Mrs. Dalloway Ten

It is interesting to note the similes in Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf and how they contradict one another. Clarissa Dalloway is called "bird-like"yet earlier on the book says:

Her only gift was knowing people almost by instinct, she thought, walking on. If you put her in a room with someone, up went her back like a cat's; or she purred.

A cat's instinct is also to enjoy catching and eating birds. This contradiction makes Clarissa appear unstable. Virginia Woolf may be subtly foreshadowing in Mrs. Dalloway. By thinking about herself as a cat, it makes Clarissa think of herself as one in power. If others are reminded of birds, which are flighty and anxious- always on the lookout for danger- then it says something about her character and how mothers perceive her differently than she sees herself. Cats and birds are symbolic for two very different reasons.

Woolf, Virginia. Mrs. Dalloway. New York: Harcourt, Brace and, 1925. Print.

Mrs. Dalloway Nine

"Up in the sky swallows swooping, swerving, flinging themselves in and out, round and round, yet always with perfect control as if elastics held them.." (Woolf 69)

In Mrs. Dalloway, Virgina Woolf talks about birds as if they are puppets held up by perfectly controlled strings. This is a similar idea to that of the almanac in Sestina by Elizabeth Bishop.

Tidying up, the old grandmother
hangs up the clever almanac                                                                                                  on its string. Birdlike, the almanac
hovers half open above the child,
hovers above the old grandmother
and her teacup full of dark brown tears.

The idea that things are not what they seem to be is a very prominent one in both of the texts. There are always higher ups controlling what goes on in everyday life; normal beings are mere puppets. This exaggeration also makes normal life seem more complicated than it really needs to be. 


Sestina, Elizabeth Bishop
Woolf, Virginia. Mrs. Dalloway. New York: Harcourt, Brace and, 1925. Print.

Mrs. Dalloway Eight

"Every one has friends who were killed in the War. Every one gives up something when they marry" (Woolf 66)

This quote suggests that everyone must suffer personal losses in order to grow and change in life. During the World Wars, most men went off to fight so it was very common for people to know others who'd died while off fighting. In Mrs. Dalloway, Virginia Woolf also suggests that everyone must give up something when they marry, whether it be freedom or flings with other people or bad habits that their spouses do not approve of. In a sense, this quote could possibly suggest that Woolf believes that marriage is a war, that the battlefield is what one must cross every day in a married life. Woolf herself married what she quoted to be a "penniless Jew," so in the 1930's, life was obviously a struggle.

Woolf, Virginia. Mrs. Dalloway. New York: Harcourt, Brace and, 1925. Print.

Mrs. Dalloway Seven

"There they go, thought Peter Walsh, pausing at the edge of the pavement; and all the exalted statues, Nelson, Gordon, Havelock, the black, the spectacular images of great soldiers stood looking ahead of them, as if they too had made the same renunciation.." (Woolf 51)

The statues in Virginia Woolf's book, Mrs. Dalloway, are in fact not actually black, but rather seen as bronze silhouettes to Peter in Trafalgar Square. Mr. Walsh assumes that the statues, all men of war, are agreeing in the same formal rejection of something. Nelson was mortally wounded whilst in battle, Gordon died during the siege of Khartoum, and Havelock died a miserable death from dysentery, yet they all look 'spectacular' in their frozen poses. Characters in Mrs. Dalloway seem heroic as well if observed from far away, but once their true identities are revealed, none of them are in a position to reject anyone else's ways of life for not being good enough.

Woolf, Virginia. Mrs. Dalloway. New York: Harcourt, Brace and, 1925. Print.

Mrs. Dalloway Six

"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." (Woolf 47)

Virginia Woolf has a similar idea in Mrs. Dalloway as Seamus Heaney in his poem, Blackberry Picking. Everything was over for Clarissa Dalloway, such as things were for the characters in the poem upon realizing that all their preciously picked fruit had gone to waste because of their greed.

We hoarded the fresh berries in the byre.
But when the bath was filled we found a fur,
A rat-grey fungus, glutting on our cache.
The juice was stinking too. Once off the bush
The fruit fermented, the sweet flesh would turn sour.
I always felt like crying. It wasn't fair.

Clarissa has more than most women her age could ask for, yet she finds herself in a sticky situation where she doesn't know what she wants and even more she cannot control everyone's fate around her. It all seems very unfair. 


Blackberry Picking, Seamus Heaney
Woolf, Virginia. Mrs. Dalloway. New York: Harcourt, Brace and, 1925. Print.

Mrs. Dalloway Five

"The ideas were Sally's, of course- but very soon she was just as excited- read Plato in bed before breakfast; read Morris; read Shelley by the hour." (Woolf 33)

Clarissa Dalloway is enamored by her childhood friend, Sally Seton in Mrs. Dalloway, by Virginia Woolf. She looks up to Sally, who once "ran naked through the hallway at Bourton." Clarissa remarked that "her behavior frequently shocked old Aunt Helena," yet it makes her even more interested in Sally. This idea of a love affair between two females may be due to the fact that Virginia herself dabbled in gay affairs, having one herself with her longtime friend, Vita Sackville-West, who was also a writer. It is interesting to note that several years before the brief affair happened between Clarissa and Sally in 1889, there was a criminalization of male homosexual acts, but female ones were not included in the law. In a way, Virginia was able to use writing as a means of clearing her conscious with both her ideas of religion and sexual preferences (although she was married to a man for over a quarter of a century).

Woolf, Virginia. Mrs. Dalloway. New York: Harcourt, Brace and, 1925. Print.

Mrs. Dalloway Four

"..not for a moment did she believe in God; but all the more, she thought, taking up the pad, must one repay in daily life to servants, yes, to dogs and canaries, above all to Richard her husband, who was the foundation of it- of the gay sounds, of the green lights, of the cook even whistling..." (Woolf 29)

In Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf, Clarissa is enraptured by Modernism in the sense that she questions religion and outwardly proclaims that she does not believe in God. Because of this, she believes that it is ever more crucial to do good things for others, for there is no time to sin; no afterlife to make things right and settle one's affairs. Mrs. Dalloway believes that her husband is at the root of why her life is the way it is, and for that, he is the reason that everything is the way it is. She seems to think that she is extremely indebted to him.

Woolf, Virginia. Mrs. Dalloway. New York: Harcourt, Brace and, 1925. Print.

Mrs. Dalloway Three

"Away and away the aeroplane shot, till it was nothing but a bright spark; an aspiration; a concentration; a symbol (so it seemed to Mr. Bentley, vigorously rolling his strip of turf at Greenwich) of man's soul; of his determination, thought Mr. Bentley, sweeping round the cedar tree, to get outside his body, beyond his house, by means of thought, Einstein, speculation, mathematics, the Mendelian theory-away the aeroplane shot." (Woolf 28)

Virginia Woolf was a very science-oriented thinker. In her book, Mrs. Dalloway, she incorporates this way of thinking by alluding to Einstein, who was an extremely pure thinker. Woolf, through her main character Clarissa, questions the idea of God, and embraces the disembodiment from this idea that Einstein also embraces. As a scientist, Einstein changed the ideas people had of time and space, and composed concepts to support his reasoning. In the passage above, Mr. Bentley seems to be extremely humanized and grounded, simply on his turf at Greenwich, where as Einstein and his ideas seem to soar through the sky like the aeroplane.


Woolf, Virginia. Mrs. Dalloway. New York: Harcourt, Brace and, 1925. Print.

Mrs. Dalloway Two

"Look! Her wedding ring slipped- she had grown so thin. It was she who suffered- but she had nobody to tell." (Woolf 23)

In Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf, Clarissa is an aging woman that pities herself about the relationship she holds with her husband, Richard. During the day that the reader is taken through in the novel, Clarissa does not come across as having many close friends, she merely has acquaintances that she runs into whilst going about her errands in preparation for the party she is throwing. This section reminds me of an excerpt in The Last Tournament, by Lord Alfred Tennyson:
'Take thou the jewels of this dead innocence, And make them, an thou wilt, a tourney-prize.' This quote seems similar in the sense that Clarissa was an innocent young girl, a prize jewel, a 'tourney-prize' that Richard claimed as his wife, and not much more than that. Now that she is growing older, the prize is becoming slightly tarnished.


The Last Tournament, 1872, Lord Alfred Tennyson
Woolf, Virginia. Mrs. Dalloway. New York: Harcourt, Brace and, 1925. Print.

Mrs. Dalloway One

"She had a right to his arm, though it was without feeling. He would give her, who was so simple, so impulsive, only twenty-four, without friends in England, who had left Italy for his sake, a piece of bone." (Woolf 16)

 In Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf, Richard finds Clarissa in Italy when she is a young and naive woman of twenty-four, and brings her home to England to make her his bride. Clarissa, being a rather impulsive woman, agrees to go with him. Virginia Woolf suggests with her language that Mrs. Dalloway was once a plain and humble girl, who was starving for affection and therefore would take whatever was thrown at her. A bone was tossed by Richard Dalloway, and she hungrily took the bait. Because of the way Richard courted Clarissa, the relationship structure becomes slightly less affectionate and more because marriage is what is expected of young, proper gentlemen.

Woolf, Virginia. Mrs. Dalloway. New York: Harcourt, Brace and, 1925. Print.