Mrs Dalloway key quotes

opening line

Mrs Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself

Big Ben - imposing, page 2

‘out it boomed. first a warning, musical; then the hour, irrevocable’

Peter of Clarissa - hostess, page 5

‘she would marry a prime minister and stand at the top of the staircase; the perfect hostess he had called her (she had cried over it in her bedroom) she had the makings of the perfect hostess

Clarissa - death, page 7

‘did it matter than she must inevitably cease completely; all this must go on without her; did she resent it; or did it not become consoling that death ended absolutely?’

Clarissa - being Mrs Dalloway, page 8

she had the oddest sense of being herself invisible; unseen; unknown; there being no more marrying, no more having of children now […] this being Mrs Dalloway, not even Clarissa anymore, this being Mrs Richard Dalloway

Lucrezia - love, page 20

to love makes one solitary, she thought

Lucrezia - wedding ring, page 20

her wedding ring slipped - she had grown so thin. it was she who suffered - but she had nobody to tell

Clarissa - nun, page 27

‘like a nun withdrawing, or a child exploring a tower, she went upstairs […] she could not dispel a virginity preserved through childbirth which clung to her like a sheet’

Clarissa - feelings for Sally, page 30

‘the purity, the integrity of her feelings for Sally. it was not like one’s feelings for a man’

Clarissa - not old, page 33

‘she was not old yet. she had just broken into her fifty-second year. months and months of it were still untouched. June, July, August. Each still remained almost whole.

‘in love’ pages 40-41

when discussing Peter being in love with daisy, ‘in love’ is repeated 9 times

Clarissa and Peter - Big Ben, page 42

the sounds of big ben striking the half hour struck out between them with extraordinary vigour, as if a young man, strong, indifferent, inconsiderate, were swinging dumbbells this way and that’

peter - time, page 45

time flaps on the mast. there we stop; there we stand. rigid, the skeleton of habit alone uphold the human frame

Peter on Clarissa - cockatoo, page 50

he had married his housemaid […] she was absurdly dressed - “like a cockatoo”

Lucrezia - give up, page 60

‘everyone gives up something when they marry. She had given up her home.’

Septimus - marriage, page 60

‘the marriage is over, he thought, with agony, with relief. the rope was cut; he mounted; he was free’

Septimus - dead but alive, page 63

I have been dead but am yet still alive. But let me rest still, he begged’

Peter recounting Sally - Dalloways and Hughs, page 70

‘she implored him, half laughing of course, to carry off Clarissa, to save her from the Hughs and Dalloways who would stifle her soul… make a mere hostess of her’

Septimus - England, page 83

to save an England which consisted entirely of Shakespeare’s plays and Miss Isabel Pole in a green dress

Septimus - sin, page 83

‘except the sin for which human nature had condemned him… the verdict of human nature on such a wretch was death’

Sir William - page 91

nobody lives for themselves alone

Richard - greatest mistake, page 107

‘they never spoke of it, not for years, which he though, grasping his red and white roses together, (a vast bunch in tissue paper) is the greatest mistake in the world’

Clarissa - unbelievable death, page 114

how unbelievable death was! - that it must end; and no one in the whole world would know how she has loved it all

clarissa - the soul, page 118

‘love and religion would destroy that - whatever it was. the privacyof the soul.’

Clarissa - time and love, page 119

‘love - but here the other clock… dumped down as if Big Ben were all very well with his majesty laying done the law.’

Septimus’ death - page 140

flung himself vigorously, violently down onto Mrs Fulmer’s area railings

Clarissa reflecting on Septimus - defiance, page 173

death was defiance. Death was an attempt to communicate; people feeling the impossibility of reaching the centre which, mystically, evaded them; closeness drew apart; rapture faded; one was alone. There was an embrace in death’

Clarissa reflecting on Septimus - like him, page 174

she felt somehow very like him – the young man who had killed himself. She felt very glad he had done it, thrown it away as they went on living

Sally on Clarissa - snob

‘clarissa was at heart a snob – one had to admit it, a snob. And it was that that had come between them, she was convinced.’

peter on clarissa - closing line

‘what is this terror? What is this ecstasy? He thought to himself. What is it that fills me with extraordinary excitement? / it is Clarissa, he thought./ for there she was.