Mrs Dalloway quotations

Clarissa as hostess - negative x3

1. 'she would marry a Prime Minister and stand at the top of a staircase; the perfect hostess he called her (she had cried over it in her bedroom)'

2. 'the Hughs and the Dalloways' who would 'stifle her soul' and 'make a mere hostess of her'

3. 'at her worst' - 'insincere', 'effusive'

Clarissa as hostess - positive (connector) x5

1. Her party is 'an offering, to combine, to create; but to whom?'

2. 'she felt somehow very like him'

3. 'her only gift was knowing people almost by instinct'

4. 'Clarissa could see' the discord/awkwardness between Prof Brierly and 'little Jim Hutton' - so 'she said she loved Bach…that was the bond between them'

5. for there she was

Clarissa withdrawing to the attic x4

1. 'like a nun withdrawing or a child exploring a tower'

2. 'An hour's complete rest after luncheon' - from Richard

3. 'a diamond, something infinitely precious'

4. 'the most exquisite moment of her whole life'

Miss Kilman and the eclair x2

1. 'swallowed down the last inches of the chocolate éclair'

2. 'If she could grasp her, if she could clasp her, if she could make her hers absolutely and forever and then die; that was all she wanted.'

Miss Kilman general x5

1. 'she had been cheated'

2. 'she had, as a matter of fact, nearly burst into tears when CD laughed at her'

3. 'she could not help being ugly; she could not afford to buy pretty clothes'

4. she was Doris Kilman. She had her degree. She was a woman who had made her way in the world. Her knowledge of modern history was more than respectable.

5. "Don't quite forget me," said Doris Kilman; her voice quivered.

Clarissa and religion x2

1. 'she evolved this atheist's religion of doing good for the sake of goodness' (Clarissa)

2. 'love and religion…how detestable they are!...the cruellest things…clumsy, hot, domineering, hypocritical…infinitely cruel and unscrupulous dressed in a mackintosh coat'

Clarissa’s dislike of MK x3

1. Miss Kilman made 'you feel her superiority, your inferiority; how poor she was; how rich you were'

2. 'she should have been in a factory; behind a counter; Mrs Dalloway and all the other fine ladies'

3. 'it was not her one hated but the idea of her'

Peter visiting Clarissa x8

1. he was in love! Not with her. With some younger woman, of course'

2. ‘always playing with his knife’,

3. Peter ‘[tilts] his pen-knife towards her green dress’

4. 'the elderly man in the hall' p43

5. 'for a single second she could not remember what he was called! So surprised she was to see him, so glad, so shy, so utterly taken aback' p44

6. 'positively trembling; taking both her hands; kissing both her hands' p44 when he sees C for first time

7. 'he burst into tears; wept; wept without the least shame'

8. 'like a virgin protecting chastity, respecting privacy'

Clarissa and Richard as disconnected x2

1. 'a solitude; even between husband and wife a gulf; and that one must respect… for one would not part with it oneself… without losing one's independence, one's self-respect—something, after all, priceless.'

2. 'he could not bring himself to say he loved her'

Clarissa’s age/mortality x6

1. 'She felt very young; at the same time unspeakably aged. She sliced like a knife through everything; at the same time was outside, looking on.'

2. 'feeling herself suddenly shrivelled, aged, breastless'

3. 'It was all over for her. The sheet was stretched and the bed narrow. She had gone up into the tower alone and left them blackberrying in the sun. The door had shut'

4. 'light, vivacious, though she was over fifty, and grown very white since her illness'

5. fear no more the heat of the sun

6. Clarissa 'feared time itself…the dwindling of life; how year by year her share was sliced; how little the margin that remained was capable any longer of stretching, of absorbing, as in the youthful year

Elizabeth

1. 'Elizabeth, with … her inscrutable mystery'

The Prime Minister in the motorcar x2

1. 'air of inscrutable reserve' p17

2. 'greatness was seated within' p17

Hugh Whitbread x5

1. flinging her hands out called him "My Prime Minister!"' (Lady Bruton and Hugh)

2. 'he had been afloat on the cream of English society for fifty-five years. He had known Prime Ministers'

3. Hugh had the most extraordinary, the most natural, the most sublime respect for the British aristocracy'

4. 'the admirable Hugh'

5. Hugh 'kissing her in the smoking room to punish her for saying that women should have votes'

Prime Minister at the party

 'one couldn't laugh at him. He looked so ordinary…poor chap, all rigged up in gold lace…he did very well. He tried to look somebody'

Clarissa considering why she throws parties

'why, after all, did she do these things? Why seek pinnacles and stand drenched in fire? Might it consume her anymore! Burn her to cinders!'

Peter thinking Clarissa is frigid

'But women, he thought, shutting his pocket-knife, don't know what passion is. They don't know the meaning of it to men. Clarissa was as cold as an icicle.'

Septimus’s suffering x4

1. 'this beauty, this exquisite beauty, and tears filled his eyes as he looked at the smoke words languishing and melting…unimaginable beauty…tears ran down his cheeks.'

2. 'like a drowned sailor on a rock' p75

3. Septimus is 'like some colossal figure who has lamented the fate of man for ages in the desert alone…the giant mourner' p77

4. 'happiest man in the world, and the most miserable' p91

Memories x2

1. So on a summer's day waves collect, overbalance, and fall; collect and fall;

2. 'for she was a child…and at the same time a grown woman…holding her life in her arms which…grew larger and larger in her arms, until it became her whole life, a complete life'

time x2

1. 'the other clock, the clock which always struck two minutes after Big Ben'

2. 'the leaden circles dissolved in the air'

Sir William Bradshaw x4

1. 'to his patients he gave three-quarters of an hour' p108

2. 'proportion, divine proportion, Sir William's goddess' p109

3. 'these prophetic Christs and Christesses…should drink milk in bed, as Sir William ordered' p109

4. 'he shut people up'

Connection between Clarissa and Septimus x3

1. 'she felt somehow very like him'

2. 'she could crouch like a bird and gradually revive…she had escaped. But that young man had killed himself'

3. 'somehow it was her disaster - her disgrace'

Clarissa’s identity lost as a wife to Richard

this being Mrs. Dalloway; not even Clarissa anymore; this being Mrs. Richard Dalloway.

Richard - disconnection in marriage x2

1.  C hears 'something fumbling, scratching at the door'

2. 'he could not bring himself to say he loved her'

Holmes to Septimus?

'Didn't one owe perhaps a duty to one's wife? Wouldn't it be better to do something instead of lying in bed?'