Mrs Dalloway quotes

‘Mrs Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself’

In the house Clarissa is only Mrs Dalloway- she lacks her own agency and identity

‘Said’- indirect discourse, reflects the idea of lacking an ability to communicate directly whilst she is an appendage

Death is present in the first line through the flowers, focusing on the notion of perishing- feminine and class connotations

Victorian women weren’t really allowed to leave the house, so Woolf viewed shopping as a great liberty.

‘What a lark! What a plunge’

Foreshadows Septimus’ death

‘A charming woman, Scrope Purvis thought her’ ‘A touch of the bird about her’

First narrative shift, a disjunct to the external world- from the internality of an 18 year old to a 50 year old

Clarissa is compared to an animal we keep in cages- objectification

‘There she perched’

Clarissa becomes what she is seen as- link to the theme of identity

‘Big Ben strikes’

Phallic symbol, acting as a connecting device

‘The leaden circles dissolved in the air’

Idea of the passage of time and mortality, with time as a motif for mortality- death is inevitable

This is masculine time, which drags us forward- feminine time is fluid; a moment can last 2 mins but feel like an hour- its all about the internal experience, not about the external world

Water imagery

Water as a liminal space within the book- Peter Walsh voyages away on water and returns with distinctly feminine qualities

‘Her old friend Hugh- the admirable Hugh!’

Hugh is the patriarch who rules this country- could be a reflection of Woolf’s half brother

He encapsulates all that the empire wanted

‘His very well covered, manly, extremely handsome, perfectly upholstered body’

Hyperbolic linguistics- Hugh is so often described as handsome that he stops being it

Facade of society- description being like an armchair- many characters are described as objects

‘His wife had some internal ailment’ (Hugh’s wife) ‘Clarissa Dalloway would quite understand’

Evelyn Whitbread probably has the menopause- vague description- in the first draft of MD, the menopause was described as ‘it’

For Woolf, menopause defies women of femininity- draws a parallel between Clarissa and Evelyn

‘Felt very sisterly, and oddly conscious at the same time of her hat’

Clarissa feels hyper aware of her femininity- internally and externally- despite her desire to comfort Evelyn, her sisterliness is denied by masculine characters

‘Stand at the top of a staircase’

Notion of Clarissa being distant and removed in her age

‘The perfect hostess he had called her (she had cried over it in her bedroom)’

This was not what she wanted at 18- this is the construct of a tragedy

Peter makes Clarissa confront her intellectual self that she has now lost- he has access to an emotional reality she cannot confront

‘A little independence there must be’ (in marriage)

Woolf had a relationship founded on independence

‘With Peter everything had to be shared’

Link to ‘a little independence’- contrast in needs

‘She felt very young- at the same time unspeakably aged’

Oxymoronic, internal vs internal world- link to identity

‘It was very very dangerous to live even one day’

Reference to suicide- septimus has to die so Clarissa can confront the reality of life

‘She would not say of herself, I am this, I am that’

Self contradictory- Clarissa believes she does not possess masculine intelligence yet she possesses feminine intelligence: the ability to read people

Link to feminine fluidity

‘Fear no more the heat o’ the sun Nor the furious winter’s rages’

Quote from Shakespeare’s Cymbeline- acceptance of fate- there is peace in death- in Cymbeline, the man dies but the woman doesn’t

Notion of physicality- men have body power but no soul power- women have soul power but no body (Clarissa and Peter)

There is a constant terror of ending life in Mrs Dalloway- the triumph of the book is what Clarissa gains by not ending it

‘Jaunts and jollities’ ‘soapy sponge’ ‘memoirs’ ‘big game shooting in Nigeria’

Low down literature in terms of sophistication, yet it’s interesting that Clarissa also picks up on Shakespeare

‘Oh if she could have had her life over again!’

Clarissa feels as though she is already dead- as a woman, she already has no life

‘This body she wore… seemed nothing’ ‘she had the oddest sense of being herself invisible’ ‘there being no more marrying, no more having of children’ ‘This being Mrs Richard Dalloway’

External vs internal- part of the most important passage in the first 100 pages- death being the inability to fulfil what is expected of women

‘Astonishing and rather solemn progress with the rest of them’

Idea of all moving in one direction- towards death- memento mori

‘Her Elizabeth’

Foreshadows ‘my Elizabeth,’ which upsets Peter Walsh and Elizabeth

‘Richard said she was very able, really had a historical mind’ ‘they (Elizabeth and miss kilman) were inseparable’

Miss kilman has masculine intelligence- Clarissa believes people can be internal and external

‘Ecstasy made people callous’

Link to what society makes people do

‘Dressed in a green mackintosh coat’ you felt ‘her superiority, your inferiority’

Societal concern- obsessed with what she wears- upholstering doesn’t reflect what’s beneath- consumerist and classist concerns

Idea that a lack of a fashion sense makes you anti-human

‘she would have loved Miss Kilman! But not in this world. No’

Clarissa seems to love Miss Kilman as she is everything that she cannot be, everything that tempts her

Clarissa buying roses ‘like frilled linen’, ‘every flower seemed to burn by itself’

Buying flowers creates a relationship with the other person, and affords her kindness from Miss Pimm. There is also a recognition of the desire that rests rooted in human souls, the delicacy and vulnerability that stems from this.

Passage on flowers

It overwhelms the stream of consciousness, becoming it, and linking to female sexual organs

‘It lifted her up and up when- oh! A pistol shot in the street outside!’

Patriarchal symbol wakes Clarissa up to societal reality

‘Mystery had brushed them with her wing; they had heard the voice of authority; the spirit of religion was abroad with her eyes bandaged tight and her lips gaping wide’

The car becomes a metaphor of modernity- there is something blinded, vulnerable, sexual about the description of secularisation. Modernity is what brings people together and makes them stop, not religion.

‘Eyes which had that look of apprehension in them’ (Septimus)

Woolf described her depression as a form of apprehension. Septimus is waiting for something, death? Clarissa too was awaiting something on the first page.

‘People must notice; people must see’ ‘Help, help! She wanted to cry’

Is she afraid of being seen, or wanting to be seen? Societal gaze- it’s not her divergence, it’s her husbands- inverted relationship- it’s not a husband worried about his wife’s madness, it’s her worried about him. Rezia has no voice in society to articulate what she needs, like Clarissa.

‘A piece of bone’

Metonymy- she tries to get him, but she ends up with a bland aspect- ownership- she can’t have his internal reality, so grabs his external reality

‘Glaxo’ ‘Kreemo’ ‘Toffee’

The airplane unlocks the attention of all who view it- unlocking sexual inhibitions perhaps? Glaxo advertised baby food- what is the role of a mother if not to care anymore. Everyone projects their desires onto the plane. Babies, hats, all external appendages become inconsequential in this moment of collective perception.

Significance of the airplane

Reminder of the war- the wound of WW1 has not yet healed, being over physically but not mentally. People try to make sense of the war, but ultimately cannot, and are eventually left with post war triviality like toffee.

‘it was cowardly for a man to say he would kill himself, but Septimus had fought; he was brave’

Worth- masculinity is based on courage and destruction wreaked- it is right to take others’ lives, but wrong to take your own- dichotomous

‘Waving her [Maisie Johnson] aside, lest she should see Septimus’

Being a wife seems to get in the way of being a woman- Rezia cannot show feminine solidarity, even though they are both displaced young women

Carrie Dempster

Same initials as Clarissa- another old woman who has survived. She wishes to ‘whisper a word’ to Maisie, as Maisie wishes to cry for help; both women see the solution of feminine solidarity but cannot convey it. They are incredibly close, yet cannot converse.

House ‘as cool as a vault’

Clarissa’s death of self reappears as soon as she enters the house- this is a place where secrets are kept, where she reverts to her married self

‘She felt like a nun’

Ultimate symbol of patriarchal oppression- the plane is symbolic of modernity, but Clarissa upholds traditional habits and old devotions

’Soft with the glow of rose petals for some’ ‘she felt herself suddenly shrivelled, aged, breastless’ ‘out of doors, out of the window’

Clarissa is hyper aware of external symbols of youth; she cannot dream about it without registering her current state, and feels a pull towards death as she walks

‘Like a nun withdrawing, or a child exploring a tower’

Old and young at the same time- liminality.

‘A match burning in a crocus’

Sexuality- orgasm

Sex can exist outside of generative intercourse, and sexuality is more than just a physical context

‘The most exquisite moment of her whole life’ ‘Star-gazing?’

The patriarchy interrupting the kiss- Woolf is interested in sexuality, but not interested in pinning it down