carnage, the truest, the purest of them all. He'll stay with me a long time.
Me too! That final happy scene that Rezia and Septimus have when Septimus is his usual self for a moment - argh! - so very moving. It's a relief that R and S's story isn't all darkness and heaviness. Right before disaster, we have this beautiful moment of reprieve.
I'm intrigued by the treatment of class, as I've mentioned before. There are so many pointed comments about how people of different positions in society interact. Miss Kilman vs. Clarissa (it is a battle); Miss Kilman and Elizabeth (E. I think barely considers Miss K, whereas for Miss K, Elizabeth is the sun and the moon); Hugh vs. Lady Bruton's secretary Miss Brush; the two doctors and their patient, Septimus, which illuminates both the exalted position of doctors when dealing with the middle class and Bradshaw's Lordly attitude / Clarissa and Sally's husband, a miner's son / Clarissa and her staff (letting them stay to the end of a show, where other servants had to leave before the end); the mysterious occupant of the car in Bond Street and the crowd. We are allowed to see how each half of these pairings feel about the other (Miss Brush despises Hugh; Miss Kilman and Clarissa despise each other), and we also see VW's comments on them (Miss Brush "deficient though she was in every attribute of female charm.") This is one element that really intrigues me, the placing of every character in a very specific position; if I were ambitious I would draw a plot graph and place each person and see what it looked like; a portrait of the King? I wonder, completely ignorantly from my social and temporal distance, if VW was commenting on English society, in addition to life and death and love, and what her take was. She seems sympathetic to members of the various classes, but then you get that comment about Miss Brush and you realize, here's a snob of the highest degree.
Oh darn - I meant to include a question or prompt about class and forgot! Yes, you're right - it's everywhere and often seems multi-pronged (intersecting with other factors like sex, education and so on). Lady Bruton is upper but can't quite write a letter to the Times without some sort of masculine oversight and reassurance. Richard Dalloway is upper but intellectually unbrilliant (PW refers to him getting up on his hind legs to talk about Shakespeare). Miss Kilman is lower middle but very educated. Septimus is middle and quite educated. Bradshaw has achieved status yet is the son of a tradesman and is sensitive to others intimating that doctors are not educated men. Clarissa 'scarcely reads a book now, except memoirs in bed' which I understood to be a self-deprecating jab at her lack of intellectual heft. She's right there in the heart of Westminster and the sphere of politics but is excluded from much of the exercise of political power because of her sex. Hugh imagines himself to be right up there with the upper crust but is ridiculous though, unlike Lady B, has the ingrained upper class male confidence that allows him to pen a letter to the Times and be published.
As I mentioned in another comment, Tash, Clarissa and her friends are about as far away in time from the Napoleonic Wars as we are from the Great War, and the Napoleonic Wars were the last great cataclysmic upheaval in Europe before the Great War. So, I'm inclined to think that Clarissa may be seeking some insight into her own times by reading about the last great global conflict of a century earlier.
Baron Marbot's memoirs are available online at the Internet Archive (I wonder if VW ever read them), and they make pretty lively and interesting reading, which could also account for Clarissa's interest in them.
Yes! Something I picked up too. Class awareness was universal in the 1920s. (Still is, arguably). It would be odd if the book wasn't infused with it. I would add Peter following the attractive stranger, when she vanished into a house, his snobbish dismissal of her hanging baskets. As an Anglo Indian Peter is socially insecure and one of the most class conscious.
I don't think I go along with VW being a snob. Miss Brush is working class and also unattractive (well technically Lower Middle I think) but her unattractivness is intrinsic. Septimus is around Middle Middle (Def. lower than Clarissa, those brown shoes you know) but is sympathetic.
I've flagged many instances of class awareness and insecurity as well as those you mentioned. Considering how significant a feature of the story this is.
It's difficult to keep track of whose mind we're inside - I think the comment on Miss Brush (deficient in female charm) may be construed 'as seen by High Whitbread' – even though a few words later in the same sentence we're inside the mind of Miss Brush who 'so resented'.
By the time I finished reading “Mrs. Dalloway”, I had come to the conclusion that the whole novel pivots around that summer of 1893 when Clarissa, Peter, and Sally were together at the Parry family’s country home at Bourton for the last time. There is an Edenic quality to the way the time and place are recalled in the characters’ memories—the garden with its flowers and shaded pathways, the outdoor fountain, rowing on the nearby lake; plus, the fact that Clarissa, Peter, and Sally are all young and innocent—think of Sally running naked down the hallway to get her bath sponge—and living the best versions of themselves. Peter is headlong in love with Clarissa, and he has a strong advocate for his suit in the person of Sally.
The arrival of Richard Dalloway on the scene need not necessarily have disrupted the triumvirate, but Peter is unable to live with ambiguity, and he commits the original sin of demanding of Clarissa that she declare where her affections lie: with him, or with Richard? Peter is seeking the forbidden knowledge that may well result in his expulsion from the garden, which, in fact, is what happens to him. It is the last time that Clarissa, Peter, and Sally are ever together, at least, until Clarissa’s party thirty years later.
And I think it is the final reunion of Clarissa, Peter, and Sally at Clarissa’s party after thirty years of separation that sums up the novel. That is what everything leads up to, and where the characters reach their goal, even though we don’t actual see the three of them sit down and talk together. We are left hanging in suspense as Sally gets up from her seat to say goodbye to Richard, while Peter remains seated a moment, intending to join her, only to be seized by the thought, “What is this terror? What is this ecstasy?” when Clarissa suddenly enters the room—and cut to black.
“Terror” and “ecstasy” is probably where I derived “beauty and terror” in my June 28th comment.
Another thing that connects the summer of 1893 with Clarissa’s party in June 1923 is the Cruciferae botanical family. We are only a few paragraphs into “Mrs. Dalloway” when we meet Peter Walsh through the medium of Clarissa’s memory of him from thirty summers earlier. She recalls Peter saying, ‘“I prefer men to cauliflowers”—was that it?”’, though only a sentence or two later Clarissa’s recollection has slightly changed, and she’s thinking that what she recalls of Peter includes “a few sayings like this about cabbages.” Cabbages, not cauliflowers.
When I read that, I wondered if VW was trying to drop a hint about the unreliability of our memory. If so, it would seem to have implications for her storyline, in which her characters spend so much time in the past. But does the accuracy of their memories even matter, if what Clarissa, Peter, and Sally remember about the past seems true for them?
In any case, the novel is further rounded out and the circle completed when cabbages, this time, make an encore appearance at Clarissa’s party. Sally is telling Peter of how her garden is a sanctuary, where she obtains “a peace which men and women never gave her.” Peter then seems to have a flashback to the moment when he found Clarissa “[m]using among the vegetables” that summer morning at Bourton thirty years earlier—much as Sally has just described seeking refuge in her own garden—the same moment in which Clarissa introduces us to Peter in the novel’s opening page. Peter then follows the script for this scene which he has held in his memory for the past three decades, and responds to Sally with the same sardonic remark he gave to Clarissa that long ago summer morning: “But no; he did not like cabbages; he preferred human beings, Peter said.”
I know it sounds a little fanciful, but "Mrs. Dalloway" could be viewed as a type of odyssey, where Clarissa, Peter, and Sally, after many twistings and turnings in their life voyages, all arrive safely back at Ithaca in the end.
I love the vegetable connection you've written about here--I am pleased to report that I noticed it as well. And yes, I suppose they are back safely, in that they are all still alive. But are they content? They were young once, with their lives ahead of them. Now they are heading toward the last years of their lives, choices having been made that they must live with. (Happens to all of us.) You ask if the accuracy of our memories matters. No memory is ever accurate. Ask two people what happened three minutes ago and they will tell you different angles/stories on the same event. So accuracy may matter in the courtroom, but it doesn't exist. And neither does the past, really. It's lost to us, we create stories out of pieces of it, some of us ruminate, trying to find the thread that led us to where we are today.
Yes - with the same three (well 4 including Richard) coming together again at Clarissa's party. At the same time - the novel's also about Septimus, and some insight that he and Clarissa have in common. So it's complicated!
I agree “it’s complicated”—and thanks for the Avril Lavigne reference here on Canada Day—but I’m still inclined to think of Clarissa, Peter, and Sally as the core character group of “Mrs. Dalloway”. Clarissa seems to confirm this herself at her party when she sees Peter and Sally sitting and talking together. “They were talking: it seemed so familiar—that they should be talking”, though it may well have been thirty years since Peter and Sally had last sat face-to-face. “They would discuss the past. With the two of them (MORE EVEN THAN WITH RICHARD [emphasis added]) she shared her past … A part of this Sally must always be; Peter must always be.”
So, I see Richard as a secondary character in the novel. If you include him with Clarissa, Peter and Sally, he’s the Zeppo Marx of the quartet, the least idiosyncratic and thus least memorable person of the bunch.
As for Septimus, I see him and Rezia as occupying a separate subplot altogether, being interwoven with Clarissa and company only in the most tangential and unconscious manner—Peter hearing the sound of the ambulance bell on its way to the scene of Septimus’s death, and Clarissa learning of the suicide of a young man later at her party that night. But I agree there are parallels between Clarissa and Septimus, even though they never know each other.
Am I the only one who finds that moment when PW hears the ambulance incredibly moving? We move from Septimus jumping from the window and Rezia being sedated (while Holmes stands 'dark against the window') to PW hearing the ambulance bell and feeling pleased about this triumph of civilisation. The light and shade of this compressed moment affects me powerfully.
When Septimus had his vision of beauty in Regent's Park. Three words "fear no more". Was this from Shakespeare Cymbeline (my favourite Shakespeare I think) - Septimus loves Shakespeare we know - or am I reading too much into 3 words? But then at the party Clarissa has a similar vision and a sudden apprehension into the mind of Septimus despite never having met _ and she completes the quote "fear no more the heat of the sun" the beautiful dirge for Imogen. I'm still thinking about this.
Is there a man in the book who has succeeded in life? Peter? No. Richard? No; he's not in the cabinet. Hugh? I suppose he's succeeded at being smarmy and useful. Septimus? No. The doctors? No; they've contributed to a man's death by their incompetence.
My two cents, after reading and pondering this novel since the late 90s -- the party is a metaphor for life itself. It's a celebration, a collection of varied characters, anything can happen and often does. And now death has come along and messed it up with its ugliness and untimeliness, as it always is. Ugly. Untimely. Disruptive. Insinuating itself into this perfect party, into this perfect life. Except it's not a perfect life. Love makes life worthwhile, but here Clarissa has fallen short herself. She has denied love, cast it off in various contexts (including for her own daughter). Clarissa's darker mood too, upon the opening of the actual party, is indicative I think of how she always sees it hiding, death, right behind that door, or that corner. She knows it's inescapable and her very identity is dependent upon the success of life, the party. But now as we approach the end, there is no making this right. You can never go back.
There is so much to say about this little gem of a novel, and I'll await Tash's summary comments with excitement!
Nancy, you've nailed it! I agree with everything you say. Beautifully put, as always.
I've now posted some closing remarks on the novel but they feel completely inadequate! Gah! There is so much more to say - I could've written an essay each on Bradshaw, on Septimus and Rezia, on the lunch with Lady Bradshaw, on Miss Kilman and Elizabeth, on Peter and Sally, on the party. I might still return to some of these things in later posts but I was racing against the clock to get something out to the group and wanted to draw things together a bit and take a wide angle view of Woolf, her writing practice and so on.
Needless to say, I would love to hear any further thoughts from you.
P.S. She had a very interesting relationship with Katherine Mansfield, by the way, which would have been a digression from our discussion, but there is just so much to say about her connections to other people, especially women writers. She had a huge ego!
Such discussions, dear Tash, remind me of the old days, luxuriating in graduate seminar classes, my head in a blur, my heart racing a million miles an hour. I had found my tribe (smile). And I ended up falling so much in love with Woolf, that I used 3 of her novels as a basis for my master's thesis, which compared several of Woolf's major protagonists with the Lilith myth. But one of those characters was Clarissa Dalloway, so I feel strangely as though she and I are old comrades, old friends. And now you got us together again, as I hadn't read this novel since the mid-90s. And of course, you should read a favorite novel every decade, I think. Because while the text remains the same, we do not, and our life experiences, our brushes with death, our own losses of people, of love, of youth, of (fill in the blank) render us as new readers again. But what bliss!
One thing that's nagged me about Lady Bruton's lunch party. It seems to me a little unusual that she would know Peter Walsh. She seems to be of such a different place in society. I can understand her friendship with Richard and the admirable Hugh, being in government and a courtier, but her family history and personality don't seem to mesh with knowing Peter — she withdraws to a private room with the Prime Minister during the party; I can't imagine Peter having that status. Tiny point, but it catches me when I read that section. But, ignorance of early 20th century English society is probably to blame for my quibble.
I'm so glad I joined this group because now I have finally read a novel that has sat on my shelf, unread, for years and years. I've a feeling I'll be thinking about this one for a long time. One thing I have to say, is that I did not find it all an easy read. So many people have told me they loved this book and as i read i wondered if they, like me, loved having read it as opposed to the moment of actually reading--which took effort. But now that I am done, I feel the book was glorious. And I know i will read it again and the next time it will be so much easier to read. Anyway, you ask what we think the book is about? And I hesitate to attempt an answer as i think I will find that the book was about so many things. But in this moment, i will say that I think the book is about how each life is important, how we don't know what anyone else is going through at any time, how a so-called small life is not small at all, how time and memory fool with us, how we struggle to think clearly, to see clearly, to see outside of ourselves, how we are all bundles of emotion, how time beats on, terrible things happen, love is elusive, there's always mending to do. etc.
Oh I'm glad you were finally able to read it! Yes, I think that is certainly a central element of the book - we get to look inside such a wide range of minds and see that each contains multitudes, each a vibrant inner life. For that reason, I always find VW's writing very humane.
And yes, VW is difficult. If you look at the first thing I published on substack, you'll see that my first experience reading Mrs Dalloway was rather an unhappy one! But it's a novel that rewards rereading - as you anticipate. Sometimes I dip in randomly and reread a single page and it's like reading poetry - crammed with vivid, convoluted life, crammed with signs and symbols, joy and despair, and beautifully dignifying the ephemeral.
Mary, it took me quite a while to finally finish the book, and now I read it almost every year. It rewards re-reading and re-re--reading, etc.
I actually read the first half of the book three times! And then, finally, continued on and read the rest. This is because, each time I read the first half, I then put the book down until the next day or so, and when I returned, I felt I couldn't continue unless I re-read what I'd already read. I just could not hold onto all of it with that break in reading. To me, it feels like a book that must be read in one big gulp (which is what I finally did--and yes, it wasn't easy to do). It needs the continuity that comes from reading all the way through without stopping. (To me, anyway.) I like Tash's thought of picking it up and reading a page every now and then. And I know I will re-read all of it and find new things each time the more familiar i become with the story. Also, I'm revising a novel and oh boy, the things I learned from Mrs. Dalloway!
I think I had the same experience, picking up and putting down a few times before getting through. And I finally got through by letting myself to go back and rereading paragraphs and pages as needed to (a) figure out what was going on and (b) figure out how she accomplished the telling. And (c) yay on revising your novel! I'll buy the flowers for your book party.
Also, makes me grateful for a 400--word limit on What Now. Imagine if VW were trying a prompt!
Ha!
I also started the book three or four times, which wasn't a great reading experience frankly. After reading fifty pages, wouldn't it be nice to remember something and feel some connection to the writing? Or is this book about learning to read another way? I don't know. I finished and still wasn't satisfied. I don't care much for the party-goer crowd, rather a superficial lot. Who cares? Meanwhile a veteran impales himself on a fence. VW peers through a microscope at London Town and gives us tons of details. I'm not sure what it all means, or if I care. But I've been blind before.
It sounds like this might not be your cup of tea, Tod, which is perfectly ok!
Perhaps you are with Lytton Strachey - the only one of VW's friends not to like the novel and particularly the portrait of Clarissa. VW noted down that Lytton 'thinks she is disagreeable & limited, but that I alternatively laugh at her, & cover her, very remarkably, with myself.' There have of course been differing viewpoints on the novel. Marxist: This is just a portrait of a privileged woman written by a privileged woman. Feminist: This is a portrait of a feminine life force that endures and creates. Literary: This is an experiment in the modernist style in which the life of the mind is more significant than the life of the body.
Tod, for me some books are the kind I love having read once I'm done. But reading them--the first time, usually--can be a rough go. (So yes, I think a person has to, sometimes, learn how to read another way, as you say.) At times, reading Mrs. Dalloway I thought to myself, wait, isn't the first rule of reading that I should be enjoying it? And so i had to change my definition of enjoyment with this one, the same way I have to do time and again when we read some of the stories in Story Club. I'm reading them to discover what it is about them that others have discovered, and to see if I can maybe find clues myself as I'm reading. I'm reading them as an exercise in slow reading--something I'm not that great at. i'm reading them as though I'm reading a poem. Unlike you, i didn't think anyone was superficial. I felt, at times, that I was watching a movie that moved from person to person, in and out, like a magic trick--someone was able to read everybody's mind at once. I kept thinking maybe this book needs to be read One Page a Day! Instead of quickly (as i finally did), maybe i should have read it super slowly. I don't know. I feel I do know what you are saying. I heard myself say to my husband several times as I read, "man, this book is so dense." And a dense book is not my favorite. But now that I'm done, the book is resonating. I'm eager to hear what others have to say so i can soak up more. Michael Cunningham wrote this about the book: "Woolf was among the first writers to understand that there are no insignificant lives, only inadequate ways of looking at them." And I think this book looks at everyone and gives every life its moment. Not to get too over the top, but to me that means that my life is also not insignificant, though i often feel it is. I matter, like Clarissa matters, like Septimus matters.
She's writing about a thin slice of English life. Not quite Downton Abbey perhaps, but the class of people at a party the prime minister attends. A couple of people from the help class, and a veteran. So from this we derive that "all lives matter?" I don't get that from this book and I tend to get cynical around parties of this sort, where who's going and who's not is important and where nothing worthwhile transpires except noting who attended. I felt some energy around the portrayal of Peter Walsh, but the rest were boring. What about the book makes us understand there are no insignificant lives, a quote oft repeated?
Did you happen to see Girls when it came out? People said, "oh four privileged white girls in Brooklyn, who cares?" But i loved that show. I was okay with the thin slice of life it portrayed, in the same way that I'm fine with Mrs. Dalloway and her circle (though Septimus and his wife aren't in her circle). Like Tash says, this one may just not be for you. As for me, I'm still thinking about the book, days after i finished. i keep thinking about Clarissa not marrying Peter Walsh. I think about Peter Walsh and the mess of his life and him breaking down in tears. (I really want to hear what others think of that.) And Clarissa kissing a woman. And her daughter so eager to be away from her mother, and falling in with that bitter woman. And the sadness of Reiza, dealing with her husband. Sally, wild Sally, no longer wild. The park, the people, that dumb party, the flowers she bought herself, the dress she wanted to wear--all of it runs through my mind again and again. Time presses on, things don't go the way you wish they would, everyone carries sadnesses... Parties, parties, parties, and the sad people who attend, talking about god knows what. I mean, this book covers so much. And quietly, steadily, with very little plot. Yes, from all of it we derive all lives are significant--we hear from everyone!, that the choices we make determine our lives... Well, i won't go on. I'm sure you get my drift. Different strokes, Tod!
"I'm not sure what it all means, or if I care" agreed!
Clarissa seems to be caught off guard and momentarily disconcerted when the Bradshaws arrive at her party, bearing with them, in a sense, the mangled body of Septimus Smith. From one of Peter’s earlier reveries, we learn that Clarissa has a “horror of death”, which she copes with by indulging in a “transcendental theory” that something—“the unseen part of us”—survives death and attaches “to this person or that, or even haunting certain places, after death. Perhaps—perhaps.” This is the psychological defense mechanism that allows Clarissa to entertain thoughts of her death occasionally throughout the novel, but on her own terms and at times of her own choosing.
Clarissa is unprepared, however, when Mrs. Bradshaw greets her with news of Septimus’s suicide, and she has to retreat to a small private room to absorb the news, and with it, the sudden reminder that “there was in the depths of her heart an awful fear”; that is, the fear of her own death. But in a moment, Clarissa rebounds: “Odd, incredible; she had never been so happy.” The beauty of the evening sky viewed out a window has a restorative effect upon her spirits, particularly because, “[i]t held, foolish as the idea was, something of her own in it, this country sky …”
Septimus shares Clarissa’s appreciation of beauty, whether expressed in the works of Shakespeare or manifested in the wonders of the natural world. The critical difference between them, I think, is that the experiences of the war have taken a coarse grit belt sander to Septimus’s psychological defenses and shorn away his ability to sleepwalk through daily life without being paralyzed by the fear of his own inevitable death in the way that Clarissa is able to; or, for that matter, that I’m able to, sitting here pecking away at the keyboard, knowing full well that when I’m lying on my deathbed—assuming I have one—it’s highly unlikely that my last thoughts will be, “Oh, if only I’d spent more time online!”
Septimus’s sensibilities are fully exposed to and totally overwhelmed by the beauty and terror of the world—'beauty and terror'; I think I may have read that phrase somewhere—and he kills himself when he is unable to withstand the unbearable effect they have upon his thoughts and feelings.
Wow, a really powerfully worded bit of commentary, Tom. Particularly - the Bradshaws 'bearing with them, in a sense, the mangled body of Septimus' and also the war having 'taken a coarse grit belt sander to Septimus's psychological defenses.' Exactly right.
I like also how you draw attention to Clarissa and Septimus's shared appreciation of beauty. I'm reminded of a note VW made to herself when writing the novel of - 'Mrs D seeing the truth. SS seeing the insane truth.' - and whether those visions are very different in the end.
Thanks, Tash, for your kind words. Actually, it was Ronald’s reference to “Cymbeline” below that put me in mind of Shakespeare’s plays, such as “Julius Caesar” or his history plays, which often feature the dead body of a noble Roman or English king at centre stage. And I was puttering around in my garage yesterday afternoon and noticed that the sanding belt on my belt sander was becoming unsutured.
There’s a scene late in the novel where Peter gives his thoughts on Clarissa, which help explain why she is able to see “the truth” and not be overwhelmed by it in the way that Septimus is. Peter speaks of Clarissa’s “indomitable vitality … there being in her a thread of life which for toughness, endurance, power to overcome obstacles, and carry her triumphantly through he had never known the like of.” This may very well be true, but then Clarissa didn’t serve in the war.
How I'm loving all these erudite comments, and the repartee. I did love Mrs Dalloway -- I surprised myself -- and I'm gaining a much deeper understanding from reading these pages. Thanks to all! But ... from the big picture to the small ... the scene where Septimus and Rezia are trimming the hat, then he leaps to his death at the prospect of facing Bradshaw again, well, it totally undid me. Septimus, for all his mental and emotional carnage, the truest, the purest of them all. He'll stay with me a long time.
Me too! That final happy scene that Rezia and Septimus have when Septimus is his usual self for a moment - argh! - so very moving. It's a relief that R and S's story isn't all darkness and heaviness. Right before disaster, we have this beautiful moment of reprieve.
I'm intrigued by the treatment of class, as I've mentioned before. There are so many pointed comments about how people of different positions in society interact. Miss Kilman vs. Clarissa (it is a battle); Miss Kilman and Elizabeth (E. I think barely considers Miss K, whereas for Miss K, Elizabeth is the sun and the moon); Hugh vs. Lady Bruton's secretary Miss Brush; the two doctors and their patient, Septimus, which illuminates both the exalted position of doctors when dealing with the middle class and Bradshaw's Lordly attitude / Clarissa and Sally's husband, a miner's son / Clarissa and her staff (letting them stay to the end of a show, where other servants had to leave before the end); the mysterious occupant of the car in Bond Street and the crowd. We are allowed to see how each half of these pairings feel about the other (Miss Brush despises Hugh; Miss Kilman and Clarissa despise each other), and we also see VW's comments on them (Miss Brush "deficient though she was in every attribute of female charm.") This is one element that really intrigues me, the placing of every character in a very specific position; if I were ambitious I would draw a plot graph and place each person and see what it looked like; a portrait of the King? I wonder, completely ignorantly from my social and temporal distance, if VW was commenting on English society, in addition to life and death and love, and what her take was. She seems sympathetic to members of the various classes, but then you get that comment about Miss Brush and you realize, here's a snob of the highest degree.
Oh darn - I meant to include a question or prompt about class and forgot! Yes, you're right - it's everywhere and often seems multi-pronged (intersecting with other factors like sex, education and so on). Lady Bruton is upper but can't quite write a letter to the Times without some sort of masculine oversight and reassurance. Richard Dalloway is upper but intellectually unbrilliant (PW refers to him getting up on his hind legs to talk about Shakespeare). Miss Kilman is lower middle but very educated. Septimus is middle and quite educated. Bradshaw has achieved status yet is the son of a tradesman and is sensitive to others intimating that doctors are not educated men. Clarissa 'scarcely reads a book now, except memoirs in bed' which I understood to be a self-deprecating jab at her lack of intellectual heft. She's right there in the heart of Westminster and the sphere of politics but is excluded from much of the exercise of political power because of her sex. Hugh imagines himself to be right up there with the upper crust but is ridiculous though, unlike Lady B, has the ingrained upper class male confidence that allows him to pen a letter to the Times and be published.
As I mentioned in another comment, Tash, Clarissa and her friends are about as far away in time from the Napoleonic Wars as we are from the Great War, and the Napoleonic Wars were the last great cataclysmic upheaval in Europe before the Great War. So, I'm inclined to think that Clarissa may be seeking some insight into her own times by reading about the last great global conflict of a century earlier.
Baron Marbot's memoirs are available online at the Internet Archive (I wonder if VW ever read them), and they make pretty lively and interesting reading, which could also account for Clarissa's interest in them.
Yes! Something I picked up too. Class awareness was universal in the 1920s. (Still is, arguably). It would be odd if the book wasn't infused with it. I would add Peter following the attractive stranger, when she vanished into a house, his snobbish dismissal of her hanging baskets. As an Anglo Indian Peter is socially insecure and one of the most class conscious.
I don't think I go along with VW being a snob. Miss Brush is working class and also unattractive (well technically Lower Middle I think) but her unattractivness is intrinsic. Septimus is around Middle Middle (Def. lower than Clarissa, those brown shoes you know) but is sympathetic.
I've flagged many instances of class awareness and insecurity as well as those you mentioned. Considering how significant a feature of the story this is.
It's difficult to keep track of whose mind we're inside - I think the comment on Miss Brush (deficient in female charm) may be construed 'as seen by High Whitbread' – even though a few words later in the same sentence we're inside the mind of Miss Brush who 'so resented'.
By the time I finished reading “Mrs. Dalloway”, I had come to the conclusion that the whole novel pivots around that summer of 1893 when Clarissa, Peter, and Sally were together at the Parry family’s country home at Bourton for the last time. There is an Edenic quality to the way the time and place are recalled in the characters’ memories—the garden with its flowers and shaded pathways, the outdoor fountain, rowing on the nearby lake; plus, the fact that Clarissa, Peter, and Sally are all young and innocent—think of Sally running naked down the hallway to get her bath sponge—and living the best versions of themselves. Peter is headlong in love with Clarissa, and he has a strong advocate for his suit in the person of Sally.
The arrival of Richard Dalloway on the scene need not necessarily have disrupted the triumvirate, but Peter is unable to live with ambiguity, and he commits the original sin of demanding of Clarissa that she declare where her affections lie: with him, or with Richard? Peter is seeking the forbidden knowledge that may well result in his expulsion from the garden, which, in fact, is what happens to him. It is the last time that Clarissa, Peter, and Sally are ever together, at least, until Clarissa’s party thirty years later.
And I think it is the final reunion of Clarissa, Peter, and Sally at Clarissa’s party after thirty years of separation that sums up the novel. That is what everything leads up to, and where the characters reach their goal, even though we don’t actual see the three of them sit down and talk together. We are left hanging in suspense as Sally gets up from her seat to say goodbye to Richard, while Peter remains seated a moment, intending to join her, only to be seized by the thought, “What is this terror? What is this ecstasy?” when Clarissa suddenly enters the room—and cut to black.
“Terror” and “ecstasy” is probably where I derived “beauty and terror” in my June 28th comment.
Love this comment!
Thanks, Mary!
Another thing that connects the summer of 1893 with Clarissa’s party in June 1923 is the Cruciferae botanical family. We are only a few paragraphs into “Mrs. Dalloway” when we meet Peter Walsh through the medium of Clarissa’s memory of him from thirty summers earlier. She recalls Peter saying, ‘“I prefer men to cauliflowers”—was that it?”’, though only a sentence or two later Clarissa’s recollection has slightly changed, and she’s thinking that what she recalls of Peter includes “a few sayings like this about cabbages.” Cabbages, not cauliflowers.
When I read that, I wondered if VW was trying to drop a hint about the unreliability of our memory. If so, it would seem to have implications for her storyline, in which her characters spend so much time in the past. But does the accuracy of their memories even matter, if what Clarissa, Peter, and Sally remember about the past seems true for them?
In any case, the novel is further rounded out and the circle completed when cabbages, this time, make an encore appearance at Clarissa’s party. Sally is telling Peter of how her garden is a sanctuary, where she obtains “a peace which men and women never gave her.” Peter then seems to have a flashback to the moment when he found Clarissa “[m]using among the vegetables” that summer morning at Bourton thirty years earlier—much as Sally has just described seeking refuge in her own garden—the same moment in which Clarissa introduces us to Peter in the novel’s opening page. Peter then follows the script for this scene which he has held in his memory for the past three decades, and responds to Sally with the same sardonic remark he gave to Clarissa that long ago summer morning: “But no; he did not like cabbages; he preferred human beings, Peter said.”
I know it sounds a little fanciful, but "Mrs. Dalloway" could be viewed as a type of odyssey, where Clarissa, Peter, and Sally, after many twistings and turnings in their life voyages, all arrive safely back at Ithaca in the end.
I love the vegetable connection you've written about here--I am pleased to report that I noticed it as well. And yes, I suppose they are back safely, in that they are all still alive. But are they content? They were young once, with their lives ahead of them. Now they are heading toward the last years of their lives, choices having been made that they must live with. (Happens to all of us.) You ask if the accuracy of our memories matters. No memory is ever accurate. Ask two people what happened three minutes ago and they will tell you different angles/stories on the same event. So accuracy may matter in the courtroom, but it doesn't exist. And neither does the past, really. It's lost to us, we create stories out of pieces of it, some of us ruminate, trying to find the thread that led us to where we are today.
Exactly. Well said.
Yes - with the same three (well 4 including Richard) coming together again at Clarissa's party. At the same time - the novel's also about Septimus, and some insight that he and Clarissa have in common. So it's complicated!
I agree “it’s complicated”—and thanks for the Avril Lavigne reference here on Canada Day—but I’m still inclined to think of Clarissa, Peter, and Sally as the core character group of “Mrs. Dalloway”. Clarissa seems to confirm this herself at her party when she sees Peter and Sally sitting and talking together. “They were talking: it seemed so familiar—that they should be talking”, though it may well have been thirty years since Peter and Sally had last sat face-to-face. “They would discuss the past. With the two of them (MORE EVEN THAN WITH RICHARD [emphasis added]) she shared her past … A part of this Sally must always be; Peter must always be.”
So, I see Richard as a secondary character in the novel. If you include him with Clarissa, Peter and Sally, he’s the Zeppo Marx of the quartet, the least idiosyncratic and thus least memorable person of the bunch.
As for Septimus, I see him and Rezia as occupying a separate subplot altogether, being interwoven with Clarissa and company only in the most tangential and unconscious manner—Peter hearing the sound of the ambulance bell on its way to the scene of Septimus’s death, and Clarissa learning of the suicide of a young man later at her party that night. But I agree there are parallels between Clarissa and Septimus, even though they never know each other.
Am I the only one who finds that moment when PW hears the ambulance incredibly moving? We move from Septimus jumping from the window and Rezia being sedated (while Holmes stands 'dark against the window') to PW hearing the ambulance bell and feeling pleased about this triumph of civilisation. The light and shade of this compressed moment affects me powerfully.
"Ask not for whom the bell tolls ..."
Ach! Yes exactly.
When Septimus had his vision of beauty in Regent's Park. Three words "fear no more". Was this from Shakespeare Cymbeline (my favourite Shakespeare I think) - Septimus loves Shakespeare we know - or am I reading too much into 3 words? But then at the party Clarissa has a similar vision and a sudden apprehension into the mind of Septimus despite never having met _ and she completes the quote "fear no more the heat of the sun" the beautiful dirge for Imogen. I'm still thinking about this.
Oh beautiful! I'd missed this.
i don't think you're reading too much into it. Definitely quoting Cymbeline--both of them, I think. (But Clarissa, for certain.)
Is there a man in the book who has succeeded in life? Peter? No. Richard? No; he's not in the cabinet. Hugh? I suppose he's succeeded at being smarmy and useful. Septimus? No. The doctors? No; they've contributed to a man's death by their incompetence.
Ha. No, I don't think so. Though I don't see any female examples of complete success either!
Well, Sally has 5 boys!
Good point!
Clarissa is successful at giving parties. Which she does see as important bringing people together. Even if Peter and Sally despise her for it...
Anyway outside novels most of us are only partly successful in life.
My two cents, after reading and pondering this novel since the late 90s -- the party is a metaphor for life itself. It's a celebration, a collection of varied characters, anything can happen and often does. And now death has come along and messed it up with its ugliness and untimeliness, as it always is. Ugly. Untimely. Disruptive. Insinuating itself into this perfect party, into this perfect life. Except it's not a perfect life. Love makes life worthwhile, but here Clarissa has fallen short herself. She has denied love, cast it off in various contexts (including for her own daughter). Clarissa's darker mood too, upon the opening of the actual party, is indicative I think of how she always sees it hiding, death, right behind that door, or that corner. She knows it's inescapable and her very identity is dependent upon the success of life, the party. But now as we approach the end, there is no making this right. You can never go back.
There is so much to say about this little gem of a novel, and I'll await Tash's summary comments with excitement!
Nancy, you've nailed it! I agree with everything you say. Beautifully put, as always.
I've now posted some closing remarks on the novel but they feel completely inadequate! Gah! There is so much more to say - I could've written an essay each on Bradshaw, on Septimus and Rezia, on the lunch with Lady Bradshaw, on Miss Kilman and Elizabeth, on Peter and Sally, on the party. I might still return to some of these things in later posts but I was racing against the clock to get something out to the group and wanted to draw things together a bit and take a wide angle view of Woolf, her writing practice and so on.
Needless to say, I would love to hear any further thoughts from you.
P.S. She had a very interesting relationship with Katherine Mansfield, by the way, which would have been a digression from our discussion, but there is just so much to say about her connections to other people, especially women writers. She had a huge ego!
Such discussions, dear Tash, remind me of the old days, luxuriating in graduate seminar classes, my head in a blur, my heart racing a million miles an hour. I had found my tribe (smile). And I ended up falling so much in love with Woolf, that I used 3 of her novels as a basis for my master's thesis, which compared several of Woolf's major protagonists with the Lilith myth. But one of those characters was Clarissa Dalloway, so I feel strangely as though she and I are old comrades, old friends. And now you got us together again, as I hadn't read this novel since the mid-90s. And of course, you should read a favorite novel every decade, I think. Because while the text remains the same, we do not, and our life experiences, our brushes with death, our own losses of people, of love, of youth, of (fill in the blank) render us as new readers again. But what bliss!
Could write an extended comment post on Miss Brush!
One thing that's nagged me about Lady Bruton's lunch party. It seems to me a little unusual that she would know Peter Walsh. She seems to be of such a different place in society. I can understand her friendship with Richard and the admirable Hugh, being in government and a courtier, but her family history and personality don't seem to mesh with knowing Peter — she withdraws to a private room with the Prime Minister during the party; I can't imagine Peter having that status. Tiny point, but it catches me when I read that section. But, ignorance of early 20th century English society is probably to blame for my quibble.