Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf

Mrs. Dalloway

Virginia Woolf

Published 1925

English Novel

The Well-Educated Mind Novels

⭐⭐⭐

Four days ago, I started the twentieth book on The Well-Educated Mind list: Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf.  After the first ten pages, I stopped, put the book down, and was afraid to go near it; I literally avoided it like a miserable assignment that I hoped would eventually disappear if I just ignored it. 

Then I actually googled: "Do I have to read Mrs. Dalloway?" as if Google had power to pardon me.  Well, I was not pardoned from reading Mrs. Dalloway, as I had childishly imagined, but instead came upon several suggested links, such as one that compared reading Mrs. Dalloway to watching paint dry.  

Frankly, in the opinion of the writer, watching paint dry was more interesting.  In fact, there were numerous remarks across the internet in which readers had admitted they picked up the book, read a few pages, put it down, only to never return to it again.  Unless I found advice quickly, I would join their ranks very soon.

Since I have yet to skip a book in TWEM list, and, after all, I persevered through Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad, I continued searching.  Then I found a post by Sarah Reads Too Much that starts off with"I need help.  Big time."  Like me, and like so many other readers, Sarah was struggling through Mrs. Dalloway.  I read through her post and the comments and found a plethora of useful advice by others who had survived the complete reading and actually appreciated this book.  It was so useful, I even took notes.  Here are some suggestions on how to read Mrs. Dalloway:

1. Keep pushing through;
2. Think of it as a stream of consciousness; "It is not going to make sense because people's thoughts do not make sense; thoughts wander; they get distracted;"
3. Read it like poetry;
4. Don't try to piece together a story; "It is as if we are eavesdropping."
5. Read it aloud.
Furthermore, Sarah posted her final review after finishing Mrs. Dalloway and added her suggestions:
6. Do not focus on details; "Details do not matter;"
7. There is not much of a plot.

Two days ago, I picked up Mrs. Dalloway again, and, with an exception of reading aloud, I applied all of the ideas and suggestions; and do you know what?  Suddenly, reading Mrs. Dalloway is a totally  different experience.  Instead of looking for details, connecting dots, focusing on characters, and trying to figure out the story, I am able to follow more clearly, even if it does not make sense in the normal sense of things making sense. 

While I still have more than three quarters of the book to go, I already recognize the changes in my reading of Mrs. Dalloway and am more aware of my own "stream of consciousness," which, by the way, is quite loud. 

I hope the links and suggestions can help others trying to get through Mrs. Dalloway, as they have helped me.

Yay!  I know I am going to survive this one.  So, yes, I do have to read Mrs. Dalloway.  

I am almost half way through Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf; my daily quota is about fourteen pages a day - it is not broken up into chapters - in order to complete my reading in two weeks.  No matter what I do or where I go, I always bring Mrs. Dalloway and find time to read. 

An interesting tidbit about this novel is that it is not like any other reading experience I have had from TWEM.  I can be in a highly distractible environment, such as sitting on my front porch while the kids ride their wiggle cars full speed down the driveway toward the street, forcing me to stop reading and look up in horror each time they need to turn toward the sidewalk away from the street, and yet I never loose my mental place in the story as I would with, say, Crime and Punishment or Anna Karenina, which required studious concentration.  That's because there really is no story in Mrs. Dalloway.  

Since Virginia Woolf spends a lot of time on the inner voice of the characters, I have been paying close attention to my own.  This is what I have discovered: The voices in Mrs. Dalloway are highly believable and demonstrate how scattered we are in our thought processes.  Our minds are full of memories of the past set off by triggers in the present.  We connect everything.  We often privately critique the actions and behaviors of others, don't we?  And I bet we do think in an over abundance of semicolons.  So I have been made more aware of my own inner voice and, as I have said before, it is loud, even while I read.  It is also always on and never shuts up, which sometimes can be extremely intrusive. 

Whatever the case, I am persevering through Mrs. Dalloway, and I am grateful that I found some help to do so because it is my intent to read every book on TWEM list, even if it is difficult.

How about you?  Have you gleaned anything new from reading Mrs. Dalloway?

Well, I think I know what I am going to do tonight.  I have been terribly bored these past ten days because my husband has been out of town, literally out of the country, on business, and there are still many more days to suffer through his absence.  When my children go to bed at night, I often wish I had a good movie to kill the time; but not much interests me because I am not much of a movie person.  And reading Mrs. Dalloway is not exactly my idea of entertainment and does not suffice to take up my evening hours, although it may help me sleep better.        

However, I think I am going to finish Mrs. Dalloway today, and if that is the case, I am going to rent "The Hours."  See, it says right here on my cover in the little gray circle that Mrs. Dalloway, the novel, inspired "The Hours," the movie.  It actually seems interesting to me, and I am curious.  Plus, Meryl Streep is my favorite actress, if I have to choose one.  

I have included the synopsis from Rotten Tomatoes, where it gets a low 80s rating:   

Three women, separated by a span of nearly 80 years, find themselves weathering similar crises, all linked by a single work of literature in this film adaptation of the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Michael Cunningham. 

In 1923, Virginia Woolf (Nicole Kidman) is attempting to start work on her novel Mrs. Dalloway, in which she chronicles one day in the life of a troubled woman. But Virginia has demons of her own, and she struggles to overcome the depression and suicidal impulses that have followed her throughout her life, as her husband Leonard (Stephen Dillane) ineffectually tries to help. 

In 1951, Laura Brown (Julianne Moore) is a housewife living in suburban Los Angeles, where she looks after her son Richie (Jack Rovello) and husband Dan (John C. Reilly). Laura is also an avid reader who is currently making her way through Mrs. Dalloway. The farther she gets into the novel, the more Laura discovers that it reflects a dissatisfaction she feels in her own life, and she finds herself pondering the notion of leaving her life behind. 

Finally, in 2000, Clarissa Vaughn (Meryl Streep) is a literary editor who is caring for Richard Brown (Ed Harris), a former boyfriend and noted author, who is slowly losing his fight with AIDS. Clarissa is trying to arrange a party to celebrate the fact that Richard has won a prestigious literary award, but is getting little help from Richard's ex-lover, Louis (Jeff Daniels). As she labors to help Richard through another day, he wonders if his life is worth the unending struggle. 

The Hours also features Toni Collette, Miranda Richardson, Allison Janney, and Claire Danes. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

Thursday, June 27, 2013

An Incomplete for Mrs. Dalloway; Extra Credit for The Hours

Now that Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf is done, I am supposed to answer the questions from The Well-Educated Mind; but in all honesty, I am a little distracted here at home and just grateful to have completed the book. 

It was not an interesting read for me, and it will not be on my "to re-read" list any time soon.  I think Mrs. Dalloway is one of those books I would have to read again and maybe a third time in order to get a clearer picture, but that is just not going to happen right now.  Once I learned how to approach it, I was able to follow the changes between the characters' thoughts.  Knowing how to read Mrs. Dalloway helped tremendously, and that is all that mattered to me.  But answering these questions is a lot of work, and I am not willing to put in the effort at this time.  I suppose I shall give myself an "incomplete" for skipping the assignment.

If anything, I came away with a feeling of sympathy for the author, Virginia Woolf, because she suffered from emotional depression.  I wonder if all the voices the characters hear in their heads in the novel, Mrs. Dalloway, are similar to personal experiences Virigina Woolf had in real life.  Before I knew very much about her and began reading the novel, I felt like I was on drugs...(I never did drugs, but I imagine that is what it is like)...I'm just saying.

As for "The Hours," I'll say this: It was a curious way to present the particulars of the novel, Mrs. Dalloway, but the characters had some problems and left me with questions.  OK, I'll give myself extra credit for sitting through "The Hours."  A funny thing: yesterday I took the kids to the beach with a friend of mine who is a second cousin of Michael Cunningham, the author of The Hours, the novel.  Small world.

Anyway, I have to take a break now from TWEM list because the next book, The Trial by Franz Kafka, which I ordered two weeks ago via Amazon.com, would have arrived today, except it wasn't The Trial, but instead Buddhism Plain and Simple. ???  Obviously it was the wrong book.  It happens.  So I am working that out with the seller, and in the meanwhile, I had to order a copy from my library.  Plus, my husband is finally coming home from Asia next week after being gone for three long weeks, and I am so excited that I won't care about reading for a good week or so.   

See you when I get back!