Mrs. Dalloway - Brought to a SPOIL, then Left to Simmer

This was the most fascinating of the three novels so far to me. I found the first 10 pages to be VERY difficult. I am used to things opening in media res, but this took that to a whole new level. I must have reread each paragraph two or three times before moving to the next one, waiting for something to become clear. From the back of the book, I knew that the story took place in one day and that it followed Mrs. Dalloway as she prepares for an evening party. That knowledge helped very little to anchor me.

When we first jump outside of Clarissa to Scrope Purvis, who drives past her while she waits to cross the street, I was shaken. That paragraph got four or five reads. It wasn't until we left Clarissa and started wandering through all the people on the street that the book came into any real focus for me. Ah! We are going to be sitting in these heads and bouncing off of people as they pass, interact, and comment upon each other. We are in a novel of thoughts more than action. Then it all became delicious.

It felt to me like a poem forced into the suit of prose. I had to read slowly, digest each sentence both for appreciation and for meaning. Once I committed myself to this deliberate pace I loved it. Every sentence feels like its meaning is supposed to echo throughout the novel, just like the "leaden circles" of Big Ben tolling away the hours and tying all the players together. How different from the overwritten prose of Dreiser, to feel like every sentence demands your attention.

As for meaning, I am not smart enough to digest this novel. I will be chewing on it for a long time to come.

I loved being in each person's head, hearing Peter Walsh view the world and himself, struggling with Mrs. Kilman as she says things that she knows she shouldn't say. Every character here is respected, has something internal. I feel like we glimpse through our various viewpoints an entire culture, or at least an entire cultural moment. These characters are both self-aware and self-delusional.

I will point to a passage that I believe Ann will expound upon because it struck us as the center of the novel. This is from the ponderings of Peter Walsh restating Clarissa's youthful theory "to explain the feeling they had of dissatisfaction; not knowing people; not being known. For how could they know each other? You met every day; then not for six months, or years. It was unsatisfactory, they agreed, how little one knew people. But she said . . . not 'here, here, here' . . . but everywhere. She waved her hand, going up Shaftesbury Avenue. She was all that. So that to know her, or any one, one must seek out the people who completed them, even the places. Odd affinities she had with people she had never spoken to . . . ."

How apt then that the novel should be called Mrs. Dalloway and follow all these people, most of whom she knows and some of whom she does not, namely Rezia and Septimus. To know Mrs. Dalloway (or any other character here) we need to know them all.

No one exists in a vacuum. Just as important is that we all exist alone. At one point I thought the novel was downright existential as no one could communicate with anyone else effectively, Dalloway couldn't even tell his wife he loved her (not in so many words). We were stuck in minds, never getting satisfactory exchanges. We jump from character to character; there is no bridge, no connection. So, no one exists in a vacuum and no one exists together. Ouch. That is a tough bind for the human race, or at least for post-war Britain.