Mrs Dalloway

Mrs Dalloway

• 1.
  Mrs. Dalloway Virginia Woolf
• 2.
  Virginia Woolf  She wasborn in London in 1882.  She grew up in a literary and intelectual atmosphere.  Her education consisted of private Greek lessons and she read whatever she liked in her father's library.  She spent her summers at St Ives, Cornwall, and the sea remained central to her art; infact for Virginia water represented two things: on the one hand, it represented what is femenine; on the other hand, it stood for the possibility of the resolution of intolerable conflicts in death.  Her mother's death in 1895, when Virginia was only thirteen, affected her deeply and brought about her first nervous breakdown.  In 1912 Virginia married Leonard Woolf.  In 1915 she entered a nursing home and attempted suicide by taking drugs.  She died in Rodmeil in 1941.
• 3.
  ➲ With herfather's death in 1904, Woolf began her own life and literary career. ➲ She decided to move to Bloomsbury and, together her sister Vanessa, she became a member of Bloomsbury Group, which included the avant-garde of early 20th century London. ➲ Bloomsbury members virtually defined the social, political, and creative concerns of the coming mid-century: unconventional sexual practices; anti-war sentiments and socialism; and the fragmented perspective aesthetics of both Modernism and Post- modernism. The Bloomsbury GroupThe Bloomsbury Group
• 4.
   A novel wrote in 1925.  Presents a day in the life  of Clarissa Dalloway, an  upper­class English  woman.  The story takes place in  London on a day in June  1923. Mrs Dalloway
• 5.
  At 10 a.m. on a Wednesday early in June 1923, Clarissa Dalloway  goes to Bond Street to buy some flowers for a party she's giving that  evening at her house. While she's in the flower shop, a car drives  noisily past and shifts the attention to the street, where Septimus and  Lucrezia Warren Smith are walking: he is an estate agent's clerk and  shell­shocked veteran of the war, she is an Italian girl. Septimus  Warren Smith, a veteran of World War I suffering from deferred  traumatic stress, spends his day in Regent's Park with his Italian­born  wife Lucrezia, where they are observed by Peter Walsh. Septimus is  visited by frequent and indecipherable hallucinations, mostly  concerning his dear friend Evans who died in the war. Clarissa walks  back home and there she receives an unexpected visit from Peter  Walsh, the man she used to love in her youth. Later that day, after he  is prescribed involuntary commitment to a psychiatric hospital, he  commits suicide by jumping out of a window. All the characters who  have been in some way important during the day are present at  Clarissa's party. The Bradshaws arrive and Clarissa hears from them  of Septimus's death, with she feels a strong connection.
• 6.
  The protagonist ofthe novel, Clarissa, is a London society lady of fifty-one, the wife of a Conservative MP, Richard Dalloway, who has extremely conventional views on politics and women's rights. The influence of a possessive father, the frustration of a genuine love, the need to refuse Peter Walsh, a man ho would force her to share everything – all this has weakned her emotional self and split her in two. She's characterized by opposing her feelings: her need for freedom and indipendence and her class consciousness. Her life appears to be an effort towards order and peace, an attempt to overcome her weakness and sense of failure. She needs to make her home perfect, to become an ideal human being but she imposes severe rescrictions on her spontaneous feelings.
• 7.
  Septimus Warren Smithis a young poet and lover of Shakespeare who, when the war broke out, enlisted for patriotic reasons. He's an extremely sensitive man who can suddenly fall prey to panic and fear, or feelings guilt. The cause of these feelings lies in the death of his best friend Evans during the war. So he's a character specifically connected with the war, he's a “shell-shock” case, one of the victims of industrialized war, who sought medical treatment in the special centres set up by 1922. After the war Septimus is haunted by the spectre of Evans, he suffers from headaches and insomnia, he cannot stand the idea of having a child, he's sexually impotent.
• 8.
  The plot doesnot connect Clarissa and Septimus. But they are similar in many respects: their response to experience is always given in physical terms, they depend upon their partners for stability and protection. There is a main difference, however, which has aroused the theory that Septimus is Clarissa's double. He's not always able to distinguish between his personal response and the nature of external reality. His psychic paralysis leads him to suicide whereas Clarissa never loses her aeareness of the outside world as something external to herself. In the end she recognizes her deceptions, accepts old age and the idea of death, and is prepared to go on.
• 9.
  Virginia Woolf wasinterested in giving voice to the complex inner world of feeling and memory and conceived the human personality as a continuous shift of impressions and emotions. In her novels the omniscient narrator disappeared and the point of view shifted inside the characters' minds through flashbacks, associations of ideas, momentary impressions presented as a continuous flux. Mrs Dalloway takes place in a single ordinary day in June 1923, and it follows the protagonist through a very small area of London, from the morning to the night of the day on which she gives a large formal party. Clarissa Dalloway's party is the climax of the novel and unifies the narrative by gathering all the people Clarissa thinks about during the day. Clarissa doesn't simply walk up Bond Street and back again, she also perceives, thinks, remembers, so that her present experience and future plans are suffused with the feelings and axperiences of the past.In Mrs Dalloway, all of the action, except flashbacks, takes place on a day in June. It is an example of free indirect discourse storytelling (not stream of consciousness because this story moves between the consciousnesses of every character in a form of discourse): every scene closely tracks the momentary thoughts of a particular character. Woolf blurs the distinction between direct and indirect speech throughout the novel, alternating her narration with omniscient description, indirect interior monologue, direct interior narration follows at least twenty characters in this way but the bulk of the novel is spent with Clarissa Dalloway and Septimus Smith.
• 10.
  THEMES Mental Illness Septimus, asthe shell-shocked war hero, operates as a pointed criticism of the treatment of mental illness and depression. Woolf lashes out at the medical discourse through Septimus' decline and suicide; his doctors make snap judgments about his condition, talk to him mainly through his wife and dismiss his urgent confessions before he can make them. Woolf weave her criticism of the treatment of the mentally ill with her larger argument, which is the criticism of society's class structure. Her use of Septimus as the stereotypically traumatized man from the war is her way of showing that there were still reminders of the First World War in 1923 London. Exsistential Issues Her love of party-throwing comes from a desire to bring people together and create happy moments. She interprets Septimus Smith's death as an act of embracing life and her mood remains light even though she hears about it in the midst of the party. Homosexuality Clarissa Dalloway is strongly attracted by Sally at Bourton — 34 years later, she still considers the kiss they shared to be the happiest moment of her life. She feels about women "as men feel", but she does not recognize these feelings as signs of homosexuality.
• 11.
  As for Joyce, also for Virginia Woolf subjective reality came  to be identified with the technique  called “stream of  consciousness”.  However, differently from Joyce's chacacters who show their  thoughts directly through interior monologue, sometimes in  an incoherent and syntetically unorthodox way, Woolf never  lets her characters' thoughts flow without control, and  maintains logical and grammatical organisation.  Her technique is based on the fusion of streams of thought  into a third­person, past tense narrative. Thus she gives the                      impression of simultaneous connections between the inner  and the outer world, the past and the present, speech and  silent.  Woolf's use of words was almost poetic, allusive and  emotional.  Fluidity is the quality of the language which flows                                following the most intricate thoughts and stretches to  express the most intimate feelings. “Mrs Dalloway”  takes  place in a single ordinary day and it follows the protagonist  through very small area of  London, from the morning to the  night the day on which she gives a large formal party. Woolf  does not elevate her characters to the level of myth, but shows  their deep humanity behind their social mask.
• 12.
  “It is sovery dangerous to live for only one day!” Edited by: Fabiana Faiuolo 5^ D