Woolf Seminar:
All references are to the Harcourt Brace Harvest Books edition
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The novel not only has two main narrative lines involving two separate characters (Clarissa Dalloway and Septimus Smith). Within each narrative there is a particular time and place in the past that the main characters keep returning to in their minds. For Clarissa, the "continuous present" (Gertrude Stein's phrase) of her charmed youth at Bourton keeps intruding into her thoughts on this day in London. For Septimus, the "continuous present" of his time as a soldier during the Great War keeps intruding, especially in the form of Evans, his comrade. |
Bourton or "Bourton-on-the-Water," EnglandClarissa's parents had a summer home at Bourton. Clarissa's memories of this place associate its pastoral setting with her childhood innocence and with the sense of open possibilities in relationships and in identity, before she becomes a wife and mother and before Richard assumes his role in public life in London. Bourton is a Cotswold village situated on the banks of the River Windrush. 17 miles from Cheltenham and 31 miles from Oxford. You can find out more about this "Venice of the Cotswolds" at http://digital-brilliance.com/org/bour_coc/booklet/index.htm
You will want to compare and contrast the past at Bourton with the present at London on this June day in 1923. The War is over. Notice the hustle and bustle of the city; the crowds on the streets; the omnibuses; the taxicabs, the motorcars, the aeroplane; the recurring noisy chiming of Big Ben's "leaden circles dissolving in the air,". Clarissa seems to thrive in the city, yet she keeps thinking of Bourton.
Shakespeare's Cymbeline: "Fear No More..."
On p. 8, Clarissa thinks of lines from Shakespeare's play Cymbeline. The lines are spoken in Act IV, scene 2 and are related to this and other Woolf novels in their interrogation of death and the response to death in language and literature. For some discussion of the excerpt from Cymbeline, as well as the passage in the play from which it is taken, and for links to other sites helpful in understanding this reference, see my Cymbeline page on this website.
Baron Marbot
Clarissa is reading Baron Marbot's memoirs (Memoires du general baron de Marbot). These memoirs describe Napoleon's "ignominious" retreat from Moscow, according to Mark Hussey, who credits Beverly Ann Schlack. You may wish to consider how Clarissa's reading of this memoir, her ruminations on her past at Bourton, and her thoughts of her own mortality after her recent illness (which has left her looking older and paler), all may create a cluster of influences. Her reading about an earlier war in the aftermath of the Great War may also be worth considering in light of the Septimus Smith story. Supposedly, by reading about the historical past, we can learn from it. But all the understanding that history could offer about the Napoleonic wars did not prevent the Great War.
Clarissa, Sally Seton, Peter Walsh, Septimus Smith, Rezia Smith, Richard Dalloway, Hugh, Dr. William Bradshaw, Elizabeth Dalloway, Doris Kilman, Lucy (Clarissa's servant), Lady Bruton, or any other characters are worthy of comment and discussion. You might want to read a summary of Woolf's "Character in Fiction" essay and a critical response, and then consider how the essay may be useful in analyzing this novel.
Why do you think Clarissa rejected Peter Walsh?
Why did she marry Richard? When she thinks of him, she is happy. Why?
Do you find it ironic that Sally Seton becomes the mother of five sons?
What do you learn about Peter in the sections devoted to his consciousness, that you could not learn otherwise? What do you learn about Richard in the section where he leaves Hugh in the shop after lunch at Lady Bruton's and decides to buy Clarissa flowers, and walks home, certain of his decision to tell her that he loves her?You may wish to analyze parallel narratives and characters (the "doubles" that critics often mention, such as Clarissa and Septimus, Clarissa and Rezia, Clarissa and Elizabeth; Clarissa/Sally and Elizabeth/Doris; Hugh Whitbread/Dr. Bradshaw etc.)
Does Septimus represent Clarissa's insanity and suicidal longings, as some critics have suggested?
You may wish to discuss your response to Clarissa's self-reproaches, or her snobbishness.
Characters who appear in more than one Woolf novel: Mrs. Durrant and Clara (from Jacob's Room) come to Clarissa's party. (And Richard Dalloway kissed Rachel Vinrace on board ship in The Voyage Out).
Some themes to consider:
illness death the country and the city the bed and the grave the significance of a party
the sane and the insane time empire war and its victims homoerotic desire narrative point of view suicide
See Some Themes in Mrs. Dalloway for further information and discussion of these themes
Westminster Abbey was built in 1064 by Edward the Confessor. Later, Westminster became "the center of politics, religion, and legislation.Westminster is, in other words, men's place and represents men's history," according to Masami Usui. Peter remembers boys in uniform bringin a wreath to the unknown soldier's tomb in Whitehall. This would have been on 11 Nov. 1920, when a service was held in Westminster Abbey for the burial of an unknown soldier. King George V placed a wreath with an inscription saying that although these young men were unknown, they are "yet well-known, as dying and behold they live." Usui contrasts Westminster Abbey with St. Margaret's, another church built by Edward the Confessor at about the same time (1064). and that stands literally in the shadow of Westminster Abbey. Thus St. Margaret's and Westminster Abbey are rather like the feminine and the masculine tendencies in society, Usui suggests. Peter Walsh associates Clarissa's voice with the bells of St. Margaret's, and his image of her virginity as necessitating a "garland" before her evokes the tradition of decorating St. Margaret's with rose garlands. Richard brings Clarissa red and white roses. Usui also points out that St. Margaret's also has been a place of politics. Most significantly, on 11 Nov. 1918, when the Great War was over, members of both Houses of Parliament attended a service there. The Archbishop of Canterbury read the lesson from Isaiah, chapter 61: "He hath sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound;. . . And they shall build the old wastes, they shall raise up the former desolations, and they shall repair the waste cities." See Usui's essay, "The Female Victims of War in Mrs. Dalloway," in Virginia Woolf and War: Fiction, Reality, Myth, ed. Mark Hussey. Syracuse, NY: Syracus U P, 1991.
For more about Mrs. Dalloway, visit Rich Goldman's resources on Mrs. Dalloway at his website, and see my linkspage..
for more study questions go to http://www.flp.com/films/mrs_dalloway/rg-fd.html
For more about Marleen Gorris's film adaptation of Mrs Dalloway (script by Eileen Atkins)
see the official website at http://www.flp.com/films/mrs_dalloway/index.html
for reviews, see any of the following:
http://www.flp.com/films/mrs_dalloway/text01.html
Roger Ebert's review at http://www.suntimes.com/ebert/ebert_reviews/1998/03/030604.html
http://bostonreview.mit.edu/BR23.2/stone.html
http://www.csmonitor.com/durable/1998/02/27/feat/film.2.html
http://movie-reviews.colossus.net/movies/m/mrs_dalloway.html
http://movies.excite.com/movie/reviews/?movie_id=114092
http://www.amcity.com/denver/stories/1998/03/30/smallb7.html
Cymbeline The Great War Themes in Mrs. Dalloway
