It’s been years – no, decades – since I read any Virginia Woolf. And I’d be hard pushed to say what of hers I’ve read, apart from A Room of One’s Own (and when it’s so long ago, I’m not sure it counts).
Anyway, Mrs. Dalloway was in the reading stack and seemed like a decent starting point for Novella November.
People have written theses about what is considered to be Woolf’s greatest novel, so there’s little that I can add. Nevertheless, some brief thoughts.
I found the stream-of-consciousness narrative to be at times mesmerising, and at times tiring and circuitous. The descriptions – of the simplest things such as the passing of time, the curl of cigar smoke, the tilt of a horse’s head – are nothing short of exquisite, and the story emerges from this lush staging.
And everywhere, though it was still so early, there was a beating, a stirring of galloping ponies, tapping of cricket bats; Lords, Ascot, Ranalagh and all the rest of it; wrapped in the soft mesh of the grey-blue morning air, which, as the day wore on, would unwind them…
But what struck me most about the story was how sad and alone each character was – trapped by their place in society, by love or the lack of it, by past trauma – such a lonely, lonely book.
Their marriage was over, he thought, with agony, with relief.
If I thought hard about these characters, Plato’s cave allegory popped to mind, and how we’re trapped by convention… but truly, I didn’t spend much time thinking hard!
She felt very young; at the same time unspeakably aged. She sliced like a knife through everything; at the same time was outside, looking on. She had a perpetual sense, as she watched the taxi cabs, of being out, out, far out to sea and alone; she always had the feeling that it was very, very dangerous to live even one day.
3/5 Persistence paid off (the ending was satisfying).
Bond Street fascinated her; Bond Street early in the morning in the season, its flags flying; its shops; no splash; no glitter; one roll of tweed in the shop where her father had bought his suits for fifty years; a few pearls; salmon on an ice-block.
I love salmon and will eat it however it’s served (but especially love smoked salmon blinis).
