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Summary Virginia Woolf Mrs Dalloway Notes
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VIRGINIA WOOLF - MRS DALLOWAYThursday, 03 June 2021 09:30
OUTCOMES
- Discuss:
○ Woolf's concern with time, memory and consciousness;
○ Woolf's treatment of gender issues and sexuality;
○ The preoccupation in the novel with trauma and Woolf's representation of the medical
establishment;
○ Identify and discuss the modernist aspects of the novel; and
○ Analyse an extract in detail, relating it to the novel as a whole
WOOLF IN CONTEXT:
- Biography:
○ Virginia Woolf
○ 1882-1941
○ Mother - Julia Steven (Calcutta, India)
○ 5 bouts of mental health issues
- Modernism & Feminism:
○ Kathleen Kuiper, 'Modernism' (2011): 'Modernism fostered a period of experimentation in the arts
from the late 19th to the mid-20th century, particularly in the years following World War I'
○ An era characterised by industrialization, rapid social change and advances in science and the
social sciences (e.g. Freudian theory)
○ New ideas in psychology, philosophy and political theory, searching for new ways of expression
- The Bloomsbury Group:
○ Progressive politically, aesthetically and sexually
- Relation to Ulysses, James Joyce:
○ Technique of stream of consciousness
Kathleen Kuiper, 'Modernism' (2011): 'Commonly ignores sentence structure and incorporates
fragments of thought in an attempt to capture the flow of the characters' mental processes'
- Diary Commentary:
THE NOVEL
- Opening shows density (thematic and stylistic); seems steady and predictable enough (example of
realism)
- Influx of memory and then returning to current moment
- Woolf's stream of consciousness (interior monologue, free indirect discourse) technique as an attempt
at psychological realism
- We experience the flow of Clarissa's mind, experience the sensorial richness of that particular moment
in London, also of the past as it intrudes upon the present
○ The perspectival shifts of the book are announced in the early sections; what we receive is a
democratic vision as we move in and out of people's minds
- How Clarissa is haunted by the past even though she delights in the present
○ An indication if Woolf's treatment of time (2 perspectives)
i. Chronological authoritative, relentless, rational, masculine movement of Big Ben
ii. A far more fluid conception of time: repetitive, cyclical, emotional, preoccupied with
thwarting linearity by returning to the past
□ i.e. Woolf's 'feminine' subversion
, - Language is suggestive of ongoing mental processes and the flux of experience - stream of
consciousness
○ "oh, right, thinks Clarissa, Peter Walsh!"; "oh, that moment with Sally!"
- Subtly misogyny of Peter - "perfect hostess"
- Complexity of Clarissa
○ Snobbish, privileged, colonial in some of her attitudes, possibly racist (English women in India or
Indian women?)
○ Sympathetic capacity, critical and yet aware; full of contradictions
- Wool's psychological portraiture highlights Clarissa's realities as a woman, and, more importantly, as an
aging woman
- Reference to Shakespeare is a link to future introduction to character
- i.e. Clarissa may be overly privilaged and undereducated and a problematic character, Woolf's
treatment of her experiences is nuanced
- Car engine starting sounds like a pistol shot
- Mystery of who is in car (Prince of Wales, the Queen, Prime Minister?)
- Introduced to Septimus Warren Smith
- The backfiring car is a linking device that moves us away from CD to SWS, but also triggers a series of
perspectival shifts which allows us to enter the minds of other Londoners
- SWS is CD's foil:
○ CD's first thought: affirmative, related to celebration and privilege
○ SWS' first thought: cataclysmic, punitive
CD's London is not SWS' London
- The 2 main characters are not actually diametrically opposed but existing side by side
- Patriotic zeal was revitalised after WWI (Royals are 'God-appointed representatives on earth)
- Skywriting aeroplane, novel mode of advertising
○ 'toffee'
○ An emblem of modernity and attention is diverted from the mysterious car
○ 'One of the most cinematic linking devices' in the novel (Showalter)
Close0+-ups, chase scenes, flashbacks
- For SWS it is an acutely personal emanation that bespeaks his conception of himself, an ego-maniacal
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