on
3.5/5
Non-Fiction
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English 45C
Rating: 4/5
Pages: 190
Started: 5 March 2024
Finished: 10 March 2024
Summary:
Virginia Woolf's Mrs Dalloway is an exploration of gender, class, mental health, and human nature in the aftermath of World War I. Written in free indirect discourse as a novel-equivalent of a one-shot film and centered around the mental illness of a war veteran and the party of a middle-aged upper-class socialite, the novel tells the story of single day in London, 1923.
Thoughts:
This was not a super easy book to read, but it was a beautiful one. Woolf has such a precise command over the words she uses, and every paragraph reads like a poem. The free indirect discourse was also fascinating to read, and it felt very interesting to get into so many different characters' heads. The book absolutely did not adhere to the principle of Chekov's gun, which I found a bit frustrating, but it was so intentional I didn't mind too much. People talk about Clarissa and Septimus as the main characters, which to a point is true because the story mostly focuses on them, and they (especially Clarissa) are the most complex and interesting characters in the story. However, although it seems Clarissa and Septimus, together, are Woolf within the story, I think that the true protagonist of the work is London itself, and the book presents a glimpse into many of its pieces.