This is Virginia Woolf's most admired novel which dates from 1924. Originally called 'The Hours', it was published the following year as Mrs Dalloway. Woolf is acclaimed as an innovator of the English language. Here, in her own handwriting, we see her explore a new style of writing called 'stream of consciousness', in which the imprint of experience and emotion on the inner lives of characters is as important as the stories they act out.
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Virginia Woolf was born Adeline Virginia Stephen in 1882 into a family with strong literary connections. Her mother, Julia, had previously been married to Herbert Duckworth, a barrister. (Their son, Gerald, went on to found the Duckworth publishing company.) Her father, Sir Leslie Stephen, a literary critic, had also been married before. Eight siblings and half-siblings shared the family home in London.
Virginia was only 13 when her mother's death triggered a nervous breakdown - the first of her many bouts of mental illness. After their father died in 1904, Virginia moved to a house in Bloomsbury with her two brothers and her sister, Vanessa, who was a painter. The siblings and their friends became the hub of an exclusive community of writers and artists referred to by critics as ‘the Bloomsbury Group’.
At the end of that year, Virginia began writing reviews, initially for a clerical newspaper and then for the Times Literary Supplement. Her first novel, The Voyage Out, was completed in 1913, but publication was delayed for two years by another of her mental breakdowns.
In 1912, she married Leonard Woolf, a political theorist who had worked for the Ceylon Civil Service from 1904 to 1911. (Ceylon, a former British colony, is now called Sri Lanka.) They decided to earn their living by journalism and publishing. Five years later, Leonard set up a publishing business with a hand-printing press at Hogarth House in Richmond, where the couple now lived - a venture designed, in part, to provide a practical therapy for Virginia's fragile mental state.
The River Ouse ran close by the Woolfs' country home in Sussex . On 28 March 1941, Virginia filled her pockets with heavy stones, walked into the river and drowned herself. The note she left for her husband read: “I hear voices and cannot concentrate on my work. I have fought against it but cannot fight any longer. I owe all my happiness to you but cannot go on and spoil your life.”
¶What’s Mrs Dalloway about?¶
The character of Mrs Dalloway had already appeared in Woolf's first novel as the wife of a Member of Parliament. By 1923, Woolf had conceived the idea of writing a new story built around her. "I want to give life and death, sanity and insanity," Woolf enthused in her diary, "I want to criticise the social system, and show it at work, at its most intense."
To this end, Woolf parallels a single day in the lives of two people: the privileged, socially elite Clarissa Dalloway, and Septimus Warren Smith, a shell-shocked veteran of the First World War. As the day begins Clarissa is buying flowers for a party she will give that night, while Septimus is in Regent's Park listening to the sparrows, who, he believes, sing to him in Greek.
By featuring their internal feelings, Woolf allows her characters' thoughts to travel back and forth in time, reflecting and refracting their emotional experiences. This device, often known as 'stream of consciousness’, creates complex portraits of the individuals and their relationships.
Woolf also uses the novel as a vehicle for criticism of the society of her day. The main characters, both aspects of Woolf herself, raise issues of deep personal concern: in Clarissa, the repressed social and economic position of women, and in Septimus, the treatment of those driven by depression to the borderlands of sanity.
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[What does 'stream of consciousness’ mean?]
It's a style of writing evolved by authors at the beginning of the 20th century to express in words the flow of a character's thoughts and feelings. The technique aims to give readers the impression of being inside the mind of the character - an internal view that illuminates plot and motivation in the novel. Thoughts spoken aloud are not always the same as those "on the floor of the mind", as Woolf put it.
'Stream of consciousness' has its origins in the late 19th century with the birth of psychology. An American psychologist, William James (brother of novelist Henry), first used the phrase in his Principles of Psychology of 1890 to describe the flow of conscious experience in the brain.The term was first used in a literary sense by May Sinclair in her 1918 review of a novel by Dorothy Richardson. Other authors well known for this style include Katherine Mansfield, William Faulkner and, most notably, James Joyce
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===How It All Goes Down==
Mrs Dalloway is not your typical day-in-the-life story, but it is a day-in-the-life story – a revolutionary one at that. It covers one day for Clarissa Dalloway (with some other central characters, too) as she prepares for a big party that will take place that evening.
As the novel begins, Clarissa strolls through Westminster, her neighborhood in London, on her way to a flower shop. Along the way, a few big things go down: she runs into an old friend named Hugh Whitbread, an explosion comes from a diplomatic car on its way to Buckingham Palace, and an "aeroplane" does a little skywriting. (Wow, that’s way more than what typically happens to us on the way to get flowers.)When she gets back from her errand, an old friend and former suitor, Peter Walsh, shows up unexpectedly. They’re happy to see each other, but there’s still some tension. Peter is clearly still in love with Clarissa, and she feels like he judges her for the decisions she’s made – among them marrying the conservative but loyal Richard Dalloway (instead of him). Numerous flashbacks – including one of Clarissa's kiss with a girl named Sally – fill in the story as it happened years ago at her family’s country home, Bourton. Feeling desperate over his own unfulfilling life, Peter gets weepy and asks Clarissa if she really loves Richard. Before she can answer, Elizabeth (her daughter) interrupts, and Peter heads out to Regent's Park.We then move to the perspective of Septimus Warren Smith, a shell-shocked World War I veteran who saw Evans, his friend and officer, killed in war. Septimus' wife, Lucrezia, is trying to distract him as they wait for an appointment with Sir William Bradshaw, a mean old psychiatrist.
The third person omniscient narrator takes us back to Septimus’ life before the war: he was an aspiring poet, read Shakespeare, and loved Miss Isabel Pole. After the war and Evans' death, Septimus becomes emotionally numb – he can't feel anything. On a total whim, he becomes engaged to Lucrezia, whose home he’s staying at in Milan, Italy. Back in the present day, Septimus is driven deeper into madness, including some crazy hallucinations. Lucrezia is also miserable, homesick for Italy, and tired of taking her husband to various soulless doctors. Whereas Dr Holmes thinks Septimus is just "in a funk," Dr Bradshaw diagnoses that he "lacks Proportion." Neither acknowledges the fact that the war has impacted Septimus (which seems pretty obvious to us).
While Clarissa rests and prepares for the party, Richard has lunch with the impressively rich and British upper crust Lady Bruton. After lunch, Richard wants to go home and tell Clarissa he loves her, but he cops out and just gives her flowers instead. Clarissa actually cherishes the independence she has in her marriage, knowing that she could never have that with Peter. In the meantime, Clarissa’s daughter goes off shopping with her friend Miss Kilman, whom Mrs Dalloway hates. And by hates, we mean despises, loathes, and absolutely cannot stand.
Meanwhile, Septimus and Lucrezia wait at their apartment for Sir William Bradshaw, who is coming to take Septimus to a psychiatric home. The couple shares a rare moment of joy, but before Bradshaw enters the apartment, Septimus throws himself out the window and is impaled on the fence outside. He would rather die than have the doctor steal his soul. Yikes.
When Clarissa’s party begins, she circulates, making sure to pay attention to every guest – especially the prime minister (um, yeah, we’d do the same). Peter and Sally patiently await some attention from Clarissa as they talk about their memories of Bourton. A late arrival, Sir William Bradshaw, shows up with his wife, who announces that Septimus has killed himself. Clarissa is annoyed that Lady Bradshaw mentioned death at her party, but she is envious of Septimus’ ability to embrace the moment. Finally, she returns to the party and her appearance fills Peter’s heart with joy.
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It was also interesting to watch The Hours after reading it. The Hours is
Directed by Stephen Daldry based on the novel The Hours by Michael Cunningham
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There's just this for consolation: an hour here or there when our lives seem, against all odds and expectations, to burst open and give us everything we've ever imagined.
— from the novel The Hours by Michael Cunningham
In the stunning opening scene of this inventive and mesmerizing film, Virginia Woolf (Nicole Kidman) is penning a farewell letter to her husband. Her poignant words accompany her as she leaves their house, walks to the river, fills her pockets with stones, and wades into the rushing current, allowing it to consume her. We immediately recognize this is not an ordinary movie. The Hours is based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Michael Cunningham with a screenplay by David Hare. The multi-layered structure of the story is laid out beautifully in the opening seven-minute sequence that unfolds without dialogue and is carried into our emotions with the enchanting piano and strings music of Philip Glass.
We are introduced to three women on three different days in the twentieth century. In 1923, in the London suburb of Richmond, Virginia Woolf writes the first sentences in her new novel Mrs. Dalloway about a woman giving a party. In Los Angeles in 1951, Laura Brown (Julianne Moore) has decided to bake a cake for her husband's birthday. In her spare moments, she is reading Mrs. Dalloway. For Clarissa Vaughan (Meryl Streep), it is a momentous day in contemporary New York as she prepares to host a party in honor of a poet friend who has just won a prestigious award.
Virginia Woolf has battled mental illness, depression, and mood swings for years and has attempted suicide several times. She carries on for the sake of her art and the life it brings to others. Her patient husband, Leonard (Stephen Dillane), has brought her to a quiet suburb so she will experience less stress than their former life in London. But Virginia is restless and irritable. She has a little squabble with a maid and then greets her sister, Vanessa (Miranda Richardson), who has come for tea with her three children. Virginia joins her niece in laying to rest a small dead bird the children have found. She asks Vanessa why she is never invited to her parties in the city. Then just before she leaves, Virginia kisses her sister on the lips, a gesture that startles both of them. Later Virginia takes a walk with the idea of taking a train back to London. Leonard finds her at the station, and they have an argument over her unhappiness. She agrees to return home and realizes that her discontent will find an outlet in the character of Clarissa Dalloway.
Clarissa Vaughan lives in New York City where she works as an editor and lives with Sally (Allison Janney), her lover for ten years. Yet the real joy and sustaining relationship in her life is Richard (Ed Harris), who is dying of AIDS. She has been looking after him and is terrified of losing him. He doesn't want to attend the party in his honor, feeling that he has failed as a writer. While Clarissa is cooking that afternoon, Louis (Jeff Daniels), Richard's ex-lover, shows up early having just flown in from San Francisco. They reminisce briefly about the past, and he tells her of the liberation he felt after leaving Richard. In contrast, the most magic moment in Clarissa's life was when Richard kissed her on the beach when they were both young and filled with dreams about all the wild possibilities. At his apartment, just before the party, Richard tells Clarissa, whom he fondly calls "Mrs. Dalloway," that he has only been staying alive for her and that she must let him go. Later that night, Clarissa confesses to her daughter, Julia (Claire Danes), that she didn't recognize happiness when she experienced it.
Laura Brown has a young son, Richie (Jack Rovello), and is expecting another child. Her conventional husband, Dan (John C. Reilly), treats her like a queen in their suburban home but vaguely senses that she is not very happy. He is right. She just doesn't seem to be able to do the housewife things very well. It's Dan's birthday but he's the one who buys flowers. And the cake she makes with Richie is a flop. One of her socially popular neighbors, Kitty (Toni Collette), shows up and announces that she is going to the hospital to have a growth in her uterus checked out. Kitty has the suburban scene down to perfection but she considers Laura to be the lucky one because she can have children. Feeling very sorry for what Kitty has to go through, Laura kisses her on the lips with an emotional intensity that far exceeds the etiquette of suburbia. It expresses the other life that Laura is yearning for. Her son Richie senses his mother's aloneness. When she drops him off with a babysitter, he screams out and runs after her car. That afternoon in a hotel room, Laura intends to end her life by taking pills. But after reading more of Mrs. Dalloway, she decides not to do it.
Stephen Daldry (Billy Elliott) directs The Hours with a skillful sense of pace and a high regard for the acting talents of the actresses who carry this film into our hearts with so many inimitable scenes of tenderness, loss, discontent, and yearning. The film explores the many spiritual connections that link our lives to others, living and dead. It also reveals the desperate yearning for happiness that propels so many people into a new day with high hopes. The drama also will speak to all those who at one time or another have felt closed off or alienated from the lives they've chosen or been forced to bear due to circumstances beyond their control.
In the evening, Leonard Woolf asks Virginia why someone has to die in her novel Mrs. Dalloway. She replies: "Someone has to die so the rest of us will value life more in contrast." This could be said of the film as well. For finally, The Hours deals in imaginative and substantive ways with the disappointments that can accumulate and lead to suicide, and the small moment-by-moment realizations that can bring someone back from the brink.
