Mrs. Dalloway (Penguin Popular Classics) [Paperback]

Virginia Woolf (Author)

Book Description

Series: Penguin Popular Classics | Publication Date: June 27, 1996

On a June morning in 1923, Clarissa Dalloway, the glittering wife of a Member of Parliament, is preparing for a grand party that evening. As she walks through London, buying flowers, observing life, her thoughts are in the past, and she remembers the time when she was as young as her own daughter Elizabeth; her romance with Peter Walsh, now recently returned from India; and the friends of her youth. Elsewhere in London, Septimus Smith is being driven mad by shell shock. As the day draws to its end, his world and Clarissa's collide in unexpected ways.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

As Clarissa Dalloway walks through London on a fine June morning, a sky-writing plane captures her attention. Crowds stare upwards to decipher the message while the plane turns and loops, leaving off one letter, picking up another. Like the airplane's swooping path, Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway follows Clarissa and those whose lives brush hers--from Peter Walsh, whom she spurned years ago, to her daughter Elizabeth, the girl's angry teacher, Doris Kilman, and war-shocked Septimus Warren Smith, who is sinking into madness.

As Mrs. Dalloway prepares for the party she is giving that evening, a series of events intrudes on her composure. Her husband is invited, without her, to lunch with Lady Bruton (who, Clarissa notes anxiously, gives the most amusing luncheons). Meanwhile, Peter Walsh appears, recently from India, to criticize and confide in her. His sudden arrival evokes memories of a distant past, the choices she made then, and her wistful friendship with Sally Seton.

Woolf then explores the relationships between women and men, and between women, as Clarissa muses, "It was something central which permeated; something warm which broke up surfaces and rippled the cold contact of man and woman, or of women together.... Her relation in the old days with Sally Seton. Had not that, after all, been love?" While Clarissa is transported to past afternoons with Sally, and as she sits mending her green dress, Warren Smith catapults desperately into his delusions. Although his troubles form a tangent to Clarissa's web, they undeniably touch it, and the strands connecting all these characters draw tighter as evening deepens. As she immerses us in each inner life, Virginia Woolf offers exquisite, painful images of the past bleeding into the present, of desire overwhelmed by society's demands. --Joannie Kervran Stangeland --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Review

"Mrs. Dalloway contains some of the most beautiful, complex, incisive and idiosyncratic sentences ever written in English, and that alone would be reason enough to read it. It is one of the most moving, revolutionary artworks of the twentieth century."
—Michael Cunningham, author of The Hours --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: Penguin USA (P); 3579108642 edition (June 27, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0140622217
• ISBN-13: 978-0140622218
• Product Dimensions: 7.1 x 0.6 x 4.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (182 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #723,021 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

VIRGINIA WOOLF (1882-1941) was one of the major literary figures of the twentieth century. An admired literary critic, she authored many essays, letters, journals, and short stories in addition to her groundbreaking novels.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

137 of 140 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Mystery of Human Personality, October 8, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Mrs. Dalloway (Paperback)

Although the time covered in this complex novel is only one day, Virginia Woolf, through her genius, manages to cover a lifetime unraveling and exposing the mysteries of the human personality.

The central character of the novel is the delicate Clarissa Dalloway, a disciplined English gentlewoman who provides the perfect contrast to another of the book's characters, Septimus Warren Smith, an ex-soldier whose world is disintegrating into chaos. Although Clarissa and Septimus never meet, it is through the interweaving of each one's story into a gossamer whole that Woolf works her genius.

The book is set on a June day in 1923, as Clarissa prepares for a party that evening. Unfolding events trigger memories and recollections of her past, and Woolf offers these bits and pieces to the reader who must then construct the psychological and emotional makeup of Clarissa Dalloway in his own mind. We also learn much about Clarissa through the thoughts of other characters, such as her one-time lover, Peter Walsh, her friend, Sally Seton, her husband, Richard and her daughter Elizabeth.

It is Septimus Warren Smith, however, driven to the brink of insanity by the war, an insanity that even his wife's tender ministrations cannot cure, who acts as Clarissa's societal antithesis and serves to divide her world into the "then" and the "now."

In this extremely complex and character-driven novel, Woolf offers her readers a challenge. The novel is not separated into chapters; almost all of the action occurs in the thoughts and reminiscences of the characters and the reader must piece together the story from the random bits and pieces of information each character provides. The complexity of the characters may add to the frustration because Woolf makes it difficult for the reader to receive any single dominant impression of any one of them. This, however, forms the essence of the novel and displays the genius of Woolf: It is impossible to describe any human being in a simple phrase or collection of adjectives. We are many things to many people, all of them somewhat different, none of them the same, just as we are many things to ourselves.

Throughout the book, the reader is constantly called upon to compare and contrast Peter Walsh and Richard Dalloway, the two significant love interests in Clarissa Dalloway's life. Compared to Peter, an adventurer, Richard Dalloway appears more than a bit reserved and dour. But, readers must constantly question this view of Richard as his personality seems to alter with his altering relationships.

Intimacy, particularly emotional intimacy, and the preservation of one's uniqueness are two of Woolf's continuing themes. We find that Clarissa married Richard, in part, to preserve her sense of self; Peter would have demanded far more of her than she was, perhaps, willing to give. Here, Clarissa and Septimus, so outwardly different, would find they share much in common. While Clarissa feels threatened by her daughter's tenacious tutor, Miss Kilman, as well as by Peter, Septimus feels threatened by his doctor. Each feels the others are asking too much. Septimus and Clarissa even agree on the subject of death: "There is no death," Septimus declares, while Clarissa, the atheist, secretly believes that bits and pieces of her will remain intact forever.

Although some characters in this book may, at first, appear to be one-dimensional, we soon learn that all are extraordinarily complex. There is Sally, impulsive yet considerate; Richard, bashful yet timid; Peter inhibited yet adventurous; Septimus, insane yet credible. And Clarissa? She is all of these things and more.

It is, however, Woolf's torrential stream-of-consciousness prose that makes this novel a true masterpiece. Even those who find the plot of little interest will be drawn in by the exquisiteness of Woolf's language. This is a complex, character study in the fullest sense of the word, one with no easy answers, for Woolf, in the end seems to be telling us that perhaps, at our essence, we are all unknowable, even to ourselves.

48 of 48 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Poetic lyricism in Virginia Woolf, January 3, 2001

By 

mcl (Nellysford, VA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Mrs. Dalloway (Paperback)

Any young aspiring writer should compare Woolf's early work, such as Night and Day to something like Mrs. Dalloway. The transformation in narrative strength is incredible. I think Woolf found her voice when she gave up on traditional technique and focused on vivid imagery, poetic language, and really getting into the souuls of her characters.

Her views on love in this boook are heartbreaking. Love serves as mere convenience, romance is just an illusion. 9 times out of 10 people choose safety. Pretty cynical viewpoint, but she lived during the days of a crumbling Empire and wrote about it beautifully. She really achieved her greatest literary power later on in life.

Also, this book studies insanity and the doctors who are impotent to help. I'm sure woolf would have the same view in today's heavily medicated society.

This book is not for the faint of heart. She does not hide characters emotions, but tends to dwelon their weaknesses. The final party scene is brilliant. If you like this book, read To The Lighthouse, which is equally brilliant.

68 of 71 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Tough, but worth the effort, January 3, 2004

By 

Peggy Vincent "author and reader" (Oakland, CA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Mrs. Dalloway (Paperback)

It's not really fair to judge this book or its author by today's standards, but damn, this is a hard read. I'd read it about 20 years ago and recall struggling with the endless sentences and the rambling explorations of Mrs. Dalloway's interior thoughts, her every little fleeting idea, and the tiny events of the day in her life which this book chronicles.
Then of course when The Hours was published, I rummaged around in the bookshelf, found it, and read it again.
And then the movie came out with that wonderful cast of characters, and, well, I had to read it a third time. And I'll say this: it takes more than a single reading to harvest all the gems from this dense prose. Mrs. Dalloway grew on me with the passage of time and with three careful readings. The studied explorations into past and present, men and women, women and other women, society and the family, love and regret...it's a lot to take on in what is really a pretty small book - and only someone of Woolf's talents and brilliance could have made so much of so little.
Highly recommended, but I'm sorry - you'll probably have to read it more than once to extract every single little diamond chip.