Mrs. Dalloway (edit title)

• Rated 2 stars

“I had a great deal of difficulty forcing my way through Mrs Dalloway. It felt like the sort of book which is technically brilliant, but too sophisticated for the likes of me. It was all stream-of-conciousness narrative, and flee like jumping from one characters scalp to another. I just found it tedious.”

• Rated 0 stars

“Virginia Woolf's brilliant writing and characters make this a memorable read. It is not a mistake that she is considered among the most influential authors of her time. Her work has shaped the way that English is written, and has inspired many authors to write. One of the most interesting things about Mrs. Dalloway is the way it is structured. Mrs. Dalloway takes place throughout a single day. However, by incorporating the pasts of the characters into the story, Woolf stretches that day into years. This is done seamlessly, with the past and present intricately intertwined throughout the book. This manner of writing is incredible because it cleverly emulates human thought. As one reads the book, one is struck by how they might have had the same thoughts as the characters if they had been in their shoes. This effect serves to make Mrs. Dalloway a very readable and engrossing book. It is a literary masterpiece that should not be missed.”

• Rated 0 stars

“It jumps from the perspectives of many characters ranging from an upper-calls woman, to that of a World War I veteran facing mental stress, and then to a corrupt doctor. Mrs. Dalloway’s free flowing structure is a reflection upon one of the novel’s main messages which is that life is a journey and that death is something that we all experience.

The characters of Mrs. Dalloway contemplate what death will be like for they realize it is an inevitability and that the time is growing near for some of them. You can not stop the journey of life at any point for your mind is constantly at work. This is represented by the books lack of divides or chapters. The book allows us to experience many different characters and takes us on a journey to the past and the present. This is a good book because it explores the difference between people and touches upon issues of diversity. We all strive for it, but sometimes it is hard to get such a diverse class of people when there is a growing society of elitists and where everything is judged by tests scores. ”

• Rated 0 stars

“Mrs. Dalloway is about a day in the life of Clarissa Dalloway. Clarissa is throwing a party for her husband and is running chores throughout the day. As she goes throughout her day she runs into people and the narrative changes. As she encounters someone different, the narrative flips to a memory from the people who she encounters about each of them. The novels layout is very hard to understand since the narrative constantly changes back and forth. I didnt particularly like this book because certain topics and plot detail was hard to grasp. ”

• Rated 0 stars

“This is one of the hardest books I have ever read. THe style is very confusing, the narrator is constantly changing. The weirdest thing about this book to me, was that it all took place in just one day. It was every thought that went through Virgina Woolfs head in just one day. Flashbacks were brought up once a memory was mentioned. Although this book was very hard to read, in the completion of it, I feel as though I learned something. To appreciate the time you have, and to value your friends. ”

• Rated 0 stars

“The entire story of Mrs. Dalloway takes place in one day, because Virginia Woolf spends so much time emphasising the stream of consciousness that every character has. The constant presence of death in Mrs. Dalloway, is evident in the broken characters. Clearly, Septimus is the most effected, and he felt the massive death toll for the English the most. If you are interested in a book where the characters are dense, and complex, this is for you. Before the war, Septimus was an ambitious poet that looked up to Shakespeare; it’s safe to assume that he was healthy at the time. After the war, Septimus was mentally unstable, suicidal, and completely detached from his surroundings. Clearly, the horrific and traumatic experiences from the War left Septimus broken. The trench life and the constant threat of death paid its toll on survivors; Septimus embodies the typical soldier suffering from shell shock hysteria. The devastation of the war still exists in the surviving men; the soldiers with an identity similar to Septimus are permanently numbed to their environments. ”

• Rated 3 stars

“The form in which Mrs. Dalloway is written is unique because the story of multiple people is not told by one narrator. Instead, each person encountered in the novel recounts their own activities, feeling, and views from their own perspective. In Mrs. Dalloway, the effect of shifting from one character’s perspective to another’s is a sort of fading in and out. The point of view changes whenever a thought or emotion is sparked in a certain character, and then that character continues on in their own stream of consciousness. It is sometimes difficult to see the shift, especially when a minor character begins thinking, because you are unused to that person’s “style” of thinking.”

• Rated 0 stars

“This book was a very difficult read for me. The way it was written made it far from straightforward and I became very confused. Despite my confusion with this book, I understand how impressive the aura of the text is and I saw that aura completely transferred into The Hours by Michael Cunningham. This book worked as a perfect influence for the Hours and it made me appreciate this book a lot more. I would like to try and read this book again in the future when I understand the style of writing better and I can break down the text in a more sophisticated way. I think it's very important to be able to recognize how well you as a reader are able to pull apart the text and understand it through different lenses of thought. I think with this book I need help in understanding it from all angles.
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• Rated 3 stars

“Reading too many stream of consciousness books would make me want to walk into a river with my pockets full of rocks too. ”

• Rated 0 stars

“We had to read this book over the summer for our College English class. I really loved this book but at first I found it very complex and difficult to read. I had never read anything by Virginia Woolf, so it was obviously a very new and different experience for me because I wasn't used to her style of writing. The book takes place in the course of one day for one society house-wife in England, and even though now a day you see many books that take place in one day, it's cool to think about how revolutionary this genre was when she wrote this book many years ago. I think the themes of the book, which include gender roles, the effect of war, love, sexuality, and many other things, really make you think about your own life, and the genre of the novel in general.”