Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf

Claire Reisberg, 10th Grade

Who is Mrs. Dalloway?

After spending weeks reading, writing and thinking about the titular character in Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway, I'm still not quite sure. Almost everyone in the book has a different take on Mrs. Clarissa Dalloway. Some characters hate her and believe her life to be a "tissue of vanity and deceit." Others love her and are filled with "terror," "ecstasy," and "extraordinary excitement," at her approach. The people in her life find her confusing, gracious, selfish, kind, passionate, and boring all at once. Even Mrs. Dalloway has contradictory opinions about herself. However, that, quite simply, is just how people are-filled to the brim with contradiction. And that is what makes Mrs. Dalloway so beautiful. Woolf is able to capture the complexities of human nature simply by describing individual interactions throughout one long day.

To be clear, Mrs. Dalloway isn't exactly set in one day. I initially struggled to get invested in the book because it seems like it is just that simple: Clarissa Dalloway preparing for a party, thinking about that party, and getting ready for that same party. However, as the book continues the scope broadens, making it easier to get attached to the characters and take interest in their personal connections. Perspectives shift, and Woolf dwells on memories from the characters' lives, taking us, the readers, far away from and then back again to that main day and that big party.

Mrs. Dalloway loves life and yes, parties but she spends much of the novel dwelling in the past, thinking of those whom she loved in her youth. She is busy thinking inside a flower shop when suddenly a car makes a loud noise and stalls in the street and just as suddenly the perspective switches to our other main character, Septimus Smith. Although he and Mrs. Dalloway never meet, Septimus is also startled by the car and is also dwelling in the past. Septimus Smith is a shell-shocked World War I veteran who deals throughout the novel with his unravelling mental health as doctors belittle him and his wife Reiza tries to understand him. Like Mrs. Dalloway, Septimus is full of contradictions; sometimes he is lucid and seems to appreciate his wife and the world around him while at other times he hallucinates and misunderstands what is happening. Unlike Mrs. Dalloway, he does not love life. Instead he is drowning in his inability to feel emotions as a result of wartime trauma and PTSD. Septimus' struggles with mental illness are similar to Woolf's, who suffered from bipolar disorder, giving her insight into Septimus' character. His suffering is portrayed distinctly, and Woolf paints a knowing picture of profound loneliness.

At the beginning of the novel the narrative style was a little jarring, but as it continued I became completely immersed. It's stream-of-consciousness - the story is told in an uninterrupted flow of feelings and thoughts meant to mimic the characters' thought processes - with a close third person narration. For example, at one point Peter Walsh- an old flame of Mrs. Dalloway -thinks about their relationship:

"There was a mystery about it. You were given a sharp, acute, uncomfortable grain--the actual meeting; horribly painful as often as not; yet in absence, in the most unlikely places, it would flower out, open, shed its scent, let you touch, taste, look about you, get the whole feel of it and understanding, after years of lying lost. Thus she had come to him; on board ship; in the Himalayas; suggested by the oddest things (so Sally Seton, generous, enthusiastic goose! thought of him when she saw blue hydrangeas)."

Peter Walsh goes from thinking about his and Mrs. Dalloway's relationship as a whole to his feelings during their meetings and then to his feelings when he is reminded of her. From there he is reminded of a specific time he thought about her (on a ship in the Himalayas) and then he remembers a time another, separate person (Sally Seton) thought about him. All of this takes place in only a few sentences and although it may seem confusing at first this stream-of-consciousness style allows you to feel like you're right there inside his and the other characters' heads, feeling and thinking everything along with them.

These characters are created both from their own thoughts and feelings and from other people's perceptions of them. At one point, Septimus and his wife Rezia are sitting on a bench in the park when Septimus hallucinates seeing a friend who died in the war. Peter Walsh passes by and thinks that Septimus and Rezia are young lovers having a fight. Septimus is, of course, having a traumatic hallucination, and Reiza is upset, trying to bring him back to reality. However, as an outsider, Peter does not understand the situation; he is wrapped up in his own memories of being young, in love, and in a fight with Mrs. Dalloway. Misconstrued situations like this one litter the novel, and I found it fascinating to consider how our own thoughts and feelings influence our perceptions of those around us.

I also was very surprised to see how contemporary the book felt. Despite being set in 1925, it reads as surprisingly modern. Mrs. Dalloway kisses and falls in love with a woman. Additionally, feminist elements pervade the novel. Outwardly, many of the female characters adhere to the restrictive roles society has given them. However, those who have the financial means are able to pursue their own passions and principles; and all the female characters, regardless of means, think independently and have unique, occasionally radical views on the world.

The book deals deftly with loneliness- a feeling with which many of us have struggled this past year -and Woolf beautifully depicts the ways that loneliness can manifest in different people. So many of her characters are lonely, yet in strikingly disparate situations: some characters are surrounded by people but can't seem to connect to them, others are separated by class or attitude from those around them, while still others are just trapped in their own heads. The novel also shows us how a traumatic event like World War I (or maybe a pandemic), can still affect a society years after the fact. We see this through Septimus and also through Mrs. Dalloway, both of whom have trouble understanding and dealing with death. Despite the isolation that loneliness presents, some of Woolf's characters are able to understand each other's differences and approach each other through this lens of understanding. Their persistent drive to make connections helped me think about the varying ways in which we have all dealt with our own loneliness during the pandemic; through Woolf's characters, I was able to contemplate the social processes that allow us to- collectively, but with acknowledging our differences - move past trauma. These stunning relationships between characters are punctuated and enhanced by Woolf's beautiful language. There are sentences that, despite their length and liberal use of punctuation, made me stop and re-read just to appreciate the words. I must have read this particular sentence eight times:

"A sparrow perched on the railing opposite chirped Septimus, Septimus, four or five times over and went on, drawing its notes out, to sing freshly and piercingly in Greek words how there is no crime and, joined by another sparrow, they sang in voices prolonged and piercing in Greek words, from trees in the meadow of life beyond a river where the dead walk, how there is no death."

Like this quote, the book Mrs. Dalloway is melancholy, insightful, and has lots of commas.