Mrs. Dalloway

I’m on a quest this year to read 50 books by 50 women writers (in honor of my impending 50th birthday and #ReadWomen2014), and as I’ve never read anything by Virginia Woolf, this felt like the right time to get to it. Mrs. Dalloway is a short novel by Woolf that covers the span of one day, marked by the hourly tolling of the bells. I would characterize it as having stream-of-consciousness narration, with the narrators switching from one to the next as they encounter one another through the hours. It is a fine summer day in June in early-1920s London, and 50-something Clarissa Dalloway is planning a party for the evening. A woman of wealth and connections, her party will be well attended by the best people of her choosing.

In this short work, Woolf weaves together past and present through characters directly and tangentially related to Clarissa. Her social set is well represented by her husband and various friends, and the key relationship in the novel seems to be between Clarissa and Peter Walsh, a former suitor whom she hasn’t seen in decades. Peter is a sharp critic of both Clarissa and her social group, yet he needs them and still has deep feelings for Clarissa. Even as he recognizes her snobbery, shallowness and flaws, even as he considers that their marriage would not have lasted, he cannot shake loose his love for her. Clarissa is indeed a self absorbed woman and she knows it. She thinks to herself, “How much she wanted it — that people should look pleased as she came in …. Much rather would she have been one of those people like Richard who did things for themselves, whereas … half the time she did things not simply, not for themselves; but to make people think this or that….” Clarissa’s day is spent choosing flowers, mending a dress and watching the servants prepare for the evening’s festivities. Her “problems” include not being invited to luncheon at Lady Bruton’s and the vexing presence of her daughter’s tutor.

Woolf’s flowing narration introduces the reader to characters of more modest means and greater struggles than Clarissa Dalloway would know. Rezia Warren Smith and her husband Septimus, a shell shocked veteran of the war, happen to be in the park as Peter Walsh is passing through. The passages in which Rezia reflects on their courtship and marriage, and Septimus demonstrates the impact of his mental illness are quite poignant. “He looked at people outside; happy they seemed, collecting in the middle of the street, shouting, laughing, squabbling over nothing. But he could not taste, he could not feel. In the tea-shop among the tables and chattering waiters the appalling fear came over him — he could not feel. He could reason; he could read, … he could add up his bill; his brain was perfect; it must be the fault of the world then — that he could not feel.” Given Woolf’s own struggles with depression, it’s not surprising that she writes of Septimus’ struggles with such force and depth. The Smiths manage to have an unwelcome impact on Clarissa’s party later that evening.

Miss Kilman, tutor to Clarissa’s daughter, is another undesired presence in Clarissa’s life. She and Miss Kilman share a mutual antipathy. They are both jealous of daughter Elizabeth Dalloway’s attention. Miss Kilman resents Clarissa’s wealth, and Clarissa resents Miss Kilman’s poverty. As far as Miss Kilman was concerned, Clarissa Dalloway “… came from the most worthless of all classes — the rich, with a smattering of culture.” Clarissa resents Miss Kilman’s green mackintosh coat. “Year in year out she wore that coat; she perspired; she was never in the room five minutes without making you feel her superiority, your inferiority; how poor she was; how rich you were; how she lived in a slum without a cushion or a bed or a rug or whatever it might be, all her soul rusted with that grievance sticking to it….”

At the end of the day, one is left with the feeling that the world of the Dalloways keeps on as it has. The struggles of the Smiths and Kilmans of the world remain unknown and unregarded, a world unto themselves existing side by side with the Dalloways’ world. I was curious to know how Mrs. Dalloway was received when it was published in 1925. The New York Times seems to have appreciated Woolf’s skewering of snobs — a timeless theme.