Mrs Dalloway (20th Century Fiction)

Mrs Dalloway: A Guide to Reading

Clarissa is in control and, at the same time, likes to control her surroundings. In other words, she has her mental bearings. Septimus, however, is not in control, nor is he in control of his surroundings. Quite the opposite of having his mental bearings, he is in the middle of a mental breakdown. You are commenting using your WordPress. You are commenting using your Twitter account. You are commenting using your Facebook account. Notify me of new comments via email.

Below are some helpful issues to think of as you read. Stream-of-Consciousness The stream-of-consciousness writing style that Virginia Woolf uses is very different from the prosaic realism of F. Keeping Track of the Narrative Voices Keeping track of on who the narrative is focused can be challenging. The narrative focuses mostly on, but not exclusively: Septimus Smith, the belagured wife of Septimus. The One Day Structure of the Novel. The Big Diametric Opposition.

Consciousness versus Unconsciousness One way you can think of the opposition between these two characters — and a theme in the novel — is that Clarissa very much represents consciousness, whereas Septimus represents the unconscious. Leave a Reply Cancel reply Enter your comment here Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in: Email required Address never made public. This site uses cookies. The Hogarth Press , run by her and her husband Leonard , had to turn down the chance to publish the novel in because of the obscenity law in England, as well as the practical issues regarding publishing such a substantial text.

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 fallen comrade.

Time plays an integral role in the theme of faith and doubt in Mrs. The overwhelming presence of the passing of time and the impending fate of death for each of the characters is felt throughout the novel. A constant stream of consciousness from the characters, especially Clarissa, can serve as a distraction from this passing of time and ultimate march towards death but each character has a constant reminder of the inevitability of these facts.

However evident time and death may be throughout the novel, only a day passes over the course of the entire story, not nearly enough to be worried about death that much. Although it seems random, it only demonstrates the infinite number of possibilities that the world can offer once connected by the individuality of each person inside. Septimus, as the shell-shocked war hero, operates as a pointed criticism of the treatment of mental illness and depression. Rezia remarks that Septimus "was not ill. Dr Holmes said there was nothing the matter with him.

Woolf goes beyond commenting on 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. Clarissa's reality is vastly different from that of Septimus; his presence in London is unknown to Clarissa until his death becomes the subject of idle chatter 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. Her use of Septimus as the stereotypically traumatised veteran is her way of showing that there were still reminders of the First World War in London in 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.

There are similarities in Septimus' condition to Woolf's struggles with bipolar disorder. Both hallucinate that birds sing in Greek , and Woolf once attempted to throw herself out of a window as Septimus does. Woolf committed suicide by drowning, sixteen years after the publication of Mrs Dalloway. 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.

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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. Most of the plot in Mrs Dalloway consists of realisations that the characters subjectively make. Fueled by her bout of ill health, Clarissa Dalloway is emphasised 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 summarised by the sentence: 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. Her old friend Sally Seton, whom Clarissa admires dearly, is remembered as a great independent woman — 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. Clarissa Dalloway is strongly attracted to Sally Seton at Bourton.

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Thirty-four years later, Clarissa still considers the kiss they shared to be the happiest moment of her life. She feels about Sally "as men feel," [16] but she does not recognise these feelings as signs of bisexuality. 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. 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.

Dutch film director Marleen Gorris made a film version of Mrs Dalloway in The Hours is about a single day in the lives of three women of different generations who are affected by Mrs Dalloway: Woolf is writing it, Laura is reading it, and Clarissa is living it out. Mrs Dalloway also appears in Virginia Woolf's first novel, The Voyage Out , as well as five of her short stories, in which she hosts dinner parties to which the main subject of the narrative is invited: From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

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Please help improve this section by adding citations to reliable sources. May Learn how and when to remove this template message. Virginia Woolf Authors in Context. Retrieved 14 May Retrieved 5 July Mapping Streams of Consciousness. Brown" — Modernism Lab Essays". Archived from the original on 7 August Retrieved 17 August Fiction as Self-Evasion in Mrs Dalloway. Dalloway, , and of Millennial London: Art is a Shocking Experience.

Journal of Modern Literature , Vol. A Biography Roger Fry: Retrieved from " https: Views Read Edit View history. This page was last edited on 5 December , at