Virginia Woolf’s Mrs.
Dalloway, published in 1925, was a bestseller both in Britain and the
United States despite its rejection of typical novelistic style.
The action of Mrs. Dalloway takes place during a single day in June 1923 in
London, England. This unusual organizational strategy creates a special problem
for the novelist, that is to say how to create characters deep enough to
be realistic while treating only one day in their lives. Virginia Woolf solved
this problem with what she called a “tunneling” technique, referring to the way
her characters remember their pasts. In experiencing these characters’
recollections, readers derive for themselves a sense of background and history
to characters that, otherwise, a narrator would have had to provide.
In a sense, Mrs.
Dalloway is a novel without a plot. Instead of creating major situations
between characters to push the story forward, Virginia Woolf moved her
narrative by following the passing hours of a day. The book is composed of
movements from one character to another, or of movements from the internal
thoughts of one character to the internal thoughts of another.
Mrs. Dalloway depicts people
walking about a city. The book makes the city, its parks, and its streets
as interesting as the characters who inhabit them.
Clarissa
Dalloway’s party, which is the culminating event of the book, ties the
narrative together by gathering the group of friends Clarissa thinks about
throughout her day. It also concludes the secondary story of the book, the
story of Septimus Warren Smith, by having Dr. Bradshaw arrive at the party and
reveal that one of his patients committed suicide that day.
The book’s major
themes are sanity and insanity, isolation and community, or the
possibilities and limits of communicativeness, as evidenced by Clarissa’s
permanent sense of being alone and by her social skills, which bring people
together at her parties.
Here you can download a PDF Presentation.
I think it is well worth watching Mrs Dalloway, the 1997 British drama film starring Vanessa
Redgrave in the title role, as it is a superb adaptation of the novel by Virginia
Woolf
As Clarissa Dalloway
prepares to host a sumptuous party, her mind wanders back to a summer in her
youth, when she was courted by an eager young man - a young man
whose much older self will come to the party she's preparing. Mrs.
Dalloway moves fluidly between the past and the present, exploring the
shifts in perspective and understanding with an unsentimental but graceful eye.
What's most impressive is the remarkable interplay between the younger and
older actors, who seem to be different versions of the same character.
Beautifully directed by Dutch filmmaker Marleen Gorris, the movie
also features Rupert Graves as a shell-shocked soldier who crosses Clarissa's
path.
4 comments:
I love literature.... and I love your blog!
Congratulations! :-)
Thank you, Esther! I am so pleased that you love my blog!
Hi teacher! I'm studying ''Mrs Dalloway'' for an oral exam at university! You always help me with your blog. Thank you!!
Your old student, Luciana!
Hello, Luciana! You are always welcome to my blog! Good luck with your exam!
Your old English teacher! =)
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