Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf

Having now read The Hours and A Home At The End Of The World, Michael Cunningham's (considerably longer) novel about young, emotionally stunted urbanites, I can only echo (sadly) other reader's remarks:  I, too, am not quite sure what all the hullaballoo is about.  I find Cunningham's prose to be tiresomely fulsome (albeit less so in The Hours) and while I think he is a perceptive and sensitive reader of Woolf, I could easily have done without The Hours and been content to let Mrs. Dalloway speak for itself.

Having said that, there was one phrase of Cunningham's (possibly a quote of V. Woolf's) which leapt out at me from The Hours, and which I now alter slightly, for my own purposes.

Cunningham has V. Woolf ruminating, as she begins work on Mrs. Dalloway, that 'one always has a better book in one's mind than one manages to write', and this strikes me as a fitting encapsulation of one of her more moving themes.  V. Woolf, I think, has a deep understanding that one always has a better LIFE in one's mind than one actually manages to live.

The oft-posited existential question (crudely put: why bother) is avoided, perhaps, in a way - we bother because the alternative is frightful and, as depressing as it can be to feel morally and philosophically infirm, the beer sure tastes good and you can't argue with a pretty spring day.  I think Woolf is more interested in the 'how' of it all, and certainly that's what I respond to in her work:  how we manage to stay afloat, how we think, feel, and behave in a universe that constantly shows us up as failures; how we grapple with the inborn pendulum swinging inside of us that constantly moves us back and forth across the spectrum of our emotions at a dizzying rate of
speed. 

I think Woolf succeeds in conveying (movingly) the perverse contradictions of the human mind, its ordered unpredictability, a chaos and madness that is nonetheless rigidly constricted by the fixed boundaries imposed by class, race, gender, time, place, et al. I admire Woolf's uncanny ability to move us, with the absolute precision of her language, abruptly in and out of different character's thought processes.  She has a driving and propulsive rythm in her prose which is what I feel is lacking in Cunningham's more langourous and (to me) self-consciously poetic style.  If there is poetry in Woolf, it is like Walt Whitman's poetry - dynamic, aggressive, and boisterous - and what makes Mrs. Dallowahy a modernist masterpiece is the juxtaposition of this propulsive style against the soporifically dull events of everyone's day.  With the key dramatic exception of Septimus,  no character does anything more demanding than write a letter, or mend a dress. Yet every character has in him/her torrents and geysers of thought and feeling - perhaps it is just this inability to fashion a life anywhere near as interesting, challenging and complex as our dreams and fantasies seem to demand that makes for such a sad and forlorn tone.  I actually prefer other Woolf books more than this one, but was happy to read it, and hope people may check out some of her other novels (To The Lighthouse and The Years, particularly).

Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf

I found “The Hours” much easier to read and actually finished it in a third of the time that it took me to get through “Mrs. Dalloway.”  Although the characters in this book were no less depressing, I found it easier to read about them and get involved in their lives and their choices.  It did take a few chapters to get used to switching back and forth between time and characters, but I was drawn back to the book each time I had a few moments to read. I cared more about the characters and looked forward to reading more about them. 

Both novels spoke of people who seemed dissatisfied with their lives in some way or another and some seemed to be questioning choices made in their lives.  I didn’t discover a single character in either book who had what I would call a purpose in life which guided their choices and decisions.  Many seemed to be living with “what if”.   Some seemed to be stuck in their pasts.  I found this very prevalent in “Mrs. Dalloway.”

I found both novels to be rather dark and depressing and came away with a feeling of sadness after reading them.  I did however come away from reading and thinking about these two novels thankful for my own life in that while I have had some rough times and traumatic events I can still enjoy life and move forward not being stuck in the past.  And yet, we have probably all known people like those who were portrayed in these two books.  So it was a touch of reality as well to cause me to remember that not everyone has that happiness and fulfillment in their lives. 

Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf

Cunningham's novel centres around four different women in two countries in four different decades. Mrs Dalloway (1920s) and Virginia Woolf (1940s), both in Britain; and Clarissa Vaughan (post- WW2 - 1950s) and Laura Brown (1990s) both in the USA. As with "Mrs Dalloway" I was totally disinterested by the immediate, and very pedestrian, story of the characters in "The Hours" (which I won't talk about). It was the state of mind of the authors and their subliminal messages that intrigued me - especially their existentialist nature. You may note here that Cunningham reinforces the notion of Britain as the Old World and the USA as the New. Yet, as we know, all that is new becomes old. According to British comedian John Cleese, many people (including many Brits) seem to believe that British culture ended with WW2. What came after that was merely the afterglow or vapour of the smoking gun that was the British Empire. This got me thinking, since decline and despair are themes in both novels, is there a subliminal metaphor in "The Hours" about the demise of two great superpowers? The new follows the old in more than just temporal continuity. It seems that more and more American intellectuals, historians and politicians are concerned about the impending decline of the USA as a superpower. A similar concern about the British Empire came to the fore in Britain after WW1, and even more so after WW2. By the 1920s, the time of "Mrs Dalloway", Britain saw the sun setting on its empire. Intriguingly this became a favourite theme of President Reagan, who proclaimed in 1980 (I believe) that "we can see the setting sun". In other words, he was warning his fellow Americans that America's superpower status won't last forever. At such times the comfortable in society, those who never rock the boat, start to get a little perturbed about life, whereby they realize that everything is not as cozy as they would wish it to be. This often translates itself in the most self-interested of ways, in a direct concern about the supposed meaningless of their own lives.

When I lived in Britain in the 1980s, I would often discuss politics with intellectuals, who would invariably come around to the same theme - the meaningless of existence and the supposed impossibility of knowing anything at all. It was very frustrating. This despondent view of the world reinforced and codified their state of utter helplessness, which only exacerbated their already depressed states of mind. While I talked about global politics they translated it all into a self-conscious assessment of their own personal weaknesses, and concluded that reality was unknowable and life meaningless. It's one of the reasons I left Britain - too depressing. It's fascinating though why they would do this. They related the demise of empire (and civilization as they knew it) with their own personal demise. In effect, they internalized the decline of empire, and reflected this in their own personalities and states of mind. I find it intriguing now that some bright spark in Britain has responded to the general air despondency by creating a very positive children's character - Bob the Builder. His catchphrase is: "Can we fix it? YES WE CAN!" This phrase is so unBritish in its optimism as to be almost revolutionary. Then again, Bob the Builder is a "common" worker, the bane of many snooty British intellectuals - especially post-modernists with a fixation about existentialism.

Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf

I think that if I had read "The Hours" first I would have liked it better. My dislike of "Mrs. Dalloway" colored my view of Cunningham's book. I found myself wondering why he bothered. I understand the idea of doing homage to a "great writer" but I also kept thinking he could have told his story in a different (more original?) way.  The only other "homage" work I've ever read was "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead" which I really loved. I guess you might call that work a "re-imagining" but still, I was hoping for that kind of thing when I started "The Hours."   Y'all know how disappointed I was :(

The main problem I had with "Mrs. Dalloway" was not being able to relate to any of the characters. The book was written 80 years ago about people in a country I have no first hand experience of and a class I am not part of. I wasn't interested in any of the people so I didn't care about them.

I was confused by the forward to the book saying that Woolf had written an amazing book about the lives of women. Thinking back on the women in "Mrs. Dalloway," the only female characters that were even partially developed were the ones of Woolf's own class. The "lower classes" just seem be there to add validity (or colour) to
the people of Clarissa's class.

I like the idea of story telling about "a day in the life." The Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "Data's Day" which deals with Data's experiences as he prepares for O'Brian's wedding was great. I supposed that could be seen as homage to "Mrs. Dalloway." The popularity of the new series 24 seems to say that this can be a good way to tell a story. I really don't know why it didn't capture me while reading "Mrs. Dalloway."

As for "The Hours," I liked the characters better. I could relate to many of them and I thought they were interesting. I liked the surprise of finding out who Richard was. I think Cunningham was severely limited by his using the Woolf book as his template.

Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf

Every summary of this book that I saw claimed that it was about a single day in Mrs. Dalloway's life.  This is true, but certainly limits the prospective reader's vision of the book.  It is certainly framed around Mrs. Dalloway and the day of her party, but she is by no means the only character in focus.

The story does start with Clarissa Dalloway at the beginning of her day.  We are given "moments" or "flashes" of her thoughts – what traffic and passersby she sees on the street, which friends she meets on her walk, and what thoughts of her past and present those encounters trigger.  However, it continues on to give us similar moments and thoughts from some of the people in the street and some of her friends.  These pieces of their thoughts and their day circle back around during the day to intersect with Clarissa and go out on their own again, until many of the characters end up at Clarissa's party, which is at the end of both her day and the book.

When I started the book, it seemed to me that no one could be thinking about all these different things at the same time or even within a matter of minutes.  I then made a conscious effort to keep track of all the subjects I thought about in a short period of time at work, and had to conclude that not only is it not impossible, it is very common (at least for me!).  I was still distracted by the run-on sentences and thought fragments that the author used to convey these impressions.  There were many sentences that I had to try to parse out slowly to figure out what the author was really trying to say.

I have enjoyed reading other novels set in this time period, but I wouldn't recommend this book as a story just to pick up and read over a weekend.  Since this was the first book I have read by Virginia Woolf, I also don't know if it really is the best book for an introduction to her work. 

The Hours

This book combines three stories  - one about Virginia Woolf writing the book Mrs. Dalloway, one about a woman named Clarissa whose life seems to parallel Mrs. Dalloway's in more than just her name, and one about a woman named Laura who is reading the Mrs. Dalloway book. 

All three stories copy the style from Mrs. Dalloway of exposing us to moments in the characters' thoughts.  In this case, they seemed a little more coherent, but we still had enough run-on sentences (and parenthetical phrases) to be distracting.

Laura is reading the Mrs. Dalloway novel, so there are many quotes from the book in her story to explain what triggers her thoughts.  Clarissa's story parallels the other novel so closely, that if I had graded it as an English paper, I would have considered it to be plagiarized.  Virginia Woolf's story gave a version of how the Mrs. Dalloway novel was begun.  I enjoyed reading the "Mrs. Woolf" story more than the other two, but I have no idea how close it is to what really happened.  I am still not sure why Laura's story was included or how it relates to the other three, other than the Mrs. Dalloway book connection.  Combining the other two stories made sense to me, but not this one.

Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf

But as Septimus stated before he committed suicide, "some things were very beautiful; others sheer nonsense".  The visions and voices of mental illness were described in several of the characters. "Leaden circles dissolved in the air"???

The Clarissa's in both books cared deeply for others but felt they were failures.