About this title: Influenced by Joyce's ULYSSES, Virginia Woolf's novel takes place within a 24-hour period and includes a stroll through the London streets that resembles Leopold Bloom's walk around Dublin. Woolf's narrative is structured out of the internal thoughts of characters Septimus Smith, the young, shell-shocked World War I veteran, and Clarissa Dalloway, the apparently perfect hostess who is preparing for her party that evening. Woolf elevates the world of the everyday, in which errands are done and buses are waited for, to a sublime evocation of the vital texture of life. But the interior ...
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Binding: Trade paperback
Publisher: Harvest Books
Date Published: 1990
ISBN-13:9780156628709ISBN:0156628708
Description: Fair. No dust jacket as issued. Trade paperback (US). Glued binding. 216 p. Audience: General/trade. small damage to lower margin read more
Description: Good. 0140622217 Different Cover. (Impressionistic portrait) Binding square and tight, with spine creasing. No other creases. Pages clean and unmarked. Free Upgrade to Expedited Shipping. Satisfaction guaranteed. Ships Immediately from CA. read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Harvest Books
Date Published: 1990
ISBN-13:9780156628709ISBN:0156628708
Description: Good. A copy that has been read, but remains in clean condition. All pages are intact, and the cover is intact (including dustcover, if applicable). The spine may show signs of wear. Pages can include limited notes and highlighting, and the copy can include "from the library of" labels. Return Policy Any defects, damages, or material differences with your item, must be reported to us within 7 days of receipt of the item or 30 days from date of shipment. The returned merchandise must be ... read more
Description: A wonderful copy with some minor edgewear to the cover. Previous owners name inscribed inside front. -, Spiral Bound, Very Good / read more
Description: Good. Light shelf wear and minimal interior marks. Millions of satisfied customers and climbing. Thriftbooks is the name you can trust, guaranteed. Spend Less. Read More. read more
Description: Good. Light shelf wear and minimal interior marks. Millions of satisfied customers and climbing. Thriftbooks is the name you can trust, guaranteed. Spend Less. Read More. read more
Description: Good. Light shelf wear and minimal interior marks. Millions of satisfied customers and climbing. Thriftbooks is the name you can trust, guaranteed. Spend Less. Read More. read more
"With an unhurried ease the River Ouse passes through the Sussex hillsides meandering it's way to join that stretch of sea which has successfully kept the English geographically aloof from their Continental cousins since before Domesday, even finding time en route for a spot of landscape gardening and to make a number of unscheduled social calls.
It was into this river that on an otherwise uneventful but, nonetheless, unforgiving Spring day during wartime, and having filled her pockets full of complicit pebbles, Virginia Woolf waded out to end her life.
Likewise, plunging into Mrs Dalloway, the reader, with a nearly breathless surrendering, slips between the surrogate streamsofconsciousness that set off a sort of emotional Brownian motion: characters collide, events conspire, there is the party to be prepared for; meantime, in the midst of it's own busy indifference a single day unturns towards the evening.
This is no multi-faceted act of ventriloquism: these economically acute character sketches share the tone of a single, singularly lyrical, narrative voice."
"One of my favorite novels, an outstanding analysis of the mind of a woman, with all her troubles and preoccupations. The exquisite (do I sound snobbish?) language in which it is written kept me reading until the end. Even in buses. It's a beautiful exploration of human feelings, and the way they get mixed up and drive us to unexpected actions. The melancholic feeling that is transmitted from the very first words, one of my favorite opening lines in all the books I've read, is catching and intense. I don't think it's Woolf's best, but I guess it's the most accessible."
"I loved this book, but not quite as much as I was hoping. The stream of consciousness style Woolf uses is brilliantly expressive and I was constantly surprised by how clearly she used it to portray character. The likenening of her style to that of the cinema (panning from character to character, moving in for a close-up, then moving on; as well as the use of techniques such as flashbacks and montages) mentioned in the introduction struck me as very apt. Clarissa Dalloway's dauntless vivacity and unstoppable vitality, despite her feelings of inadequacy and occasionally moments of dissatisfaction, were perfectly portrayed. On the other hand, Richard's more staid simplicity of thought and action was immediately clear.
And how can anyone not love a book written with such use of punctuation! - I say bring back the double punctuation mark. Few things are so expressive. The key to Woolf's prose, I believe, lies in her use of punctuation to mediate the rhythm of her sentences, and all of a sudden it's completely clear why this technique is called 'stream of consciousness' - it all comes out, in a long stream, as water, with the rises and falls and cadences and tones dictated by, you guessed it, punctuation.
It's incredibly easy to read because it is so much like thought, so it flows like thought through the mind. The flip-side of this, though, is that it was so easy to read that my mind kept wandering off and I would realise I had been reading for pages and pages without taking in a single word. Furthermore, the excessive use of commas, while beautiful, was sometimes confusing. Tant pis, I say, style over practicality every day!
Here is a sample of prose. It's a famous one, and with reason, because it's brilliant:
"For Heaven only knows why one loves it so, how one sees it so, making it up, building it round one, tumbling it, creating it every moment afresh; but the veriest frumps, creating it every moment afresh; but the veriest frumps, the most dejected of miseries sitting on doorsteps (drink their downfall) do the same; can't be dealt with, she felt positive, by Acts of Parliament for that very reason: they love life. 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 trumph and the jingle and the strange high singing of some aeroplane overhead was what she loved; life; London; this moment of June."
Such joy, such vitality! But really, there are so many beautiful passages to choose from.
In terms of content, as opposed to language, I've read a little about a few interpretations of this work that I like very much. One is the idea of Mrs Dalloway being like a cubist painting (the cubism movement was active in art around that time); showing the same event from many different perspectives. This is linked to the idea of the novel being about the threads of thought between people; how they rarely intersect, and true connections rarely succeed (I suspect I like this because it is a little Chekhovian). The different perspectives on life offered by each the characters the narrative brushes against are so different as to be virtually irreconcilable; it is a bit depressing to be shown so clearly the gulfs that exist between people; how can we ever hope to form a meaningful relationship with anyone when we are so different? Yet the book ends on a positive note: Clarissa's ultimate affinity, even understanding, of Septimus Warren Smith breaks through the barriers of class, gender and situation, offering some hope for human interaction.
In a mostly-irrelevant aside, reading this suddenly makes Michael Cunningham's The Hours a whole lot clearer. I wasn't expecting to enjoy Mrs Dalloway as much, but DAMN I love it. I must read it again soon."
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