Virginia Woolf/Mrs. Dalloway

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Virginia Woolf/Mrs. Dalloway

1readerbabe1984
Août 10, 2009, 8:49 am

Not that many years ago I watched the movie The Hours and was moved to try some Wirginia Woolf. I had never read any of her works. I just randomly picked up Mrs. Dalloway as it was the novel discussed in the movie. I found it absolutely terrible. I cannot believe she went on for pages and pages of the imagrey of one little scene. I have to admit I'm someone that is more into plot than imagery. Should I give her other books a try or are they all like that?

2PhaedraB
Août 10, 2009, 11:04 am

I remember enjoying A Room of One's Own (which is still relevant for any artist), but I did read it during during the seventies during my most political feminist years. No opinion on the novels.

3inkspot
Août 11, 2009, 7:37 am

I haven't read very much Woolf, but from what I know about her, her writing isn't really about plot. She experiments with stream-of-consciousness and looks very closely at imagery and the psychologies and emotions of her characters.

In Jeanette Winterson's book Art Objects Winterson discusses the attempts of Woolf and other modernist writers to reawaken language, in a time when novels were largely about entertainment, not writing.

So if you're just looking for an exciting story, you aren't going to get one. Woolf's writing is the kind of thing you should read carefully and closely, and the way she uses language and studies her characters is amazing.

But yeah, it's not all that palatable, and it takes patience. I suggest you give her another try, but that you change your approach. One thing I found inspiring in Art Objects was when Winterson said how some writers put so much thought and effort into their work, and offer us such incredible insights into ideas and feelings, that it doesn't seem so much to ask of us to put in a fraction of the effort spent by the writer into appreciating their work.

4Sandydog1
Juil 10, 2014, 11:02 pm

Any time I think about re-reading Mrs.Dalloway, I stick a pencil in my eye and then, maybe, pick up Orlando.

5LucindaLibri
Oct 10, 2014, 5:46 pm

Where to begin? Stream of consciousness and exploring the details of a single day really are the main points of Mrs. Dalloway . . . so I agree with >3 inkspot: inkspot . . . if you can't bear the details . . .

Actually, to me the most interesting storyline in the book is that of the WWI vet with shell-shock, Septimus Warren Smith.

For me, the key to Woolf is to focus on the details and the picture(s) they paint . . . Of course there's the language itself, which is often beautiful.

And I don't usually suggest this, but you could also try watching the movie of Mrs. Dalloway (1997 with Vanessa Redgrave and Michael Kitchen) and then try to read the book again . . . Roger Ebert's review began this way: "In many lives there is a crossroads. We make our choice, and follow it down to the present moment. Still inside of us is that other person, who stands forever poised at the head of the path not chosen. "Mrs. Dalloway" is about a day's communion between the woman who exists, and the other woman who might have existed instead." http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/mrs-dalloway-1998

(And yes, this is also what The Hours was about.)

All that said, Virginia Woolf is an acquired taste . . . Most of us read her in college, but had no idea what it was really about until much later . . . (Now I'm thinking about the Indigo Girls' song Virginia Woolf and Emily's spoken intro to it on 1200 Curfews . . .) . . .

6anthonywillard
Oct 26, 2014, 9:51 am

I found Jacob's Room much more approachable and involving than the later ones. But it is still a modernist novel. It does have a recognizable story line that goes on for a number of years, so it's not all the same day or two. It's an affecting story of the growth and maturation of a young man seen through the eyes of the women in his life.

Interestingly, Clarissa Dalloway appears as a character in Woolf's first novel, The Voyage Out, which is a more traditional novel.

7asurbanipal
Sep 5, 2021, 5:19 am

Beautiful language, for connoisseurs. The place and time are also interesting - London shortly after WW1. Many men died (like in the movie "Chariots of Fire"). London is presented in such an oneiric way, like a large park.

8librorumamans
Modifié : Sep 6, 2021, 9:57 am

>3 inkspot: Winterson said how some writers put so much thought and effort into their work, and offer us such incredible insights into ideas and feelings, that it doesn't seem so much to ask of us to put in a fraction of the effort spent by the writer into appreciating their work.

Winterson seems to be channelling James Joyce, who remarked that he had needed seven years to write Ulysses(?) and he saw no reason why anyone else should expect to spend less time reading it.

Woolf intensely disliked Ulysses (1922) and wrote Mrs Dalloway (1925) as a response.

Because both works are artistic responses to Einstein's two theories of relativity, they are centrally concerned with the nature of time in a way analogous to the Cubists' deconstruction of space and time a few decades earlier.