Jesse’s Reviews > The Voyage Out > Status Update
Jesse
is on page 200 of 381
this section covers the other part of the dance and its aftermath, with Hewet and Rachel obviously in the process of falling in love, and featuring a lovely romantic passage where Hewet returns the favor of the women spying on him, going to the Ambrose villa, and hearing and seeing Helen and Rachel talk, and while he is fond of Helen it is Rachel who he is focused on.
— Jun 23, 2026 09:39AM
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Jesse
is on page 150 of 381
this span covers the two main young men of the piece, Hewet and Hirst, arranging first an expedition to the top of a local mountain for a picnic and then a dance to celebrate the engagement of two of the visiting English. I’m stoked to see how the self-styled intellectual young men perceive Helen and Rachel but Woolf is playing it naturally as they interact more with the hotel patrons they are familiar with.
— Jun 22, 2026 08:27AM
Jesse
is on page 100 of 381
what’s beautiful here: Rachel, never having conversated with men before, is enthralled by Mr. Dalloway, and at one point he impulsively kisses her. Woolf’s description of Rachel’s feelings—so intense that they’re painful, trying to steady her nerves, thoroughly having enjoyed the kiss but still terrified at the universe of gender relations that has opened before her, and her aunt Helen shepherding her.
— Jun 11, 2026 02:04PM
Jesse
is on page 50 of 381
Woolf delivers one of the main points of the novel early on in a beautiful passage that describes the ship as a character, alone but free, as a metaphor for Rachel’s imminent metamorphosis. I am enjoying how each of the characters on the boat seems fully-envisioned, including the Dalloways, who have just stepped aboard. I am aware that the Missus will be followed up on in her own novel of mental dissolution.
— Jun 01, 2026 01:37PM
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Jun 23, 2026 09:42AM
a big part of this book involves portraying women from a very broad set of circumstances, all of them differing from Rachel’s current situation, but having the compassion not to condemn anyone because, as Hewet states, they’re just people, they are adjusted to and satisfied with their way of life, though they may judge others.
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There is a great dialogue between Hewett and Evelyn Murgatroyd as she is trying to manipulate him into betraying some sort of confidence, probably trying to get him to confess having feelings for her, and he plainly does not. “Why is it that relations between different people were so unsatisfactory, so fragmentary, so hazardous, and words so dangerous that the instinct to sympathise with another human being was an instinct to be examined carefully and probably crushed? What had Evelyn really wished to say to him? What was she feeling left alone in the empty hall? The mystery of life and the unreality even if one’s own sensations overcame him as he walked down the corridor which led to his room.
We can also see that Hirst has his own difficulties in connecting with people, and that he tends to stampede toward assuming that most people and especially women are simple, but Helen finds his intellect interesting, he’s just too uptight.
The description of what Rachel feels when Hewet and Hirst come to call is perfect—“Rachel’s heart beat hard. She was conscious of an extraordinary intensity in everything, as though their presence stripped some cover off the surface of things…”
