In Defense of Mrs. Dalloway

Before we begin, I want to mention I am approaching this piece without having read any critical analyses of Mrs. Dalloway, taken any classes on it, nor, for that matter, do I know terribly much about Virginia Woolf’s life outside of that presented in The Hours. So I might be dreadfully wrong in my interpretations of things, or totally miss the point of the story but really that’s just too bad. Unfortunately, this is my blog, and you are now subjected to my desire to explain, in the most untainted way possible, why I actually enjoyed reading Mrs. Dalloway.

The only thing I did know about this book before I picked it up at a local quirky gift shop, admittedly swayed by the author and the vintage 70s paperback cover, was that people thought this book was terribly boring. Even so, I thought, worst-comes-to-worst I will have tried to read it and failed, and it can serve me as an exceptional piece of decor on my bookshelves (because that’s exactly the kind of superficial hedonist I am).

I was pleasantly surprised, when I began it, to find that it wasn’t boring at all! Virginia Woolf’s writing is singularly poetic and rambling and wonderfully whimsical. I was caught up immediately in the way the story moves from character to character so easily, without the burden of chapters or transitions to tell you your viewpoint had changed. As long as you have your wits about you, it’s really quite easy to tell who Woolf is writing about at any given time. I would describe it almost as if a bee were flying through London, landing here or there on a character and telling their story for a time before taking off again and alighting somewhere else.

Despite the fact that I have a feeling most people perceive Mrs. Clarissa Dalloway, the story’s protagonist, as a terrible rich drip and a bore, I really related to her. She struck me as a woman not unlike myself, dealing with an undercurrent of melancholy constantly running in the background of her inner-monologue, who uses very superficial things (social engagements, flowers, walks in the city) to silence the voice in her head, which really seems to burble up in moments when she is quiet. She seems drawn to the hubbub of London because it keeps her from these solitary ponderings over loves that could have been, other people’s perceptions of her, and her daughter’s drifting away towards another motherly figure.

Mrs. Dalloway is a uniquely small story, and by that I mean it isn’t an epic, an action-filled adventure, a desperate romance… It’s simply one day in the life of one woman and some of the people peripheral to her. In my mind, it shows the kind of scope of a woman’s like Clarissa Dalloway’s world at the time, small but totally engaging, perhaps hemmed in like a cage, causing the mind to hyper-fixate on tiny and superficial things. I think it’s important that the story begins with such a buoyant, uplifting air, and ends in such a dark and ponderous place, in the span of just one day. Because after all, if we think it’s boring to read such a small story, shouldn’t we consider that to be part of the story? That Clarissa’s dissatisfaction and depression is a product of how tidy and minimal her little life is? That she spends so much of the time remembering more grand adventures and having fantasies about how much more fantastic life might be if she had married Peter Walsh and gone to India?

Anyway, to sum it all up, I don’t think Mrs. Dalloway is a boring book. The near stream-of-consciousness writing style that verges on poetry combines satisfyingly with the close examination of the mental wellbeing of a number of characters, and gives such an intriguing window into the kind of things that were of focus for Virginia Woolf at the time. I do think it’s worth a read, if you’re the kind of person who can handle such a small story.

The leaden circles dissolved in the air…