Mrs Dalloway Paperback – 2011

Formatting is off throughout the kindle edition. I bought this specifically for the annotations and the annotations (outside of the introduction, which was formatted perfectly) are not properly linked. There are no annotation numbers/links in the text at all. If I manually look at the annotations at the end of the book, they do not link back properly to their place in the text (they all link back to page 1 of the Mrs Dalloway portion of the book). I am not familiar enough with the text itself to notice if that's significantly affected, but I've already found one place where a period was omitted from the end of a sentence (when compared with a paperback version, isbn 198539412X). Mrs. Dalloway is already a challenging text, I don't need the literal formatting making it any harder for me.

This book by Virginia Woolf has been described as the greatest English language novel. That may not be hyperbole. Some sentences are so beautifully written that they beg to be read again (and again). The story is simple: It follows one day in the life of Clarissa Dalloway as she prepares to host a high-society party in London that evening. It jumps from Clarissa's story to that of several of the guests. It's a story about their thoughts and reminisces more than their actions. It's a story about the love between men and women and women and women. It's a story about the politics of marriage in the early 20th century. It's a classic!

I had previously only read Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own. Since no less an authority than Simone de Beauvoir, in her seminal work, The Second Sex repeatedly referenced Wolfe's works, and even quoted significant passages from "Mrs. Dalloway" (p. 509, Bantum, 1968 edition), I figured that Woolf, Book #2 was long overdue. And I found this work of hers impressive.

Conceptually at least, Woolf's work could be considered derivative of James Joyce's classic Ulysses which was written several years earlier. Each concern the daily lives of a range of characters, living in the British Isles, on a single day, and in each novel, that day is in the middle of June. The stream-of-consciousness technique is used in each. Woolf's work is much shorter, and in ways, more intense as a result. And Woolf's work concerns the "gratin" of society, the "ruling class," as they socialize, making and reinforcing connections, and largely ignoring the catastrophe that overwhelmed Europe, ending only five years earlier, casting its "short shadow" on current events. Where Woolf has the clear edge is in her depiction of that always fascinating subject: how women and men interact.

Clarissa Dalloway awakes, and throughout the day will be preparing for the party she will hold that night to help her husband's career. Sometimes she is reduced to a single "s," as in the third letter of Mrs. Richard Dalloway. Her role as wife and supporter is a key theme in the novel. They have a daughter, Elizabeth, 18, who, as many daughters of that age do, yearn for some independence. Peter Walsh, who once courted Clarissa in her youth, 30 years before, and is six months older than her, is just back from a few years "managing" things in India, and immediately races to see her, in part to report the news that he is in love with the young wife of a British major in India, who has two children. Hum! Why, oh why, indeed? The "backdrop," central London, Mayfair, Oxford Street, et al. is repeatedly referenced as an integral part of the work.

Woolf depicts "minor characters" with deft strokes; so much so that they are so memorable that the adjective "minor" does not do them justice. There is Septimus Warren Smith who "...went to France to save an England which consisted almost entirely of Shakespeare's plays and Miss Isabel Pole in a green dress walking in a square." He returned with what we now call PTSD caused by the loss of a friend; he also returned with an Italian wife, Lucrezia. There is Miss Kilman, of the frayed cloth coat, around 40, who knows that life has passed her by, and is the tutor of Elizabeth. Miss Kilman has found solace in religion. Perhaps four generations later, I became acquainted with the "Harley Street" doctors, and their clients (patients), and so I was most impressed with Woolf's depiction of one of their antecedents, Sir William Bradshaw. Woolf says: "Sir William said he never spoke of `madness'; he called it not having a sense of proportion." Hum, again. And they always seem to know this quiet place in the countryside where the "client" will not trouble or embarrass the family. Or, as Woolf put it: "He swooped; he devoured. He shut people up. It was this combination of decision and humanity that endeared Sir William so greatly to the relations of his victims."

Much more laconic that Joyce, as I have said, and equally so compared to Proust, but Woolf novel ends with the party - will it be "successful," and yes it will be if we don't mention unpleasant things like death - that is worthy of Proust's descriptions of the "gratin" across the channel. I foresee reading To the Lighthouse in the next six months. As for Mrs. Dalloway, 5-stars, plus.

WOOLF wrote to a rhythm more than she wrote to a plot, and Mrs. Dalloway is a perfect example of her stellar method. Is there one sentence, one word, that is not perfect? I can't find or hear one, and I have now listened to this entire recital by the wonderful Annette Bening 14 times now. Yes, 14 times. I will listen 14 more times before this notice has been up a month. There are not enough superlatives to describe Virginia Woolf's genius and talent.