Title: Mrs. Dalloway

Author: Virginia Woolf  

Genre: Classic

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt  

Format: Paperback  

Pages: 194

Rating: 4/5 stars

Synopsis (Goodreads):

Mrs. Dalloway is a novel by Virginia Woolf that details a day in the life of Clarissa Dalloway, a fictional high-society woman in post-World War I England. It is one of Woolf’s best-known novels.

Created from two short stories, “Mrs Dalloway in Bond Street” and the unfinished “The Prime Minister,” the novel addresses Clarissa’s preparations for a party she will host that evening. With an interior perspective, the story travels forwards and back in time and in and out of the characters’ minds to construct an image of Clarissa’s life and of the inter-war social structure. In October 2005, Mrs. Dalloway was included on TIME magazine’s list of the 100 best English-language novels written since 1923.

Review:

Mrs. Dalloway takes you into the lives of the people who survived the Great War. Taking place in 1923, some are trying to carry on like nothing happened, while others are stuck with the horrors they experienced.

Clarissa Dalloway is a character that you enjoy analyzing. She grew up in high society life, and now that she is married with an older child, she is still running in high society. The book follows a day in her life as she is preparing for a party she is hosting that night. She goes out to get the flowers, which is considered appalling since she has servants to do this. She then meets up with her old friend, Peter Walsh, who just came back from India. He has always been in love with Clarissa, and cannot seem to get her off his mind.

Clarissa’s relationship with her husband is an interesting one; sort of typical for a marriage that was made for status, not love. While Richard Dalloway seems to love Clarissa, we get the feeling that she does not share the same love towards Richard. He brings her home flowers, and her response was not what he was hoping for. He could also not bring himself to tell her he loved her, although he really wanted to.

The most interesting character in the book, in my opinion, was Septimus Warren Smith, who is suffering from shell shock. During the war, he met an Italian girl and married her and brought her back to England, but he could not get over the death of his friend, Evans. He mentioned that he wants to commit suicide, which sends his wife into a frenzy. We follow him throughout the day in the same way we follow Clarissa, although his day is quite drastically different. He wants to be happy, and he wants to make his wife happy, but he cannot move past the sadness that sits on his chest when thinking about the war and the men lost.

This is a great post-war tale, written as a contemporary for the time period, and I would definitely recommend. Woolf paints a beautiful picture of post-war England, and develops the characters well that, even though it’s a short book, you feel very attached by the end.

Happy Reading!