Banned Books Club discussion

What do you think of Clarissa Dalloway so far?

I just got my copy of Mrs. Dalloway last night. I went to Borders, because everything is on sale now that they're closing. Unfortunately, they did not have a copy of The Hours so I'll have to get it somewhere else. BUT, I was going to read Mrs. Dalloway first anyway.

I started reading it last night, but it was late by the time I got home and I've just been so exhausted, so I only read a few pages before my eyes started closing on me. So it's too soon for me to make any decision on what I think of Mrs. Dalloway.

I agree with Satia -- most female characters pale in comparison to Eliza Bennett, but it will be interesting to find out what Clasissa Dalloway is like.

I hope I can keep my eyes open long enough to read tonight!!!

I've strated yesterday to read it. I can not quite say "reread it", since it is first time when I read it in English (and, belive me, it is not very easy :)and after so, so many years from the first reading(almost 20). But I am already charmed by the subtle and ironic style and I can enjoy more the text, knowing who is talking when (Clarissa as narator or Clarissa as character), who are Richard, Peter, Lucy, Scrope Purivis and so on...

As first comment, I can remark the proustian approach. Clarissa is recovering the past, not in front of a Madelaine, but on the London streets,in a Midsommer day, mid in her life!

I'm on page 30 of Mrs. Dalloway. The writing is amazing. I love it, but it's also SO DIFFERENT from anything else I've ever read!!!

I'm in "deadline hell" with my work, so I can't post very much for the next few days, but I highlighted some things from the first 30 pages that I wanted to share (and question) here. I had to read the first 22 pages TWICE before I could move on. There were so many "subject changes" that I was confused, but now that I'm getting used to this style, I'm really enjoying it.

Is this considered "stream of consciousness"??? Because if this style is not stream of consciousness, I don't know what it would be described as!!!?????

Since this is my first Virginia Woolf, I was very curious whether this is her usual writing style. After the first 5 pages I was going around asking anyone around me: "have you read Virginia Woolf? Did she usually write like this?" Hahahaha!

Clarissa at this point (I'm on page 48) seems blurry and not very defined to me, perhaps it's because her internal struggle of who she is? Is she Mrs. Dalloway? Clarissa the girl? Is there a Clarissa the woman who never married?

Does everyone else feel differently?

The scenes surrounding her flower errand in the morning I thought was amazingly created. Yes I agree with Barbara, there are so many "subject changes", but just as a busy city area would be if one's sitting there just people watching, all the different dramas, activities, and actions all gathered in one moment, confusing yes, but also filled with life!

The fact that she used "poor people" twice bothered me.

Serena wrote: "Clarissa at this point (I'm on page 48) seems blurry and not very defined to me, perhaps it's because her internal struggle of who she is? Is she Mrs. Dalloway? Clarissa the girl? Is there a Clarissa the woman who never married?

Does everyone else feel differently?"

Yes indeed, Clarissa, as she is talking about herself, is not very defined. Rather, very vaguely defined. She is in between two ages. She is, in the same time, a married woman and a perfect hostess, but also the image of the young and frivol lady. Her portrait (quite misogynistic) is later developed by Peter Walsh, before and after his anamnestic sleep in Regent Park.

The motif of middle is predominant. Characters are, as I said, in the middle of their lives; it is a Wednesday (middle of week), middle of June, middle of year, middle of the day. It's "twelve o'clock, twelve by Big Ben", time of danger for mortals!

I am in the middle of the book (yes :)) and I can remark that sexual references are less and less allusive. Sex, however, is in women’s mind. Men, for usually, are touched by a Shakespearean mood, dispensing, like Septimius, the traditional sex between men and women.

Hmm... Thanks Anda. I think I need to slow down my reading. I did get the sense of straddling and not belong to either side, but didn't really clearly get the middle motif... :)

I'm really enjoying reading this book, but it's definitely a slow read for me. I'm only up to page 60!!

I know very little about Septimius at this point, but I'm assuming he will make more appearances based on the fact that he has a thread all to himself here in the group (along with Clarissa and Peter.)

Last night I really started getting to know Peter's character.

As of page 60, I really just know Clarissa and Peter. I think Virginia Woolf did a fantastic job with this book, because she's showing us the "real" and the "dark" side of human beings. Both Peter and Clarissa think about death, illness, failure, etc. I believe that when Clarissa is "thinking" or "talking" about how she loves walking through London in the morning, she is actually just "trying" to think and talk of how happy she is, just to cover up the pain she is actually feeling. (and again, I'm only on page 60, so this is all just a guess.)

And I think the "pain" she's feeling is over the fact that now she's 52 years old and in some way she may think her life is over and she made the wrong choices. (Twice, in the early part of the book, she mentions that someone had complimented her by saying she is still just like an 18 year old girl -- something like that.) I think she wants to be young again and maybe change some of the choices she's made.

Same with Peter.

I have finished the book yesterday and I just can repeat what I wrote in my 5 stars review!

It is a WONDERFUL book! It is round, deep, fresh, sophisticated, daring, tragedy and comedy, has wit and humour…it’s mesmerizing. Reading "Mrs. Dalloway" is like looking at a Picasso’s portrait, with its many surfaces (un)matching within an imagine that is far away from perfection, from the Divine Proportion. But if you come closer and look attentive at each detail, shadow, and perspective, you are overwhelmed by the beauty of all meaning. Mrs. Dalloway and her own nemesis, Septimius Warren Smith, are actually the human being in all its depth. In its splendour and futility, its happiness and fears, its hopes and disappointments, in its struggle with the transient condition of the mortal soul.

The style is splendid. It has the madness and sweetness of a dream; it is equivocal, but perfectly balanced. The passage between voices, memories, images, and moments is magnificently pointed by the hours, by the almighty sounds of the Big Ben. Everything has middle, and what is next is only the reflection of the past. The symbols and metaphors are subtly used and the references to Shakespeare and Ulysses are smartly placed in the text. Nothing is too obvious or too explicit.

But beside all the ambiguous and contradictory characters, we also have London, the imperial town hit by the hot wave of midsummer. We have its streets and squares, its houses with their opened windows. It is a sensorial abundance of views, sounds, colours, smells. London is vivid and alive despite the disillusionment with what once upon a time was The British Empire, and with… life.

Next week, I will try to make some note in the Reading guide, as well. I think the questions from this guide are very relevant for the better understanding of this masterwork!

Anda, I'm so glad that you loved it so much. Now I really can't wait to finish it!! I don't know why it's taking me so long. (I've realized that I don't think my "slowness" in reading this has as much to do with the book as it does with the fact that I've been working so many hours and I'm just exhausted by the time I get home. Last night my eyes started closing after just two pages!!!!)

Satia, thank you for the "heads-up" on paying attention to the use of flowers in this novel. I've been highlighting certain points that I'm either confused about, or that I want to remember, so I'm thinking of using a different color highlighter and highlighting (maybe in pink) all of the mentions of flowers.

I'm going to try to speed up my reading of this great novel!!!

Barbara, I think you just have to take your time with Mrs. Dalloway :) It needs a lot of attention and fresh mind to read it (at least for me, who I had many times to reread some sentences or entire paragraphs). And I perfectly understand your “lack of speed” after a full working day :) For me, it took also a while to get use with “another kind” of English. English is not my first language, and I found a little bit occurred her use of “for” or those many inversions that emphasize the text!

Like Satia, I also remarked the abundance of flowers, always connected with feelings and with the way in which these feelings are expressed. Not once, flowers are even replacing words (see the case of Richard or Lady Bruton and her way of behaving with flowers). Unfortunately, my botanic knowledge is very limited and I can not go deeper into the subject, but I am pretty sure that there should be connections between a certain flower (as carnation, for instance) and its meaning and significance in the text.

After some thougths, I found Mrs. Kilman (what a name :)) the most disturbing character. She is quite grotesque!! Does anyone find the same?

Satia, I read both your reviews and I agree, it is this kind of book that should periodically be reread; at least once on year :)

Mrs Dalloway is undoubtedly the most outstanding character. She is composed by all the other characters’ perspectives, a significant contribution having Peter Walsh. What is quite contradictory is that, at the surface, she looks to be very “unsubstantial”: a middle aged lady, with fluffy preoccupations, selfish, unable of deep thoughts or feelings. But she is the centre; all the others are spinning around her, physically or psychologically. And what is most important is that she (and of course, her nemesis, Septimius) have realized the futility of the life, the loneliness of the human being. The scene with Clarissa watching her old neighbor woman through the window, in the middle of her exquisite party, is rather dramatic. She comprehends the emptiness of life, but though she loves it and she is happy that was not she the one who died!

Well, I finally finished Mrs. Dalloway!!! I can't believe it took me almost two weeks to read it, but I think it just took a long time because I've been working such crazy hours and by the time I get home and relax with my book, it's so late that I barely could get through 10 or 15 pages!!

I really loved this book so much. Now I want to read more Virginia Woolf!! (I think I've read To the Lighthouse quite a while ago, but I may have not finished it for some reason or another.)

I'm going to put my thoughts into a spoiler (if I can actually get the "spoiler feature" to work. I think I'm the last one to finish the book, but just in case there are more reading it, I don't want to ruin it for anyone.

(view spoiler)[ I thought the writing was absolutely magnificent. Just so beautiful. As far as the story, I really loved the movement from one character to another, and from one person's inner thoughts to another. I really didn't like many of the characters (more on that later) but even if I didn't like them, I still cared enough to find out what they would do or think or say next.

However, although I loved the writing style, I was a bit disappointed with the last few lines of the book. I don't know, I just felt that the last few lines could have been stronger in some way. Or maybe I was waiting for something more to happen in the end, or for something to be said, but Peter asks himself "What is it that fills me with extraordinary excitement?" and then... "It is Clarissa, he said. For there she was."

I guess this was just a bit of a let-down for me, because I already knew (throughout the entire book I knew) that Clarissa filled Peter with extraordinary excitement. I'm not sure how I would have liked it to end, but I was definitely expecting a bit more.

As far as the characters, I think my favorites were Rezia and Septimus Warren Smith. I really was so sad when he killed himself, because the two of them were SO HAPPY, FINALLY, for a short period of time before he killed himself. For the sake of the novel, I am glad that there was a suicide (I think this really had to happen in this story) but when the two of them were laughing and happy together it was just so lovely. I just found them to be so vulnerable and real, and especially Septimus -- he was a person in so much emotional pain, but unlike Clarissa and Peter and some of the others, his pain was due to the death of his friend in the war, and due to the way he felt that humanity and life in general was just not right. I think Septimus really cared about others, unlike many of the other characters.

As far as the suicide and the theme of death and the soul throughout the novel, I'm wondering if Virginia Woolf had some sort of an obsession with death and suicide when she was writing this, because she did take her own life around 16 years later (I believe it was 16 years later.) But her words about death and the soul were just so beautiful. I need to go through the book and add some of my favorite quotes to our "quote section" here.

As far as Clarissa? Well, I just didn't like her. She was a snob, and she didn't seem to care about anyone but herself. I didn't like her, but I loved reading about her, which is absolute proof that Virginia Woolf is such a magnificent artist. I was absorbed with every single thing Clarissa did and thought, even though I did not like her. Actually, I was absorbed with every word, every line, every paragraph in this book.

I'm sure I have more to say, so I'm sure I'll be back with more thoughts. (hide spoiler)]

YAY!!! I finally figured out how to create a spoiler!!! Thanks Satia, for going through all the steps for me in your message a while back!! I guess I finally "got it."