Friday, May 18, 2012

The Dalloway

Mrs Dalloway - Virginia Woolf


This one's a classic. When I first mustered up enough courage to start buying books off Book Depository, I spent a good amount of time looking at Top 100 lists, books we must read before we die and all that jazz. Woolf's novel made it to at least 80% of the sheer amount of lists I looked at. So I decided I would get around to reading it and I did! (pat on the back for myself)


The novel follows the progression of a day in the eyes of two characters, Clarissa Dalloway and Peter Walsh. It really is quite ingenious the way the novel's been written in terms of its narration. The 'stream of consciousness' technique is frustrating to read but at the same time, so personal it's quite frightening. As a reader, often we take things for granted and simply understand the perspective of the narrator and accredit it for what he/she is worth. However, sometimes narrators aren't always as nice as we perceive them to be (I am reading The Catcher in the Rye at the moment, and I assure you, Holden Caulfield is a terrible narrator). 


What I really do enjoy reading in this text is the discovery of both narrators from each other. Peter reveals something about Clarissa from long ago and likewise. It's so biased, but yet, so honest. You just really don't know who to believe- does Clarissa really have issues? Can she not hold parties simply because she likes it? Must there always be an insecurity interpreted through her actions? It's really quite mind-provoking. 


From the get-go, I was so curious to know who Clarissa's husband was, and to find that he was a 'safe' man to marry, it was quite disappointing. But that's how it always is, isn't it? She picks the 'safe' choice over the man she should have married. I entitled my little review as 'The Dalloway' because Clarissa in the end, adopted his name and married him- and it ultimately is a choice she made, regardless of her feeling that she lacked the choice. Oh, the irony!


For a short book of less than 150 pages, I did however find it a bit tiresome to read somewhere in the middle but one must persevere and it was totally worth it. In page 42 of my edition, I stumbled upon one of the most satisfying passages I'll ever read. It's the words used and the rising-and-falling of the phrases which really leave me just in awe, comprehending what I've just read.


"Nothing exists outside us except a state of mind, he thinks; a desire for solace, for relief, for something outside these miserable pigmies, these feeble, these ugly, these craven men and women. But if he can conceive of her, then in some sort she exists, he thinks, and advancing down the path with his eyes upon sky and branches he rapidly endows them with womanhood; sees with amazement how grave they become; how majestically, as breeze stirs them, they dispense with a dark flutter of the leaves charity, comprehension, absolution, and then, flinging themselves suddenly aloft, confound the piety of their aspect with a wild carouse." (p.41)


Mind-blown.


[On a sidenote, I received two Hemingway and Dostoevsky novels in the mail today! I'm excited!]

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