Mrs. Dalloway Study Guide
Virginia Woolf is known as a great writer in part because of her novel “Mrs. Dalloway”. It is included in different lists of the best English-language novels of all times. It talks about the generation that lived during a post-war time and the generation that will follow, making the same mistakes.
The timeframe of the book is one day. It talks about the life of a well-respected woman Clarissa Dalloway and how she prepares for a big gala in the evening. Throughout the day the reader travels back and forward in time. Due to such writing style, the text can be difficult to read. But it’s only at the beginning. Just like the Monet paintings that can seem like a set of colorful dots from a close perspective, the book gets its real feel after a couple dozen of pages.
It all begins with Clarissa walking down her street, visiting flower shops, and meeting friends. When she meets with Peter Walsh, the old memories are evoked. Peter proposed to Clarissa some years ago and was turned down. They follow and judge each other’s lives closely since that time.
The characters of the book are soldiers who suffer from physical and mental illnesses, husbands who can’t tell “I love you” to their wives because it feels weird, doctors who don’t understand their patients, and other high society members who are lost in their daily worries. To some extent, they either failed to accomplish their life’s goals, or failed to set these goals right.
This book is about the life as it is and the richness we experience in each single day. It is about how people move on, but the life catches up with them at any point in time. Why did we marry the people we married? Why did we fight the wars we fought? These are just some of the thoughts the reader will be left with after finishing the book.
Author: Leona Watson
New Essays
The corresponding themes and symbols of an appropriation encourage readers to re-examine the original text. This is evident in the novel Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf, and the appropriation The Hours by Michael Cunningham. When someone reads The Hours they recognise the universality of the themes...
Clarissa-“She could not dispel a virginity preserved through childbirth” “match burning in a crocus” “ Do u remember how the blinds use to flap at bourton” “The curtain with its flight of birds or paradise blew out” “She had a perpetual sense, as she watched the taxi cabs, of being out, out, far...
Discussion questions: 1. In the novel “Mrs. Dalloway” both Clarissa and Septimus repeat a line from Shakespeare, what is the line and what is its importance to the characters? 2. In “Mrs. Dalloway” Septimus is created as Clarissa’s double, why do you think Woolf did this? 3. How are Clarissa and...
Mrs Dalloway”, Virginia Woolf’s modernist novel which mimics the unjust nature of 1920’s society in England focuses on the dark places of British culture at that time, and more importantly, the nature of its upper class. Woolf explores the patriarchal authoritarian abuses that were prevalent...