Book Review: ‘Mrs. Dalloway’ by Virginia Woolf

I recently read Virginia Woolf’s ‘Mrs. Dalloway.’ It’s not a mere novel – it’s a new genre of English fiction; an entirely new style, highly innovative and unique. I must say Woolf was a truly gifted writer. Here are a few things that made it an immediate favorite for me.

Stream of consciousness:

Woolf’s technique of narrating anything, an idea or a notion or a scene or thought, is through a ‘stream of consciousness.’ And this stream, although made up of disparate notions at times, is continuous. You can barely discern when one streak of thought ends and the other starts. And the way she narrates things through this technique is exquisite!! Here’s an example I would really like to cite,

He lay back in his chair, exhausted but upheld. He lay, resting, waiting, before he again interpreted, with effort, with agony, to mankind. He lay very high, on the back of the world. The earth thrilled beneath him. Red flowers grew through his flesh ; their stiff leaves rustled by his head. Music began clanging against the rocks up here. It is a motor horn in the street, he muttered; but up here, it cannoned from rock to rock, divided, met in shocks of sound which rose in smooth columns (that music should be visible was a discovery) and became an anthem…

She takes us through the perceived reality and then suddenly, we find that we were in the singular reality of a character and not an actual reality. Her characters blur the distinction between reality and fiction and oftentimes, you don’t even realize that you have passed from one to other, so seamless, so perfectly smooth is the transition.

Version of reality:

Most of the characters in ‘Mrs. Dalloway’ have two versions of reality, in generic terms. One version is that perceived by themselves, their understanding of life as it is to them. The other version is what life is to them through others. A reality that is shared, different from the everyday reality they own, and is lot more personal. For instance, Clarissa, Peter Walsh and Sally Seton all go on in their lives, leading a life which is quite normal in a number of ways; that’s the reality each one of them possesses, on his/her own. But there’s another reality, a reality that is much more profound, more meaningful to them, that the three of them share, no matter how removed it is from the present day. And this is what defines them, intrinsically. For instance, even after having strayed across half of the world, Peter Walsh still is in love with Clarissa; a love he can’t deny, neither does he wish to embrace but nonetheless which defines his thoughts.

Importance of characters over the plot:

Woolf, in this novel, doesn’t seem to particularly care about an overall plot; and yet that, in no way, means that the novel lacks in the plot. On the contrary, she weaves the story through her characters who then reveal figments of their past, their part of the story. She then goes on to use this to construct the plot, which although may not be very striking overall, but the characters who are weaving the narrative and their thoughts are extra-ordinary. It is as if she emphasizes more upon the relations of characters to each other rather than worrying about giving her novel a definite story. And these relations do turn out to define her novel more convincingly than the actual story.

Grasping the intangible:

Yes, many authors are honest. But what stands Woolf apart, to me, is that she is honest as well as capable of defining certain emotions which we are very fleetingly cognizant of. She very deftly details such things which seem almost intangible, so fickle is their existence. That’s a craft very few possess and Woolf is very well-versed at it. In fact, if I was asked about what exactly I liked most in this novel, this would be it – the ability to reach deep into the conscience and extracts unsaid things, which often slip away, even through our thoughts, let alone be touched and felt.

‘Mrs. Dalloway’ is considered a classic, one of the greatest novels of the last century – and very rightly so. Reading this novel, for me, was a great learning experience. Especially with the liberties Woolf took with grammatical syntax and the fiction she wrote despite that, she kind of tells you to write if you want to, what you want to and in whatever way you want to; no bounds, no limits placed! And that is very, very inspiring.