Woolf in Winter: Mrs. Dalloway

Mrs. Dalloway


by


Virginia Woolf

About the book
(Barnes and Noble)

Heralded as Virginia Woolf's greatest novel, this is a vivid portrait of a single day in a woman's life. When we meet her, Mrs. Clarissa Dalloway is preoccupied with the last-minute details of party preparation while in her mind she is something much more than a perfect society hostess. As she readies her house, she is flooded with remembrances of faraway times. And, met with the realities of the present, Clarissa reexamines the choices that brought her there, hesitantly looking ahead to the unfamiliar work of growing old.

"Mrs. Dalloway was the first novel to split the atom. If the novel before Mrs. Dalloway aspired to immensities of scope and scale, to heroic journeys across vast landscapes, with Mrs. Dalloway Virginia Woolf insisted that it could also locate the enormous within the everyday; that a life of errands and party-giving was every bit as viable a subject as any life lived anywhere; and that should any human act in any novel seem unimportant, it has merely been inadequately observed. The novel as an art form has not been the same since.

"Mrs. Dalloway also 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 (Inspired by Mrs. Dalloway)

About the Author
(Barnes and Noble)

The early decades of the 20th century saw the rise of the “experimental” novel, and few writers had more success with their experiments than Virginia Woolf. Her innovative approach as a novelist, critic, and biographer made her an author who is even more widely read today than she was in her own time.

My thoughts and feelings about the book:

I saw the button for this reading group on a blog I follow. I was entranced by the things she said about the author and how excited she was to read this book. I was more intrigued by the idea of reading a book with a group of bloggers and then on a designated day (today Jan. 15) all who read the book would participate in a discussion about the book. So I signed up to participate.

My first step in preparation to read this book was to look up information about the author. As seems to be the case for many creative people this woman lived a tortured life as she dealt with the effects of physical abuse and mental illness. In the end she took her own life.

This is my first experience with Virginia Woolf, in fact I had never heard of her prior to this challenge. But I like to try new things and I was taken in by the cover art. So I began reading.

Mrs. Dalloway is
one never ending sentence without breath
that wanders in and out of the minds of 25 people
over the span of one day

It made me dizzy with confusion and I longed for a resting place so I could shut the book and put it away.

It reminded me of a Star Trek episode where the alien was bodiless but wanted to study the crew of the enterprise so he flitted from mind to mind absorbing all their knowledge until satisfied and then passing off to inhabit another unsuspecting individual.

There was no story. There was no point. Only the wandering thoughts of mindless people. It drove me batty.

There were a lot of pretty words, bits and pieces to tease the reader, and if you took them out of context there were a lot of ways they could be interpreted and quoted. But as a whole I found no purpose in the book.

Enough said. There are plenty of people in today’s discussion who love the book and have lots of beautiful and heartfelt things to say about it. I’d suggest you visit them to get a better perspective on Mrs. Dalloway.

As for me this may be my one and only adventure with Virginia Woolf.

Today's discussion about Mrs. Dalloway is being hosted by Sarah

Post Script:

There were a lot of wonderful posts and comments to read with today's discussion and after reading them I have a few thoughts I'd like to add:

 The posts were well written and thought provoking. I must admit to being a little fearful about posting my own opinion for fear I would sound ignorant. However, I felt I wouldn’t be true to myself if I posted something else.

I have learned a lot reading the reviews and comments. There were a number of reviewers that said they had to read the book several times before they enjoyed it. I especially liked the way Claire compared the book to a song. It did have a lyrical feel to it and there were many phrases, sentences and paragraphs that I enjoyed immensely. If that is the readers’ intent then the book is perfect. But even after studying the spark notes and reading about characters, motifs, symbols and such, I still can't see the point of the book. The only symbol that I got and really enjoyed was Big Ben tolling the hour and marking time. One cannot escape the passage of time, as all of the characters in Mrs. Dalloway discovered. I also like the fact that the story ended where it began, with Mrs. Dalloway as the central figure—symbolizing the futility of all our worry.

I really enjoyed participating in the reading group. This was my primary reason for joining up. I think it is great fun to share thoughts about a book with other people. I would like to join up with more people conducting reading groups. And I do plan on continuing with this group at least through the next book. I just hope it has a plot ;-P

Book #2

this book is part of my e-library on my kindle