Mrs. Dalloway
{{Mrs. Dalloway}}
Basic Info
- Author: Virginia Woolf
- Year: 1925
- Type: #primary1
Summary (brief)
-Follows a single day in the life of high-society housewife Clarissa Dolloway as she prepares to host a party in post-World War I London.
Major Themes
Key Passages / Quotes
Quote 1
quote:: “I am no bird.”
page:: 197
themes:: freedom, identity
Genre Notes
-VW's masterpiece. While the superficial plot is incredibly simple, (buying flowers, greeting an old suitor, entertaining guests), the actual book is a vast deeply intricate map of human thought, memory, and trauma.
-Pioneering stream-of-consciousness (prose is a fluid wave, seamlessly sliding from interior thoughts of one character to another as they pass each other)
-A radical re-centering of everyday life: Woolf argues that a standard plot is artificial because real life is a luiminous halo of internal thoughts; by giving an ordinary woman's party planning the same epic weight as a war veteran's trauma, she proved there are no insignificant human lives.
Searing post-war social commentary
Groundbreaking mental health depiction: terrifyingly accurate and empathetic look at PTSD
Characters / Concepts (if relevant)
-Clarissa's Day (the ringing of Big Ben triggers intense memories of her youth; she reflects on her choices, her comfortable but distant marriage from Richard, her passionate rejection of former lover Peter Walsh, and a forbidden youthful romance with her friend Sally Seton)
Septimus's Foil: Septimus Warren Smith is a working-class WWI vet suffering from severe shell shock (PTSD). Tortured by hallucinations of his fallen officer and completely failed by arrogant medical doctors, his descent into madness and eventual suicide directly parallel's Clarissa's domestic anxiety.
Theory Connections
Related Texts
My Argument / Interpretation
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