Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf: Review
Book: Mrs. Dalloway. Date of Publication: January 1, 1925. Pages: 194. Genre: Literary Fiction.
Fear no more the heat o’ the sun,
Nor the furious winter’s rages;
Thou thy worldly task hast done,
Home art gone, and ta’en thy wages:
Golden lads and girls all must,
As chimney-sweepers, come to dust.
- William Shakespeare, “Cymbeline”
The End of Fear. That is the subject of Mrs. Dalloway which is often called the quintessential postwar novel. We approach it from two opposing perspectives: that of Clarissa Dalloway, wife of a minor politician organizing a society party; and that of Septimus Smith, a veteran struggling to find adequate mental health treatment.
Clarissa is preparing to host a grand party after being confined to bed due to illness. While mending her evening gown which was torn at a prior function when someone stepped on the hem she receives a visit from an old flame. Peter, who was and still might be madly in love with her. He has come to London from India to file divorce papers, get remarried in an equally foolish fashion as the first time, and ply his connections for a new job. The pair have not met for decades and Clarissa’s thoughts are overwhelmed with remembrances of the past. She was once a spirited girl who got along better with her dog than any boy in her vicinity. She had once shared a kiss with her best friend Sally Seton. She had once the choice between marrying the romantic but unreliable Peter Walsh or the slightly dull but steadfast Richard Dalloway. She thinks that she has done well into her middle age, but she is not certain.
But — but — why did she suddenly feel, for no reason that she could discover, desperately unhappy? As a person who has dropped some grain of pearl or diamond into the grass and parts the tall blades very carefully, this way and that, and searches here and there vainly, and at last spies it there at the roots, so she went through one thing and another.
Pg. 120–121
Septimus is sitting on a bench, talking to himself and the people in his head. He has been out on a walk with his wife Lucrezia on the orders of his doctor who has prescribed time off and exercise for a nervous breakdown. She tries to occupy his attention by pointing out squirrels and little kids in strollers while also making sure that he does not jump in front of any buses that speed past. They go to see a new doctor for a second opinion but he kindly suggests an involuntary commitment to a facility in the countryside. Septimus was once a starry-eyed young man answering the call of his country when it needed him. He had once a bond with a fellow soldier, Evans, that carried him through thick and thin. He was once a smart and capable war hero with a bright future and a pretty Italian girl. But Septimus mistook trauma-based dissociation for resilience. He admired his stiff upper lip when he moved on quickly from Evans’s death just to find that he hadn’t been able to move on at all.
When Evans was killed, just before the Armistice, in Italy, Septimus, far from showing any emotion or recognizing that here was the end of a friendship, congratulated himself upon feeling very little and very reasonably…When peace came he was in Milan, billeted in the house of an innkeeper with a courtyard, flowers in tubs, little tables in the open, daughters making hats, and to Lucrezia, the younger daughter, he became engaged one evening when the panic was on him — that he could not feel.
Pg. 86
While Clarissa is able to move like a fish in water through post-war Britain Septimus can barely keep from drowning. While Clarissa fears aging, Septimus fears the accusatory voices saying he doesn’t deserve the chance to age. Septimus jumps out of a window and his doctor uses the suicide as an excuse when he arrives very late to Clarissa’s party. For a moment, she is taken out of her it’s awfully good of you to comes and we must talk laters. Although they have never met, she feels a connection to this unnamed man. They have both found the End of Fear. Clarissa, by accepting the tyranny of society. Septimus, by rejecting it.
Some unstructured thoughts:
- I read this right after The Maltese Falcon and boy did that give me whiplash. I went from a book that exists only in the actions of its characters to a book that exists only in their consciousnesses. Funnily enough they published within 7 years of each other.
- This is not the first time I’ve tried to read Virginia Woolf. I confess to starting To the Lighthouse about a year ago and only getting 30 pages in before giving up. Reading on a packed train car during rush hour with loud noises and dubious smells really makes you cling desperately on any form of escape you can find.
- I’ve always thought that stream of consciousness writing is a volume play. You’re going to get a lot of stuff that’s redundant or unintentionally funny (like the infamous birds speaking Greek in this novel). But you miss 100 percent of the shots you don’t take!
- I have to mention Woolf’s sharp critiques of patriarchy and stuffy British people. She drew on her own experiences with mental health and treatment to write Septimus and it shows. A feminist highlight: “With twice his wits, she had to see things through his eyes — one of the tragedies of married life.” (Page 77)
