Riassunto esame Letteratura inglese, Prof. Ragni Cristiano, libro consigliato La signora Dalloway - con testo a fronte oppure "Mrs Dalloway", Virginia Woolf- a cura di Marisa Sestito. Letteratura Universale Marsilio

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Università degli Studi di Verona English literature and culture 1 Module 2

Mrs Dalloway

The novel of records

“Mrs Dalloway”, published in 1925 by Virginia Woolf , is regarded also as a “novel of records”. But why?

1. It is the only novel which was anticipated in a short story form;

“Mrs. Dalloway in Bond Street” and “The Prime Minister”

1.

2. Most of the characters appear in other works of Virginia Woolf;

1. Clarissa and Richard Dalloway (The Voyage Out)

2. Old Mrs. Hilbery (Night and Day)

Mr. Bowley (Jacob’s Room)

3. Mrs. Durrant and Clara (Jacob’s Room)

4. city of London → the novel gives us an extremely faithful description of the

3. It has a cartographic fidelity to the

capital, which Virginia loved so much;

Virginia Woolf became a celebrity right after the publication of the novel → she also appeared on Vogue

4.

5. It is the only novel which was immediately re-printed and Virginia herself wrote the introduction for the 2nd

edition;

6. It is the most adapted story and was used in new versions and stories until nowadays.

Virginia Woolf: high priestess of Modernism

Virginia Woolf wrote essays and short novels that tell the reason of her being a modernist and the features of the modernist

novels.

 “Modern novels” (1919), “Poetry, Fiction and the Future” (1927)

Essays:

 Short Stories: “The Mark on the Wall” (1917), “Kew Gardens” (1919), and “An Unwritten Novel” (1920)

Features of modernist novels:

The focus on ordinary characters and their lives → there’s no need for sensational events: any day can

1. [high contrast with the narrative coherence of Victorian fiction] → “Mrs Dalloway” in fact, takes

suffice place

in just one day in June, right after the First World war.

«an ordinary mind on an ordinary day, often several minds»

2. The main aim was to give voice to the complex inner world of feeling and memory;

3. The human personality is considered as a continuous shift of impressions and emotions;

 narrator: there’s the disappearance of the omniscient narrator used, for example, by Dickens. We have the thoughts

and impressions of the character in that precise moment. Readers find out new things moment by moment, like

the characters.

 point of view: the point of view shifted inside the characters’ minds through flashbacks, associations of ideas,

momentary impressions presented as a continuous flux. her diary and is known as “tunneling technique”; the

Virginia's way of presenting character is presented by herself in “dig out beautiful caves” and talks also about their

characters acquire their profundity and features because Virginia Woolf

past not immediately but throughout the novels. The feelings and emotions that past reminds are deeply connected with

the characters presented in the present.

– “How

30 August 1923 I dig out beautiful caves behind my characters: I think that gives exactly what I

want; humanity, humor, depth. The idea is that the caves shall connect and each come to daylight at the

present moment.”

Jacob’s room

“Jacob’s Room” is a novel about the death of a young man. Chronologically, Mrs Dalloway takes over where “Jacob’s

Room” left off. In fact, in Mrs. Dalloway Woolf writes about those who survived war [As it is quoted in Mrs Dalloway in

Bond Street “a lot of young men died, so others could survive” ].

“La signora Dalloway” con testo a fronte, a cura di Marisa Sestito. Letteratura

Primary Text:

Universale Marsilio

Clarissa Dalloway. Out of flowers. –

Università degli Studi di Verona English literature and culture 1 Module 2

The beginning of the novel is one of the best in the whole English literature and it’s like a poem in prose. It is more difficult

than the beginning of the short story. The difficulty of the novel is also given by the fact that Virginia used a very Germanic

kind of English but it’s interesting to notice the rhythm and style.

Novel Interpretation

Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself. Clarissa Dalloway had just got out of her house to buy

FLOWERS.

Lucy → she’s probably the maid

For Lucy had her work cut out for her. The doors would be taken off Rumpelmayer's men→ they’re probably coming for some

their hinges; Rumpelmayer's men were coming. And then, thought work at her home.

Clarissa Dalloway, what a morning—fresh as if issued to children on a Clarissa really likes the fresh morning.

beach. Then she makes two exclamations with 2 opposite type of

What a lark! What a plunge! For so it had always seemed to her, when, movements:

with a little squeak of the hinges, which she could hear now, she had What a lark! = che bellezza! ma anche =che tuffo!

burst open the French windows and plunged at Bourton into the open = che “caduta”!

What a plunge!

air. How fresh, how calm, stiller than this of course, the air was in the She is brought back to her past: she remembers when she

early morning; like the flap of a wave; the kiss of a wave; chill and sharp was a girl of eighteen, at Bourton; this morning that she’s

and yet (for a girl of eighteen as she then was) solemn, feeling as she living really feels like the morning she lived in her past,

did, standing there at the open window, that something awful was about before the war, with Peter Walsh.

to happen; looking at the flowers, at the trees with the smoke winding before the war → we know that because there’s a

off them and the rooks rising, falling; standing and looking until Peter reference o the war, given by the words “something awful

Walsh said, "Musing among the vegetables?"—was that it?—"I prefer At that time she was happy, but they

was about to happen”.

men to cauliflowers"—was that it? He must have said it at breakfast one had this strange feeling that something awful (=orribile,

morning when she had gone out on to the terrace—Peter Walsh. He come la guerra) was about to happen.

would be back from India one of these days, June or July, she forgot Peter Walsh → we will discover more about him but what

which, for his letters were awfully dull; it was his sayings one is a pragmatic man; he’s

we already can know is that: he

remembered; his eyes, his pocket-knife, his smile, his grumpiness and, going to come back to London and meet Clarissa because

when millions of things had utterly vanished—how strange it was!—a he lives in India. There’s a peculiar relationship between

few sayings like this about cabbages. Peter and Clarissa.

The written creation of Clarissa’s thoughts and way of thinking is the result of a style, called free indirect style → the free

indirect style, where the discourse is emanated by different points of view in the continuum and the flow is continuous,

without distinctions. It’s easy

«This narrative technique, whose first English practitioner was probably Jane Austen, is called free indirect style.

to see how Mrs. Dalloway’s especially frequent an mobile use of the technique contributed to the novel’s reputation as

nebulous. Free indirect style imagines discourse as emanating not from a single point (a character, a narrator) but from

perspectivalism of “point of view”

shifting points along the continuum between the two; it may even reject the Cartesian

altogether, replacing it with a charged and wavering field, a probabilistic cloud of perception» [Saint-amour 2016]

Novel Interpretation

She stiffened a little on the kerb, waiting for Durtnall's van to pass. A Here, as in the short story, we are given a description of

charming woman, Scrope Purvis thought her (knowing her as one does Mrs Dalloway from the point of view of Scrope Purvis,

know people who live next door to one in Westminster); a touch of the bird her neighbor. Then, however, we are immediately

launched into Clarissa’s thoughts

about her, of the jay, blue-green, light, vivacious, though she was over fifty, again, without

and grown very white since her illness. There she perched, never seeing connections.

him, waiting to cross, very upright. This is an example of free indirect style.

For having lived in Westminster—how many years now? over twenty,—

one feels even in the midst of the traffic, or waking at night, Clarissa was

positive, a particular hush, or solemnity; an indescribable pause; a suspense

(but that might be her heart, affected, they said, by influenza) before Big

Ben strikes. There! Out it boomed. First a warning, musical; then the hour,

irrevocable. The leaden circles dissolved in the air. Such fools we are, she

thought, crossing Victoria Street.

As we have already seen from the thoughts of Scrope Purvis, Clarissa’s portrait is never given by herself or the narrator in

a specific paragraph. Clarissa’s portrait is created by other people’s thought: –

Università degli Studi di Verona English literature and culture 1 Module 2

«[Clarissa’s] portrait is to a great extent created by other people’s thoughts about her. She takes form through other people

people’s expectations

and is governed by other and her own desire to make a good impression.» [Larrson 2017]

Clarissa is described as a person that really cares about what the other thinks about her and wants to make a good

impression, as she is the wife of the Prime Minister. She wants to be the perfect hostess of the party she’s going to organize

on that evening.

 Offill 2020:«“Mrs. Dalloway” is a remarkably expansive and an irreducibly strange book. Nothing you might read

in a plot summary prepares you for the multitudes it contains. In fact, on the surface, it sounds suspiciously dull.

The novel depicts a single day in June from the perspective of a number of characters. The year is 1923. The

Great War is over, but the memory of its unprecedented destruction still hangs over England. In a posh part of

London, a middle-aged woman plans a party. She goes out to get flowers. A man she almost married drops by for

a visit. She is snubbed by an acquaintance. She remembers an alluring girl she once kissed. Later, guests pour into

violent death. In between these

her house for the party. In the midst of all this, she hears news of a stranger’s

modest plot points, Clarissa Dalloway wanders around London, lies down for a rest, and takes note of Big Ben

striking out the hours again and again. But, wait, I am leaving out everything…»

 Virginia Wollf’s essay: “Modern Novels” (1919):

«Let us record the atoms as they fall upon the mind in the order in which they fall, let us trace the pattern,

however disconnected and incoherent in appearance, which each sight or incident scores upon the consciousness.

Let us not take it for granted that life exists more fully in what is commonly thought big than in what is

commonly thought small.»

Novel Interpretation

For having lived in Westminster—how many years now? over The idea of time recurring in the novel is called

“CLOCKINESS”. The novel has 12 MACRO-

twenty,—one feels even in the midst of the traffic, or waking at night,

Clarissa was positive, a particular hush, or solemnity; an indescribable SECTIONS, it is not divided into chapter and this structure

pause; a suspense (but that might be her heart, affected, they said, by reminds the hours of the day.

influenza) before Big Ben strikes. There! Out it boomed. First a The repetitions of sentences of time in the novel reminds us

of the difference between subjective and historical time →

warning, musical; then the hour, irrevocable. The leaden circles

dissolved in the air. Such fools we are, she thought, crossing Victoria a moment can last much longer than another, because we

Street. For Heaven only knows why one loves it so, how one sees it so, perceive time differently depending on the feelings of the

making it up, building it round one, tumbling it, creating it every moment.

moment afresh; but the veriest frumps, the most dejected of miseries Time flows differently for Clarissa and the other characters

sitting on doorsteps (drink their downfall) do the same; can't be dealt in different moments.

with, she felt positive, by Acts of Parliament for that very reason: they

love life. In people's eyes, in the swing, tramp, and trudge; in the bellow

and the uproar; the carriages, motor cars, omnibuses, vans, sandwich

men shuffling and swinging; brass bands; barrel organs; in the triumph

and the jingle and the strange high singing of some aeroplane overhead

was what she loved; life; London; this moment of June.

 Saint-Amour 2016: «Mrs. Dalloway asserts its clockiness at both macro and micro scales, as if to insist that the

whole is isometric with the parts. Keyed to a single day and divided into 12 sections, the novel presents itself as

it is a clock. At more local scales, too, it emulates the clock’s

a device for quantifying diurnal experience:

hour through a system of verbatim repetitions. The phrase “First a warning, musical;

cyclicality by marking the

then the hour, irrevocable” occurs twice (MD 4, 114); the sentence “The leaden circles dissolved in the air” four

times (4, 47, 92, 182). […] Such refrains remind us that a second-long clock event takes much longer than a

[…]»

second to unfold as a public sound-event

Clarissa is interrupted many times in her walk from Wenstminster to Bond street.

Novel Interpretation

Clarissa’s past always comes to her memory but loves alothe

(June had drawn out every leaf on the trees. The mothers of

Pimlico gave suck to their young. Messages were passing from vitality of the place. Her love for life and the vitality of the capital

of London are connected but peculiar → in fact, in modernist

the Fleet to the Admiralty. Arlington Street and Piccadilly seemed

to chafe the very air in the Park and lift its leaves hotly, brilliantly, novels the cities are big and people don't feel at ease there, they

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Università degli Studi di Verona English literature and culture 1 Module 2

on waves of that divine vitality which Clarissa loved. To dance, fear the loss of humanity. (For Joyce, Dublin is the center of

to ride, she had adored all that.) paralysis)

This feature is not present in Mrs Dalloway because Virginia

Woolf loved the city of London.

 is […] an

Larsson 2017: «Mrs. Dalloway unusual urban novel in the context of modernist European fiction,

where metropolises are almost always associated with fear and alienation. Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway is, in contrast,

a grand, almost euphoric, celebration of the vigour imparted to the city by its parks and streets, roaring traffic and

busy shopping areas.»

Novel Interpretation

For they might be parted for hundreds of years, she and Peter; she Perhaps, Clarissa talks about questions of the past between

never wrote a letter and his were dry sticks; but suddenly it would Peter and her.

come over her, If he were with me now what would he say?—some

days, some sights bringing him back to her calmly, without the old

bitterness; which perhaps was the reward of having cared for Clarissa and Peter were probably bond in a romantic way but

people; they came back in the middle of St. James's Park on a fine they had 2 different approaches in life:

morning—indeed they did. But Peter—however beautiful the day  Peter was more interested in material and personal

might be, and the trees and the grass, and the little girl in pink—Peter things in life, he liked Wagner. He used to scold bad

never saw a thing of all that. He would put on his spectacles, if she things about Clarissa → he told her she will be just

told him to; he would look. It was the state of the world that interested “the wife of the Prime Minister, a perfect hostess”,

him; Wagner, Pope's poetry, people's characters eternally, and the without any other sight in her life.

defects of her own soul. How he scolded her! How they argued! She Clarissa keeps thinking about Peter, his life in India with

would marry a Prime Minister and stand at the top of a staircase; the indian women, that could give him all the passion and feelings

perfect hostess he called her (she had cried over it in her bedroom), she never gave him. Peter run away with indian women but is

she had the makings of the perfect hostess, he said. coming back to India.

 Larsson 2017: «Mrs. Dalloway abounds with addresses that indicate where the various characters in the novel are

to be found and how they move about on the London map. Woolf describes their walks in such detail that one

can see precisely where they meet and where they part, when they follow in each other’s footsteps and when their

routes diverge»

 Larsson 2017: «If one undertakes the various walks oneself, it in fact becomes apparent that the time allowed by

Woolf for Clarissa’s and Peter Walsh’s walks is all too short.»

 ‘adventure-

Larsson 2017: «As mentioned earlier, in The Dialogical Imagination Mikhail Bakhtin uses the term

time’ to indicate the span of time in a novel where a lot of things happen that would not have been possible in

real time.»

→ Adventure-time is the span of time in a novel where a lot of things happen that could not happen in real life. Literary

fiction offers the space to introduce a lot of details and feelings that otherwise would have been expressed.

While thinking about Peter, she said that the relationship between the 2 has changed. She now cares about Peter.

Novel Interpretation

Her only gift was knowing people almost by instinct, she thought, walking Clarissa recognizes the fact that she might be

on. superficial, but she also says she can connect with other

people and feel like them → she is an empathic person.

If you put her in a room with some one, up went her back like a cat's; or → it can have

she purred. Devonshire House, Bath House, the house with the china There are a lot of references to WATER

cockatoo, she had seen them all lit up once; and remembered Sylvia, Fred, 2 different meanings:

Sally Seton—such hosts of people; and da