Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf (59 down 41 to go)

As a cloud crosses the sun, silence falls on London; and falls on the mind. Effort ceases. Time flaps on the mast. There we stop; there we stand.

This is the first time I’ve read Mrs. Dalloway and the second novel I’ve read by Virginia Woolf. The story is written predominantly in stream of consciousness. I think it would be called a modernist work, along with Woolf’s other novels.

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

 

I've made no secret of my dislike for stream of consciousness, but I seem to dislike each occurrence a little less. I strongly disliked Ulysses, disliked The Sound and the Fury and To the Lighthouse, but liked A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, As I Lay Dying, and Absolam, Absolam! a bit more, and now I liked Mrs. Dalloway more than my previous experience with Woolf.

Obviously, I still didn’t love it, but I am getting used to stream of consciousness. A good thing, as my next novel by Faulkner, likely uses it.

The story covers a single day in the life of Mrs. Dalloway as she plans an elaborate party that evening. A single day, but there are many flashbacks in the consciousness of characters. It takes place in London, shortly after the First World War. There are two main characters, Mrs. Clarissa Dalloway and Septimus Smith. They do not know each other, but their lives become oddly intertwined.

Mrs. Dalloway is 50 something, a socialite, the wife of a minor government official. She loves London and high-society. She is a little vain, materialistic, or even superficial, but she is not completely unlikable. Septimus Smith is a pitiable veteran of the war, who is losing his mind, probably due to post-traumatic stress.

There is a stark contrast between the two. Mrs. Dalloway has known little but comfort and privilege, whereas Septimus, once with a promising career, is ruined by the war and no one except his foreign wife seems to notice or care.

There are numerous secondary characters: Rezia Smith, Septimus’ Italian born and worrisome wife; Peter Walsh, a one-time suitor of Mrs. Dalloway; and Sally Seton, a childhood friend of both Mrs. Dalloway and Peter.

These and other characters attend Mrs. Dalloway’s party and the narrative shares bits of their consciousness.

SPOILER ALERT: the following contains a spoiler.

At the party, Mrs. Dalloway learns through a guest, a doctor, of one of his patients, Septimus, who has committed suicide. Even though she did not know Septimus, his death affects Mrs. Dalloway in a unique and powerful way. At first, she is almost insulted that the topic of his death should invade her party, but as she contemplates it, she identifies with Septimus, and seems to take some sort of satisfaction from his suicide.

She felt somehow very like him – the young man who had killed himself. She felt glad that he had done it; thrown it away.

Ah well…very existential. Woolf’s prose has some moments of beauty, but overall – I’m not a fan.

One element that was similar to my previous exposure to Woolf is the duplicitous nature of all the characters contrasted between their spoken words and private thoughts. Mrs. Dalloway has an ironic thought:

Cleverness was silly. One must say simply what one felt.

Ironic because Mrs. Dalloway, like all the other characters almost NEVER says what she feels.

Woolf uses the chiming of Big Ben as a motif throughout the novel. As various characters are about their business, they hear Big Ben, each occurrence a bit later in the day – symbolizing I suppose the unstoppable progress of time.

Other Excerpts:

In people’s eyes, in the swing, tramp, and trudge; in the bellow and the uproar; the carriages, motor cars, omnibuses, vans, sandwich men shuffling and swinging; brass bands; barrel organs; in the triumph and the jingle and the strange high singing of some aeroplane overhead was what she loved; life; London; this moment of June.

The world has raised its whip; where will it descend?

Peter Walsh convincing himself he was not still in love with Mrs. Dalloway…

unable to get away from the thought of her; she kept coming back and back like a sleeper jolting against him in a railway carriage; which was not being in love of course; it was thinking of her criticizing her, starting again, after thirty years, trying to explain her.

Septimus was one of the first to volunteer. He went to France to save an England which consisted almost entirely of Shakespeare’s plays and Miss Isabel Pole in a green dress walking in a square.

This was now revealed to Septimus; the message hidden in the beauty of words. The secret signal which one generation passes, under disguise to the next is loathing, hatred, despair.

So there was no excuse; nothing whatever the matter, except the sin for which human nature had condemned him to death; that he did not feel.

They thought, or Peter at any rate thought, that she enjoyed imposing herself; liked to have famous people about her; great names; was simply a snob in short. Well, Peter might think so. Richard merely thought it foolish of her to like excitement when she knew it was bad for her heart. It was childish, he thought. And both were quite wrong. What she liked was simply life.

Rezia Smith describing words that Septimus had her record in a journal: 

She wrote it down just as he spoke it. Some things were very beautiful; others sheer nonsense.

…there was the terror; the overwhelming incapacity, one’s parents giving it into one’s hands, this life, to be lived to the end, to be walked with serenity; there was in the depths of heart an awful fear.

Film Rendition:  1997 starring Vanessa Redgrave as Mrs. Dalloway and Natascha McElhone as young Clarissa Dalloway. A very worthy portrayal - and just about as exciting as the book. I thought Redgrave and McElhone were superb choices as was all the casting. To convert stream of consciousness writing to film requires taking some liberty with the written work, but this was still quite true to the book.

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To The Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf (13 down, 87 to go)

...if you look from a mountain top down the long wastes of the ages, the very stone one kicks with one's boot will outlast Shakespeare.

This is the first time I've read To the Lighthouse or Virginia Woolf. The book is a Modernist novel written primarily in stream of consciousness. It begins in England prior to WWI, and covers several decades of the Ramsey family and acquaintances. 

The story has only three major divisions: Part one, "The Window" – a single day that introduces the principal characters; Part two, "Time Passes" – covers many years fleetingly, and; Part three, "The Lighthouse" – a single day with only a small number of the original characters from "The Window".

My rating: 2 1/2 of 5 stars

 

"The Window" gives the reader a glimpse into the lives of Mr. and Mrs. Ramsey, their eight children, and guests at the Ramesy summer home in the Hebrides sometime prior to WWI. One of the children hopes to make a trip to a lighthouse that is visible across the bay. His mother encourages him that they might go tomorrow, but his father dashes his hopes stating the weather will be too inclement. The child is bitterly resentful of his father, and even fantasizes about killing him. The Window reveals the duplicitous nature of the rest of the occupants, and the stark difference between their public face and private thoughts. Besides the Ramsey family, there is Charles Tansley an academic and admirer of Mr. Ramsey, Lily Briscoe, a young painter of no renown, Augustus Carmichael a poet of some import, William Bankes, a friend of the Ramsey’s, and Paul Rayley and Minta Doyle, who end up engaged, perhaps partially due to Mrs. Ramsey's matchmaking.

Time passes quickly in "Time Passes", which covers a period of some years. Several persons from "The Window" pass away and the house and property is vacant and neglected. A former housekeeper enlists help to restore things in preparation for the return of the former occupants.

"The Lighthouse" covers a single day. The house has been readied for the Ramseys and guests to return, though of course not all. Still the reunion has promise of something cheery and pleasant. There are plans to finish some long overdue business, and hopes to restore familial tenderness, or more precisely establish it…also long overdue. But this is no Hollywood sit-com reunion and Woolf is no writer of comedy. A single day, and simple gestures cannot amend for years of aloof detachment. There are a hundred clichés and ways to say it. Redeem the day at hand.

That's what I got out of it. Woolf likely intended some bright shining thought, some great beacon to illuminate the human experience, if you’ll pardon the pun, but I'm not sure what it is.

Though I'm not a fan of this story, one thing I did like: the way Woolf treated time with the three chapters, one day - many years - one day again. "The Window" and "The Lighthouse" were the real looks at the characters. The middle chapter, "Time Passes", is aptly named and just gives the reader hints of events that will have changed the remaining characters in the end. In more linear stories you may see characters change gradually over time, but this was like a leap forward in time. The characters were changed in what seemed an instant.

Overall, not a very cheery story though, and difficult to follow at times (a consequence of stream of consciousness). I did like the point of view of Lily in the final chapter. Something of an outsider, she is outside painting as she recalls the former days while observing the present.

One thing that struck me in the overall story was how astonishingly duplicitous the characters were in thought and deed. I know we all put on a public face, which can be quite different from our private thoughts. And I know it is difficult to be truly objective about oneself, but I don’t believe I am half so hypocritical as Woolf’s characters. I can only presume that to Woolf they seem quite normal. Perhaps I’m naïve, but I disagree.

The duplicitous family relationships are reminiscent of The Sound and the Fury.

Quotations:

Mrs. Ramsey's thoughts: 

Oh, but she never wanted James to grow a day older! Or Cam either. These two she would have liked to keep forever just as they were, demons of wickedness, angels of delight, never to see them grow up into long-legged monsters. Nothing made up for the loss. When she read just now to James, "and there were numbers of soldiers with kettledrums and trumpets," and his eyes darkened, she thought, why should they grow up and lose all that? He was the most gifted, the most sensitive of her children. But all, she thought were full of promise. Prue, a perfect angel with the others, and sometimes now, at night especially, she took one's breath away with her beauty. Andrew - even her husband admitted that his gift for mathematics was extraordinary. And Nancy and Roger, they were both wild creatures now, scampering about over the country all day long. As for Rose, her mouth was too big, but she had a wonderful gift with her hands. If they had charades, Rose made the dresses; made everything; liked best arranging table, flowers, anything. She did not like it that Jasper should shoot birds; but it was only a stage; they all went through stages. Why, she asked, pressing her chin on James's head, should they grow up so fast?

Mrs. Ramsey's thoughts: 

...one's children so often gave one's own perceptions a little thrust forwards.

Narrative: 

Did Nature supplement what man advanced? Did she complete what he began? With equal complacence she saw his misery, his meanness, and his torture. That dream, of sharing, completing, of finding in solitude on the beach an answer, was then but a reflection in a mirror, and the mirror itself was but the surface glassiness which forms in quiescence when the nobler powers sleep beneath? Impatient, despairing yet loth to go (for beauty offers her lures, has her consolations), to pace the beach was impossible; contemplation was unendurable; the mirror was broken.

Film rendition: 1983 made for television production starring Rosemary Harris and Michael Gough. Faithful rendition, well cast, and great locations, but like the book, not very exciting.

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