Mrs. Dalloway

The pleasure of rereading any (great) novel is that one should get something new from it on each occasion. This was undoubtedly the case with Mrs. Dalloway. I had long contended (to Julie/Nik) that it was one of the most important novels of the 20th century, but a recent piece in The Atlantic (8/10/21) asserted that Mrs. Dalloway continues to have major relevance almost 100 years on from initial publication, and especially in the context of the era of both social media and the pandemic. A major preoccupation of both Clarissa Dalloway and Virginia Woolf is the lingering ubiquity of death and the transience of life (the moment) as demarcated by time. Modernism was a partial response to the change wrought by the Great War; a time for renewal where technology helped push the world forward (think the leitmotif of the aeroplane in the novel). Both Clarissa and Peter Walsh describe just having survived the war as a “miracle”. The contemporary echoes should be evident. The other topically interesting dynamic is just how preoccupied all the characters are by “appearance” — how they deport themselves and are perceived; a not dissimilar parallel to “likes” and “shares”; what's “trending”. Clarissa remains an enigma: when is (or was) she truly happy?; should she have married Peter Walsh?; might her life have passed, with her daughter Elizabeth constituting the future? There is much to ponder, as ever. 10/10.

By Virginia Woolf