MRS DALLOWAY

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 Born 1882

Part of the Bloomsbury group

Virginia Influential modern writer

Suffered occasionally from nervous episodes( anxiety and depression)

Woolf
Married in 1912

Feminist

Died in 1941: She committed suicide

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 SUMMARY OF MRS DALLOWAY

A unique novel which takes place in only one day

Interweaves two seemingly unconnected storylines during this day

At the beginning, Clarissa Dalloway recently is recovering from an illness and is hosting

a party

Begins her day by running an errand to purchase flowers

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Throughout the morning, Clarissa reflects on her past

Flashbacks on her decision to marry Richard Dalloway 30 years earlier, rather than her

more fiery suitor Peter Walsh

Meanwhile, the second story begins with Septimus Smith, a shellshocked war veteran out

on the street with his wife

Clarissa returns home and start to remember the special friendship she shared with Sally

Seyton, a vivacious, slightly scandalous young woman. Clarissa remembers a kiss they

shared. The two shared a special bond, bordering on a crush.

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Clarissa receives an unexpected visit from Peter Walsh while mending her green

silk dress

Peter once told Clarissa that she would become “perfect hostess” and it is clear

that his prediction was accurate

Clarissa and Peter talk to each other about the present but both are thinking of

their past and the decisions they made to get them to the place they are now

After Elizabeth, Clarissa’s daughter, enters Peter ends his visit

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Peter goes to a park where Septimus and Lecrezia are also walking

The couple get into a heated discussion about suicide and Peter sees them as a

young in love couple quarrelling. He doesn’t know the depth of their emotions or

how unsteady Septimus is

Lecrezia had visited a specialist, Sir William Bradshaw, who dismiss the madness

of Septimus and recommends the asylum to get a better perspective on his illness

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Meanwhile, Richard Dalloway went to have lunch with Lady Bruton

Clarissa was somewhat miffed that Lady Bruton invited only her husband and not

her

Richard realized during this lunch that he wants to go home and tell Clarissa that

he loves her, he has gone so many years without saying them

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Clarissa goes to see Elizabeth who is studying with her tutor, Doris Kilman

Clarissa despises Doris, who she sees as a monster with “hooves” taking her

daughter from her

Doris also despises Clarissa for her bourgeois ways and means

Septimus decides to escape and he jumps out the window causing his death

Clarissa’s party is underway with several ghosts from her past including Peter

Walsh and Sally Seyton

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Richard has still not been able to tell Clarissa that he loves her

Lady Bradshaw and Sir William came late to the party and apologetically explains

that it was because Septimus committed suicide and he was the patient of Sir

William.

The party ends with Clarissa surprisingly disappointed at the success of her party

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 Stream Of Consciousness in Literature

 A style of narration meant to mimic the flow of human thoughts

Stream of Consciousness addresses the character’s self, inside of the character’s
mind with little structure
Different from a Soliloquy which addresses the audience or an absent third
person
Used mostly in fiction instead of drama or poetry
Lacks punctuation and grammatical structure
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 Stream of Consciousness Versus Interior Monologue

• Interior Monologue performs the functions of Stream of Consciousness in a more

organized way
• Interior Monologue is a more structured way. It maintains proper punctuation and
grammatical structure
• Interior speech in someone’s brain

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 THEMES
1) Society and Class: We see in Mrs Dalloway how deeply aware
the characters are of their social class. Those in the upper class
cherish their family history and often come from royalty or
aristocracy; for those in the lower class, it is very difficult to
move up in the world. Most of Clarissa’s friends are of the same
social status or higher –the prime minister even comes to her
party! On the other hand, people like Ellie Henderson and Miss
Kilman are loathsome to Clarissa in part because they’re beneath
her socially.
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2) Time: The creative use of time in Mrs Dalloway is amazing and means that
you have to read closely as every moment counts. Characters will flash back in the
past, recall and elaborate stories while in the present time only a few minutes have
passed. This is poignant for Clarissa whose preoccupation with time relates to her
fear of death. She is deeply aware that as time passes, she gets closer to death.

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3)Isolation: Mrs Dalloway feels isolated in some way. The characters are bound by
tradition, class, history, love of empire, or survival of trauma, they feel very alone
in the world. Woolf uses metaphors of thread and fish swimming in water to
indicate how loose the connections between people are. People see each other as
objects .They think about others but don’t communicate with them – even though
they’re desperate to. Characters seem to lack the right language to have meaningful
exchanges. Clarissa's husband, who loves her very much, finds himself incapable
of even saying "I love you," and must use flowers to send the message. Clarissa’s
parties aim to bring people together but really become gatherings of a bunch of
isolated individuals. The isolation that people feel throughout Mrs Dalloway brings
with it deep feelings of fear that the entire world is against them. In the end,
Clarissa feels more of a connection to Septimus and the old lady across the way
than to anyone else.

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4) Warfare: No actual warfare takes place. All we see is the aftermath – the
trauma and the shell-shock, the ripples of damage to those who survived. The war
had been over for five years when Mrs Dalloway takes place, and yet everyone is
still deeply impacted by it. Septimus is the most damaged, since he fought in the
trenches and lost his good friend and officer, Evans. He represents what happened
to these young men who fought for the queen and for abstract ideas of duty.
Septimus’ shell-shock is a shameful expression of how soldiers can become
damaged from warfare and return as madmen instead of heroes.

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5) Suffering: Suffering takes many forms in Mrs Dalloway. People may be
physically ill with vague but debilitating problems, or be deeply, emotionally
damaged, or somewhere between. Almost everyone in the novel is suffering,
everyone feels that they're in it on their own. Miss Kilman suffers partly by choice
and as a political expression, making martyrdom part of her personality. Peter
suffers above all from the past, from the fact that Clarissa never loved him and the
reality that he has made bad choices with women and in his career. Septimus
ultimately kills himself to end his mad suffering.

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6) Repression: Mrs Dalloway is filled with repression. Our title character,
Clarissa, is constantly holding in emotion so she can conform to English social
standards. What she feels on the inside and what she projects to the outside world
are very different. Inside, she has deep feelings of anxiety and a big fear of death.
Woolf suggests that British society expects and almost demands that people repress
emotion, so that someone like Septimus must hold in his madness because it
wouldn’t reflect well upon society to have a soldier act in an unmanly way. British
society places great pressure on the soldiers to behave like heroes. Sexual
repression is also a huge issue in this novel, Clarissa must repress her sexual
feelings toward Sally.

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• 7) Memory and the Past: Clarissa’s party stirs up memories for many of the characters,
and memories are constantly woven into the present-day thoughts of the characters. The
past affects each character differently in Mrs Dalloway:
• Certain memories are very keen (and much happier) for Clarissa, such as getting a kiss
from Sally Seton. She cherishes these moments as the best of her life.
• For Peter, the past is mostly just painful: he still can’t get over his love for Clarissa and
so he constantly returns to the summers at Bourton in order to make sense of what
happened.
• For Septimus, memories are haunting and painful. He continues to hallucinate that he’s
seeing Evans get killed and memories of the war dominate his mind. Though he
struggles to see beauty, the present is constantly interrupted by gruesome visions of the
past.

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8) Madness: Septimus has been driven mad by the violence and death of combat,
many characters deny the very possibility of madness. Dr Holmes in particular
thinks that Septimus is just "in a funk," and that gaining some weight and
distracting himself will be the perfect cure. Septimus’ visions are also a source of
anxiety for his wife, who feels like she has to hide him from the prying eyes of the
public, Woolf suggests that war can cause profound psychological effects –
something society at her time was not prepared to accept because shell-shock
didn’t conform with "right" British behaviour. In Woolf’s day, people were still
trying to understand the psychological effects of World War I

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 Virginia Woolf wanted her work:
• To reflect life
Purposeful • Authenticity
• Mirroring the universal human experience
Innovation • How people saw the world
• Literature had to change because
literature is human experience

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 Suicide in Mrs Dalloway
Announcing Septimus' death in the
middle of the party is when things
start to turn around. Clarissa soon
sees the beauty of the sacrifice
that Septimus has made with his
suicide. Rather than feel pity, she’s Woolf ends by emphasizing the
heartened: Shakespeare's words idea of Clarissa and Septimus as
"Fear no more the heat of the sun" doubles. The reflection of both
(from Cymbeline), return to her. characters.
These words connect Clarissa and
Septimus, and suggest an end to
fearing death, something that has
haunted Clarissa throughout the
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story.
• "But what an extraordinary night! She felt somehow very like him – the young
man who had killed himself. She felt glad that he had done it; thrown it away."

• Septimus' suicide has allowed Clarissa to see the beauty of life-his death means
her rebirth. To emphasize this rebirth, Woolf has the woman across the way
finally acknowledge Mrs Dalloway, She has finally made a connection. After
these great revelations, Clarissa returns to the party. Quite simply, she delights
Peter with her return. He no longer denies the deepness of his feeling for her and
her presence changes the moment. A surprisingly optimistic ending indeed.

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 Style of writing
• COMPLEX AND PSYCHOLOGICAL
• In one sentence, we can encounter multiple ideas and multiple tones.
• Woolf was very concerned with the subjective reality, that is, what reality looks
like from any one person’s point of view. So what and how, each character thinks
is very different
• We also have present-day observations and stream of consciousness mixed in
with memories and visions. All of this makes for one big style mash-up.
• Woolf wanted to convey what people said and what they didn’t say. For this
reason, she includes a few different types of speech for us.
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• Woolf utilized a method of writing that portrays the story as web-like. All of
these characters are connected in some way, either through physical
confrontation, their past, or through their memories. Because the characters' point
of views are mostly thoughts and memories and because they are constantly
shifting, the past and present frequently overlaps. As a result, these characters get
entwined in each other's lives either in their former lives or their present ones

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 THANK YOU

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