MRS DALLOWAY by VIRGINIA WOOLF

MRS DALLOWAY

by

VIRGINIA WOOLF

THE BLURB:

Clarissa Dalloway, a fashionable London hostess, is to give an important party. Through her thoughts on that day and through memories of the past, her character is gradually revealed. And so are the other personalities who have touched on her life. Their loves and hates, their tragedies and comedies, all are vividly, intimately- and quite uniquely- brought to life.

Mrs Dalloway, Virginia Woolf's fourth novel, marked an important stage in her development as a writer. With this book she finally broke from the form of the traditional English novel, establishing herself as a writer of genius.

THE REALITY:

I have to say, I approached this novel with trepidation. It's the “stream of consciousness” style, you, see, which I can find skittish and trying. It's not a book you can relax with- indeed, it's almost as if you have to keep on reading and are compelled to turn the page to find out where the threads of anyone's thoughts are going. And that's why the book is a success; once I started it I found it as hard to put down as it was to pick up, namely because it would draw me in and then fascinate.

Literary fiction is about the characters more than the plot, and in that this genre can be lacking, so you have to learn to respect it for what it is; which is an in-depth study of the day, in the lives of a collection of people. For me, its highest achievement was the way it could draw the next character into the plot (or, lack of a plot) seamlessly. That's not an easy thing to do when you're immersed with one person's recollections and nuances, but Ms Woolf does it, and it works. Indeed, I've taken a bit of a lesson on how to write from this book!

There were contradictions in this book, such as when Mrs Dalloway's “virginity preserved through childbirth” was mentioned, until you realise that it's all metaphorical and a state of mind, rather than being. I also wonder how autobiographical this book is, as it mentions Clarissa's liking, romantically, for her own sex, which is something Virginia Woolf was also inclined to. The saddest characters for me were Septimus and Rezia. It would appear that (spoiler alert!) this war-damaged soul could not give his wife what she wanted, and his demise from shellshock to suicide was painfully documented.

I have read a novel before which alludes to a moon garden in the style of Virginia Woolf- a moon garden being a selection of flowers whose leaves and petals glisten under moonlight and which release fragrance after sundown. This novel hints towards that, and I did love the idea of cabbages with leaves “like rough bronze” reflected starkly from the ground. It kind of added to the semi-but-not-quite-romantic and ethereal and insubstantial (because of the multitude of musings) nature of this book. 

It's a short read and worth a go.