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    Mrs Dalloway: "It might be possible that the world itself is without meaning."
    Mrs Dalloway: "It might be possible that the world itself is without meaning."
    Mrs Dalloway: "It might be possible that the world itself is without meaning."
    Ebook220 pages5 hours

    Mrs Dalloway: "It might be possible that the world itself is without meaning."

    By Virginia Woolf

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    About this ebook

    Adeline Virginia Woolf ( 1882 - 28th March 1941) is one of Britain’s leading literary talents and a pioneer of modernist writing especially ‘stream of consciousness’ which provides the reader with the flow of thoughts from the naked inner voice without any filter, order or arrangement. She overcame sexual abuse from her brothers, the death of her mother and then sister in her childhood but it was the death of her father as a young adult that institutionalised her. These dark emotional episodes were to reappear at different times throughout her life but did not prevent her prolific output of some of the most poignant and poetic prose ever written. Mrs Dalloway is often thought of as one of Woolf’s most brilliant novels and was the basis of the award winning film The Hours. It takes place on a June day in post WWI London where wealthy socialite Clarissa Dalloway is preoccupied with the finishing touches to her party. She considers those that will be attending her party that evening, past loves, people who have touched her life, a re-evaluation of her practical marriage and her hesitancy in growing old. These flashbacks, reminiscences and memories conjure up a vivid and insightful portrait that make this a riveting read and a classic work by a brilliant author at the top of her game.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherA Word To The Wise
    Release dateOct 11, 2013
    ISBN9781780006925
    Mrs Dalloway: "It might be possible that the world itself is without meaning."
    Author

    Virginia Woolf

    Virginia Woolf was an English novelist, essayist, short story writer, publisher, critic and member of the Bloomsbury group, as well as being regarded as both a hugely significant modernist and feminist figure. Her most famous works include Mrs Dalloway, To the Lighthouse and A Room of One’s Own.

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    Reviews for Mrs Dalloway

    4/5

    3,984 ratings151 reviews

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    • 4/5
      Not the most entertaining book but an interesting writing style. Needs good concentration to not miss a change in the storyline.
    • 5/5
      “Mrs. Dalloway” is a classic, considered by some to be the finest modern novel. That sort of recommendation is enough to make me approach carefully; I’m not educated enough to fully appreciate the great works and I find reading them a chore. But I’m happy to say that, although I found the first bit tedious, it didn’t take me long to get sucked into the story. It’s not that the plot is engaging; there is almost no plot. The book is merely a record of one day in the life of Clarissa Dalloway, and that of a few of her friends, and some people that she passes by. We are given access to their thoughts as they go about their day. Clarissa buys flowers, mends a dress, and gives a party. She hosts a visitor, just back from India. She thinks about a girl from her school days, with whom she had been in love. Septimus Smith, suffering from PTSD from WW I and the loss of a fellow soldier with whom he’d been in love, quietly sinks into a fatal madness. The stream of consciousness leads us seamlessly through the minds of these people; there are no chapters to provide breaking points. Wolff’s prose is simply beautiful; she describes the everyday moments that are usually forgotten or ignored as things of beauty. But the book is not just pretty prose; there is surprising depth to some of the characters. Clarissa and Septimus, in particular, although not directly connected, seem to be two sides of the questions of life and death. Five stars.
    • 4/5
      I reluctantly gave it a high mark because I was eventually won over. She has lots of good moments in the writing, starting with her appreciation of 'life', especially in the context of the recent war, and the wonderful description of a June day. There is a note of regret throughout, about her charmed, but naive youth, and turning down an interesting man's marriage proposal, although he turns out to be hopeless. There are no chapters and the mental meanderings are a bit purple and prolonged at times. But the knives come out for poor Miss Kilman, (interesting choice of name), the Christian who is clearly hated by Dalloway and I imagine by Virginia. Ugly sweaty and poor, though principled. Her influence on daughter Elizabeth seems unlikely. And finally what is it about the Love interest, Peter's pocket knife, which he is constantly fiddling with?
    • 4/5
      masterpiece by one of the greatest writers in English literary history, Mrs. Dalloway is both a moving and innovative novel that breaks new ground in the representation of inner experience. A day in the life of a London woman, Clarissa Dalloway, Woolf's novel is a meditation on time, perception, memory and experience. Informed by the great novelists of the previous century as well as contemporary trends in philosophy, art and literature, Mrs. Dalloway is a towering achievement by an extraordinary artist.
    • 2/5
      This book has no chapters and is basically the stream of consciousness of Mrs Dalloway during one day. It was difficult to read without the natural chapter breaks. The style also didn't suit me--the author just lists random things that the character has seen without explaining why they are relevant or what they relate to. She does this in the middle of other trains of thought which can be confusing. There was nothing offensive about this book, I just didn't get on with it.
    • 5/5
      I finally got around to reading this one. Over forty years ago I was taking this seminar from a renowned scholar of existentialism and this was on the reading list. Unfortunately, the week I was supposed to have discussed the book at his home with about a dozen other students I was being hammered with other course work (most notably in chemistry), and despite its short length I had to fake my way through the evening. Too bad, because this is a brilliantly written novel, deceivingly light in comparison to its obvious influences, the recent works by Joyce and Proust. But it is anything but light despite its readability. Highly recommended.
    • 3/5
      Op zich een relatief mager, dun verhaaltje, over 1 dag in juni 1923 in Londen; maar zeer ruime diepgang. Thema’s: oud worden, vriendschap onmogelijk, eenzaamheid, schone schijn en innerlijke leegheid tegenover gevoel en avontuur. Vorm: innerlijke monologen en omniscient beschrijvingen, maar 1 grote golf, continue stroom.Centrale thema: waanzin en gezond verstand. Onverbiddelijkheid van de tijd. Zeer compacte schrijfstijl met korte tussenzinnen, vol impressies; erg joyceaans, techniek van nevenschikkende reacties, telkens verschuivend perspectief, en de rijdende auto als tussengewoven draad; verwantschap met The Dead
    • 2/5
      One word : boring.
    • 3/5
      This month we ventured into the classics with Virginia Woolf's Mrs Dalloway. We try to include at least two classics a year, believing it enriches our reading experiences, as so many of them are referred to in contemporary novels.As society hostess Clarissa Dalloway prepares for one of her fashionable parties, neighbour Septimus Warren Smith, a World War I veteran, contemplates suicide. Social contrasts and similarities become interwoven in a thought provoking and at times disturbing story.Unlike the Great Gatsby and Wuthering Heights, Dalloway did not score high with our group, but it did produce a lively discussion. One of the best we've had in my opinion!Nancy loved its beautiful prose and clever structure - something we all generally agreed on. This however was not enough for Ann, who found it self-indulgent and just plain boring! She felt she could see how Woolf was compiling the story with clear pointers and was simply out to shock.Denise found it hard going at first but persisted and was awarded with a great book, one she will not forget and would probably not of read outside the book club.Not surprisingly, we found our talk turning towards the social classes of 1920's England and the dos and don'ts of its society. It was mentioned that what was then called 'class structure', (politically incorrect today) is now called 'tradition'. Class distinction has been a common thread in many of our book discussions, which makes one think it is and always will be an endurable theme in popular novels.And of course we eventually found ourselves discussing the film 'The Hours' which is roughly based on Mrs Dalloway, and the book's original title.For those who had seen it, the opinion was of a brilliantly produced film that made one thing absolutely clear - every generation has their own Mrs. Dalloway!
    • 4/5
      All the action within this novel takes place during one day and evening as Mrs Clarissa Dalloway, an upper class woman, is first preparing for, then throws a party in the evening. While still at home before she sets out to run her errands, she is visited by Peter Walsh, a man she's known since she was a young girl and who once asked her to marry him. For the whole of the novel, we wander from one stream of thoughts to another, with Clarissa's mind wandering from the moment's happenings and backwards into the past, then without preamble we are following Peter's thoughts, then Clarissa's husband and so on, with the author's focus wandering between every person encountered in the novel. Clarissa thinks about the life choices she has made. Peter has just come back from India and is seeking a divorce from his wife now that he has fallen in love with a much younger married woman. Clarissa's husband has bought her flowers and intends to tell her he loves her, something he presumably hasn't said in a very long time. There is Doris Kilman, the teacher of Clarissa's daughter Elizabeth, who, while she venerates the young girl to a degree that borders on desire (or as much desire as a religious fanatic will make allowances for), despises her mother Clarissa for all she stands for as a society woman living a life of ease and luxury. We meet Septimus Warren Smith, sitting in the park with his wife; he is a war veteran suffering from a very bad case of shell-shock who is being treated for suicidal depression. His wife is concerned because he talks to himself and to his deceased army friend Evans, who may have been much more than just a buddy, and together they are waiting to meet a psychiatrist who will suggest a course of treatment for the young man. I had a couple of false stars with this book over the years, never making it past the first couple of pages, and must say one needs to be in the right frame of mind to fully appreciate this short, yet very profound novel. Having just finished reading A Room of One's Own I found myself in the right mood for more of Woolf's deep reflections on life and how we are affected by circumstances and the people we are surrounded by, whether by choice or happenstance. Once one gets accustomed to the flow of words, which doesn't follow a traditional narrative style with chapters and commentary, but pours forth in an organic way meant to mimic a real-life experience, one is transported by the portraits Woolf paints of these people, whom we get to know from the inside out, as opposed to the other way round. Because of this, there is a timeless quality to this novel, even though the events it alludes to are very much fixed in the London of the 1920s.
    • 4/5
      Mrs. Dalloway relates the day in the life of Clarissa Dalloway, an English high-society matron during post-World War I. The novel deftly weaves together snippets of several characters in a stream of consciousness style as Mrs. Dalloway prepares for a party she is hosting that evening. Some of the characters who flit in and out include Clarissa's old flame Peter Walsh. Peter was jilted by Clarissa in their youth. He had moved to India to pursue a career and several failed love affairs and seems out of step with his peers. Septimus Smith is a WW I veteran suffering from shell shock, who is cared for by his Italian wife Rezia. Elizabeth is Clarissa's 17 year old daughter, who seems destined to follow her mother's footsteps, despite not being all that interested in society. Sally Seton is an old friend of Clarissa's who she may have had a lesbian affair with in their youth.Despite several of the characters coming from vastly different backgrounds and some of them never even meeting Mrs. Dalloway, the author does a very good job of knitting these differing points of view together in a coherent and intelligent way.
    • 5/5
      In her inimitable writing style, Woolf created a novel that beautifully captures the complicated interactions between our mental terrain and the external world always pressing on us. The story begins with Mrs. Dalloway planning for her party that evening, and deciding that she needs to buy the flowers herself. As she walks to the shop, her observations of her surroundings trigger memories and emotions, thoughts that jump from past to present to future in no chronological order, and images that are vague and associative or concrete and embodied stories. Woolf has such mastery in the way she captures a mind. The subconscious and the conscious twining together, the way our thoughts can hop from coherent and functional concentration to light reverie in seconds. How our mind can travel down a chain of thoughts, whilst we are almost unaware of the process, and arrive at a new topic that seems completely unrelated, but actually had a logical progression. I am not actually straying from a plot synopsis, because the majority of the book actually takes place within these interior dimensions. As Mrs. Dalloway prepares for her evening party, we frequently see her thoughts, rather than action or dialogue. Just as the mind nimbly sweeps from one idea to the next, so does the omniscient narrator skillfully move from perspective to perspective. While Clarissa is preparing her party, starting with the flowers and returning home to mend her dress for the night, her old lover Peter Walsh is just returning to England. One of his first stops is at Clarissa's house; he surprises her while she is in the middle of her sewing, and while she clutches her scissors, and he plays with his pocket knife, they have a friendly conversation that contains much more depth in the memories and undercurrents than in what is actually said. (I read a review that pointed out the importance of being armed in this book, having weapons, as this scene eloquently illustrates.) During this interlude, the narrative moves smoothly from Clarissa's mind to Peter's and back again, but eventually leaves when Peter does, and follows him as he walks from Clarissa's house to his hotel. Again, the reader enjoys a long sequence where the outside world is just a vehicle to evoke the more interesting inner thoughts and permutations. Actually, the correlation of physically walking through London and mentally wandering through memories is a trope in the story; we follow Clarissa, Peter, Septimus and Rezia - even Richard and Elizabeth Dalloway for short periods of time - and these journeys occupy the majority of the book. While the characters roam, the reader is invited to occupy their most private mental musings.A narrative with so little action, and so much introspection, may sound like a dull read, but it absolutely is not. I have never read an author who was able to portray in words, in a story, the inexplicable workings of our minds; no, our souls. Woolf's language is gorgeous; the imagery is powerful, moving, strong. She creates extended metaphors that make my writer's heart quiver with delighted admiration. Her grasp of beautiful language rivets the attention. Most writers need action to drive the story forward, but in this case, the fascination is focused inward, and is so compelling that only a minimal plot is needed to contain the characterization that takes place on a grand scale. We learn so much more about the people in this story than in novels of comparable length. They feel like real people, This is a complicated novel.
    • 5/5
      Most astonishing this time round was the anticipation in Woolf of the not-yet-existing Frankfurt school. Famously (so far as I know: I'm boning up on it this summer), the Frankfurt school discovered links between rationalism, positivism, and state violence; WWI and, later, fascism were not (or at least not simply) negations of the Enlightenment, but part of the same. With that in mind, reread Walsh and Richard Dalloway and their civilized, cynical pose toward Empire and its great projects, reread Septimus Smith, sacrificing himself to Shakespeare and crushed by psychology. I'm sure this argument has been made hundreds of times before, but to this medievalist, it's brand new and fun. For my students, perhaps not so much so.

      And good lord people who think the novel's boring and hate it because it's plotless: yeah, being plotless is just the point, as this is central to Woolf's critique of the arrogance of narrative teleology. I hate to say ecriture feminine, but, well, there: I said it.

      By the way: I chose this edition because: a) used copies are very cheap; b) it includes a map of London with the itineraries of the characters clearly marked. Understanding the order of the novel requires knowing London, so there you go.
    • 5/5
      Absolutely loved it. It’s so complex you have to slow down and read each paragraph as its own story. Truly a poetic masterpiece
    • 2/5
      Though the ahead-of-its-time brilliance cannot be denied, Woolf's bewildering, exceedingly complicated narrative style may make the story inaccessible to all but the most dedicated of readers.
    • 4/5
      I loved her precise, almost clinical analysis of emotions!
    • 4/5
      The entire story takes place over a single day, beginning with Mrs. Dalloway (Clarissa) planning for a society party she is throwing that evening, because that's what she does and that's what she's good at. Her thoughts about nearly everything under the sun are shared with us through some very long and complicated sentences; then one thought leads to another; then her old love Peter stops by for a visit, leading to a perfect segue into his thoughts and meanderings about life, love, and regrets; then he goes out for a stroll and there’s someone else, such as Septimus and his wife (who Clarissa also ran into on her earlier jaunt), and Septimus is suffering from post traumatic stress disorder from serving in the first World War and seeing his friend blown to bits, with no feelings at this juncture about anything/anyone, other than a desire to kill himself, much to the distress of his immigrant wife, who wants nothing more than to have a baby. The entire book is like this review, just a stream of thoughts and characterizations, making me wish Woolf would stop obsessing what time it is and get back to what Clarissa is up to, and will we ever get to this exalted party? I did enjoy the storyline buried deep down in there somewhere, if only the sentences weren’t quite so... so like they are! Great commentary on society and the after effects of war.
    • 5/5
      Oh what bullshit I could write here. But I won't. No, not in so many words. This book is a reinvention of form, but that's not important because it's not driven by the need to show off. So the reinvention (though necessary) is not the point! It's a means to an end, that end being the need to reconnect, to feel again like we once did about so many things but have been so pathetically unable to. So instead of bullshit I'll just say this, that Mrs. Dalloway killed me a little, and that's a good thing. Fucking shit.
    • 4/5
      A modernist classic, perfect use of the steam-of-consciousness narrative technique and a beautiful story overall. A bit difficult to read but once you get use to the style it's much easier.
    • 2/5
      This book is the story of a single day in Clarissa Dalloway's life as she prepares for a party. Famous for its stream of consciousness narrative, I found my stream of consciousness straying away from what Clarissa was planning to do for the party, to what I was planning for dinner that night. This book is so highly regarded that I really wanted to like it. I wouldn't say the book was a bust, but you have to be in the right frame of mind for this one. I think I'll try some other Virginia Woolf titles and maybe pick this up again.
    • 4/5
      Woolf's lyrical sentences brought this book to life. Don't confuse her craft with stream of consciousness because these sentences have been executed skilfully and with precision. All of her characters are well-crafted and by seeing into their minds rather than having a strict narrator, readers are able to feel much more than guess at how characters are reacting to various stimuli. The title character is rather hard to tolerate, but her foil, Septimus, provides just enough of a break from her narrative arc to keep reading. This is definitely a commentary on social class and agency. The women who have the means to live according to their desires choose comfortable, safe lives and women such as Rezia support themselves and manage a household. Lady Bruton, however, seems to be a hybrid of both these types. She is a product of her class, but also has rather progressive views regarding the negativities of marriage, although they rather favour men and view women as dull accessories. Possibly the strongest and most moving parts of this novel deal with Septimus. Woolf apparently wrote just about everything in her life down and it was her own mood swings (mania/depressive episodes) which she put to paper to describe this character's shell-shock. This makes his agony palpable and secures his place as, arguably, the most interesting character in the novel. Overall, this is a quick read, both charming and engaging, with characters you will love and despise.
    • 5/5
      This is my first book by Virginia Woolf. It was a slow read for me, as I savored the language and the imagery. Woolf takes us deeply into one day as Clarissa Dalloway plans for a party. But the story branches off as Mrs. Dalloway crosses paths with an old lover, a war veteran, and other members of London society. The characters are deeply introspective, reflecting on their very different circumstances, pulling us in and out of the hours leading up to the party. I am certain that I only absorbed a fraction of what this book has to offer. It is one that I'd like to dip back into again someday.
    • 5/5
      A fantastic novel, but to say I enjoyed it might not be exactly the right word as it's not an easy read. It still feels experimental, even nearly 100 years after it was first published, with its stream-of-consciousness style deftly flitting from the mind of one person to the next. All of the characters, however brief a glimpse you get into their heads, feel like complete, real people.
    • 4/5
      First Virginia Woolf novel! I didn't think this would be quite my cup of tea, but I really enjoyed it. Beautifully vivid language and strange compelling insights into the business of living.
    • 3/5
      I keep feeling as though I'm doing something wrong with this. Intellectually, I recognize that there is something beautiful and emotive and melancholy about all this, no doubt. But the whole emotional connection isn't coming across too well. Great passages and recollections. But I keep wanting to fall asleep while reading this. I can't explain why. Maybe I'm not ready. I'll try again later.
    • 2/5
      I struggled all the way through with the blending of stream of conciousness and third-person omniscience. It jumps back and forth between characters, to a guy walking down the street, to someone who never even makes an appearance aside from her one random thought. Additionally, each character's thoughts were identical to the next--they were merely the thoughts of Virginia Woolf. The opening scenes were the most interesting and least confusing of the book; after that, it all went downhill for me.
    • 5/5
      one of my favorite books ever. i remember i first read it in kevin kopelson's joyce & woolf class at iowa and was very focused on mrs. dalloway's business with sally.
    • 5/5
      4.5 difficult to read much at a sitting, for me, because it's so much like an exploded poem (peppered with parentheses & enormous run-on sentences...sort of like this review!) but incredibly beautiful due to the same poetic handling - felt almost T.S. Eliot-esque to me in fact, & no one handles language like that man! Enough moments of soul-stabbing poignancy to give it more than a 4. Absolutely lovely, all in all.
    • 5/5
      Just a few thoughts on one of my all-time favourite novels that I re-read for my book club meeting today. Ever since I saw the film "The Hours" I just can't get Meryl Streep out of my head as the perfect Mrs Dalloway, even though in the film she was Clarissa Vaughn a well to-do American Woman based in modern New York. It is because Streep has that amazing facility to suggest that an awful lot more is going on in her head than would appear to be from the actions she is performing, like when she is on her way to buy some flowers.One of the stars of Woolf's Mrs Dalloway is London itself, especially for me because I used to work in the Westminster district where Clarissa Dalloway set out to buy those flowers and I could so easily imagine the sights and sounds as she walked through St James' Park. The passage in the novel where Woolf flits inside the heads of her characters as they pass unknowingly by in the Park is a superb example of the stream of conscious technique. This is one of my all-time favourite sequences and it was a joy to read it again.I have been reading H G Wells early novels and stories recently, written at the turn of the century and the difference in writing styles between them and Woolf's novel written in the 1920's is immense. Books that seem worlds apart.Mrs Dalloway is a short novel it could almost be a novella and yet it can be a tricky read, because it is not always clear where or in whose head the story is taking place, however I think there is enough here to delight even the first time reader, not familiar with the modernist style (of which Woolf was one of the leading exponents). If ever a novel deserved five stars it is this one, I'm already looking forward to my next re-read.
    • 4/5
      I liked this book a lot, the images, the sense of the place...that disconnect and emptiness of her life. What's not to love?

    Book preview

    Mrs Dalloway - Virginia Woolf

    Virginia Woolf - Mrs. Dalloway

    Contents

    Mrs Dalloway

    Virginia Woolf – A Biography

    Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself.

    For Lucy had her work cut out for her.  The doors would be taken off their hinges; Rumpelmayer's men were coming.  And then, thought Clarissa Dalloway, what a morning, fresh as if issued to children on a beach.

    What a lark!  What a plunge!  For so it had always seemed to her, when, with a little squeak of the hinges, which she could hear now, she had burst open the French windows and plunged at Bourton into the open air.  How fresh, how calm, stiller than this of course, the air was in the early morning; like the flap of a wave; the kiss of a wave; chill and sharp and yet (for a girl of eighteen as she then was) solemn, feeling as she did, standing there at the open window, that something awful was about to happen; looking at the flowers, at the trees with the smoke winding off them and the rooks rising, falling; standing and looking until Peter Walsh said, Musing among the vegetables? was that it? I prefer men to cauliflowers was that it?  He must have said it at breakfast one morning when she had gone out on to the terrace - Peter Walsh.  He would be back from India one of these days, June or July, she forgot which, for his letters were awfully dull; it was his sayings one remembered; his eyes, his pocket-knife, his smile, his grumpiness and, when millions of things had utterly vanished, how strange it was! a few sayings like this about cabbages.

    She stiffened a little on the kerb, waiting for Durtnall's van to pass.  A charming woman, Scrope Purvis thought her (knowing her as one does know people who live next door to one in Westminster); a touch of the bird about her, of the jay, blue-green, light, vivacious, though she was over fifty, and grown very white since her illness.  There she perched, never seeing him, waiting to cross, very upright.

    For having lived in Westminster, how many years now? over twenty, one feels even in the midst of the traffic, or waking at night, Clarissa was positive, a particular hush, or solemnity; an indescribable pause; a suspense (but that might be her heart, affected, they said, by influenza) before Big Ben strikes.  There! Out it boomed.  First a warning, musical; then the hour, irrevocable.  The leaden circles dissolved in the air.  Such fools we are, she thought, crossing Victoria Street.  For Heaven only knows why one loves it so, how one sees it so, making it up, building it round one, tumbling it, creating it every moment afresh; but the veriest frumps, the most dejected of miseries sitting on doorsteps (drink their downfall) do the same; can't be dealt with, she felt positive, by Acts of Parliament for that very reason: they love life.  In people's eyes, in the swing, tramp, and trudge; in the bellow and the uproar; the carriages, motor cars, omnibuses, vans, sandwich men shuffling and swinging; brass bands; barrel organs; in the triumph and the jingle and the strange high singing of some aeroplane overhead was what she loved; life; London; this moment of June.

    For it was the middle of June.  The War was over, except for some one like Mrs. Foxcroft at the Embassy last night eating her heart out because that nice boy was killed and now the old Manor House must go to a cousin; or Lady Bexborough who opened a bazaar, they said, with the telegram in her hand, John, her favourite, killed; but it was over; thank Heaven, over.  It was June.  The King and Queen were at the Palace.  And everywhere, though it was still so early, there was a beating, a stirring of galloping ponies, tapping of cricket bats; Lords, Ascot, Ranelagh and all the rest of it; wrapped in the soft mesh of the grey-blue morning air, which, as the day wore on, would unwind them, and set down on their lawns and pitches the bouncing ponies, whose forefeet just struck the ground and up they sprung, the whirling young men, and laughing girls in their transparent muslins who, even now, after dancing all night, were taking their absurd woolly dogs for a run; and even now, at this hour, discreet old dowagers were shooting out in their motor cars on errands of mystery; and the shopkeepers were fidgeting in their windows with their paste and diamonds, their lovely old sea- green brooches in eighteenth-century settings to tempt Americans (but one must economise, not buy things rashly for Elizabeth), and she, too, loving it as she did with an absurd and faithful passion, being part of it, since her people were courtiers once in the time of the Georges, she, too, was going that very night to kindle and illuminate; to give her party.  But how strange, on entering the Park, the silence; the mist; the hum; the slow-swimming happy ducks; the pouched birds waddling; and who should be coming along with his back against the Government buildings, most appropriately, carrying a despatch box stamped with the Royal Arms, who but Hugh Whitbread; her old friend Hugh, the admirable Hugh!

    Good-morning to you, Clarissa! said Hugh, rather extravagantly, for they had known each other as children.  Where are you off to?

    I love walking in London, said Mrs. Dalloway.  Really it's better than walking in the country.

    They had just come up, unfortunately, to see doctors.  Other people came to see pictures; go to the opera; take their daughters out; the Whitbreads came to see doctors.  Times without number Clarissa had visited Evelyn Whitbread in a nursing home.  Was Evelyn ill again?  Evelyn was a good deal out of sorts, said Hugh, intimating by a kind of pout or swell of his very well-covered, manly, extremely handsome, perfectly upholstered body (he was almost too well dressed always, but presumably had to be, with his little job at Court) that his wife had some internal ailment, nothing serious, which, as an old friend, Clarissa Dalloway would quite understand without requiring him to specify.  Ah yes, she did of course; what a nuisance; and felt very sisterly and oddly conscious at the same time of her hat.  Not the right hat for the early morning, was that it?  For Hugh always made her feel, as he bustled on, raising his hat rather extravagantly and assuring her that she might be a girl of eighteen, and of course he was coming to her party to-night, Evelyn absolutely insisted, only a little late he might be after the party at the Palace to which he had to take one of Jim's boys, she always felt a little skimpy beside Hugh; schoolgirlish; but attached to him, partly from having known him always, but she did think him a good sort in his own way, though Richard was nearly driven mad by him, and as for Peter Walsh, he had never to this day forgiven her for liking him.

    She could remember scene after scene at Bourton, Peter furious; Hugh not, of course, his match in any way, but still not a positive imbecile as Peter made out; not a mere barber's block.  When his old mother wanted him to give up shooting or to take her to Bath he did it, without a word; he was really unselfish, and as for saying, as Peter did, that he had no heart, no brain, nothing but the manners and breeding of an English gentleman, that was only her dear Peter at his worst; and he could be intolerable; he could be impossible; but adorable to walk with on a morning like this.

    (June had drawn out every leaf on the trees.  The mothers of Pimlico gave suck to their young.  Messages were passing from the Fleet to the Admiralty.  Arlington Street and Piccadilly seemed to chafe the very air in the Park and lift its leaves hotly, brilliantly, on waves of that divine vitality which Clarissa loved. To dance, to ride, she had adored all that.)

    For they might be parted for hundreds of years, she and Peter; she never wrote a letter and his were dry sticks; but suddenly it would come over her, If he were with me now what would he say? some days, some sights bringing him back to her calmly, without the old bitterness; which perhaps was the reward of having cared for people; they came back in the middle of St. James's Park on a fine morning, indeed they did.  But Peter, however beautiful the day might be, and the trees and the grass, and the little girl in pink, Peter never saw a thing of all that.  He would put on his spectacles, if she told him to; he would look.  It was the state of the world that interested him; Wagner, Pope's poetry, people's characters eternally, and the defects of her own soul.  How he scolded her!  How they argued!  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), she had the makings of the perfect hostess, he said.

    So she would still find herself arguing in St. James's Park, still making out that she had been right, and she had too, not to marry him.  For in marriage a little licence, a little independence there must be between people living together day in day out in the same house; which Richard gave her, and she him.  (Where was he this morning for instance?  Some committee, she never asked what.)  But with Peter everything had to be shared; everything gone into.  And it was intolerable, and when it came to that scene in the little garden by the fountain, she had to break with him or they would have been destroyed, both of them ruined, she was convinced; though she had borne about with her for years like an arrow sticking in her heart the grief, the anguish; and then the horror of the moment when some one told her at a concert that he had married a woman met on the boat going to India!  Never should she forget all that! Cold, heartless, a prude, he called her.  Never could she understand how he cared.  But those Indian women did presumably, silly, pretty, flimsy nincompoops.  And she wasted her pity.  For he was quite happy, he assured her, perfectly happy, though he had never done a thing that they talked of; his whole life had been a failure.  It made her angry still.

    She had reached the Park gates.  She stood for a moment, looking at the omnibuses in Piccadilly.

    She would not say of any one in the world now that they were this or were that.  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.  She had a perpetual sense, as she watched the taxi cabs, of being out, out, far out to sea and alone; she always had the feeling that it was very, very dangerous to live even one day.  Not that she thought herself clever, or much out of the ordinary.  How she had got through life on the few twigs of knowledge Fräulein Daniels gave them she could not think.  She knew nothing; no language, no history; she scarcely read a book now, except memoirs in bed; and yet to her it was absolutely absorbing; all this; the cabs passing; and she would not say of Peter, she would not say of herself, I am this, I am that.

    Her only gift was knowing people almost by instinct, she thought, walking on.  If you put her in a room with some one, up went her back like a cat's; or she purred.  Devonshire House, Bath House, the house with the china cockatoo, she had seen them all lit up once; and remembered Sylvia, Fred, Sally Seton, such hosts of people; and dancing all night; and the waggons plodding past to market; and driving home across the Park.  She remembered once throwing a shilling into the Serpentine.  But every one remembered; what she loved was this, here, now, in front of her; the fat lady in the cab.  Did it matter then, she asked herself, walking towards Bond Street, did it matter that she must inevitably cease completely; all this must go on without her; did she resent it; or did it not become consoling to believe that death ended absolutely? but that somehow in the streets of London, on the ebb and flow of things, here, there, she survived, Peter survived, lived in each other, she being part, she was positive, of the trees at home; of the house there, ugly, rambling all to bits and pieces as it was; part of people she had never met; being laid out like a mist between the people she knew best, who lifted her on their branches as she had seen the trees lift the mist, but it spread ever so far, her life, herself.  But what was she dreaming as she looked into Hatchards' shop window?  What was she trying to recover?  What image of white dawn in the country, as she read in the book spread open:

          Fear no more the heat o' the sun      Nor the furious winter's rages.

     This late age of the world's experience had bred in them all, all men and women, a well of tears.  Tears and sorrows; courage and endurance; a perfectly upright and stoical bearing.  Think, for example, of the woman she admired most, Lady Bexborough, opening the bazaar.

    There were Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities; there were Soapy Sponge and Mrs. Asquith's Memoirs and Big Game Shooting in Nigeria, all spread open.  Ever so many books there were; but none that seemed exactly right to take to Evelyn Whitbread in her nursing home. Nothing that would serve to amuse her and make that indescribably dried-up little woman look, as Clarissa came in, just for a moment cordial; before they settled down for the usual interminable talk of women's ailments.  How much she wanted it, that people should look pleased as she came in, Clarissa thought and turned and walked back towards Bond Street, annoyed, because it was silly to have other reasons for doing things.  Much rather would she have been one of those people like Richard who did things for themselves, whereas, she thought, waiting to cross, half the time she did things not simply, not for themselves; but to make people think this or that; perfect idiocy she knew (and now the policeman held up his hand) for no one was ever for a second taken in.  Oh if she could have had her life over again! she thought, stepping on to the pavement, could have looked even differently!

    She would have been, in the first place, dark like Lady Bexborough, with a skin of crumpled leather and beautiful eyes.  She would have been, like Lady Bexborough, slow and stately; rather large; interested in politics like a man; with a country house; very dignified, very sincere.  Instead of which she had a narrow pea- stick figure; a ridiculous little face, beaked like a bird's.  That she held herself well was true; and had nice hands and feet; and dressed well, considering that she spent little.  But often now this body she wore (she stopped to look at a Dutch picture), this body, with all its capacities, seemed nothing, nothing at all.  She had the oddest sense of being herself invisible; unseen; unknown; there being no more marrying, no more having of children now, but only this astonishing and rather solemn progress with the rest of them, up Bond Street, this being Mrs. Dalloway; not even Clarissa any more; this being Mrs. Richard Dalloway.

    Bond Street fascinated her; Bond Street early in the morning in the season; its flags flying; its shops; no splash; no glitter; one roll of tweed in the shop where her father had bought his suits for fifty years; a few pearls; salmon on an iceblock.

    That is all, she said, looking at the fishmonger's.  That is all, she repeated, pausing for a moment at the window of a glove shop where, before the War, you could buy almost perfect gloves. And her old Uncle William used to say a lady is known by her shoes and her gloves.  He had turned on his bed one morning in the middle of the War.  He had said, I have had enough.  Gloves and shoes; she had a passion for gloves; but her own daughter, her Elizabeth, cared not a straw for either of them.

    Not a straw, she thought, going on up Bond Street to a shop where they kept flowers for her when she gave a party.  Elizabeth really cared for her dog most of all.  The whole house this morning smelt of tar.  Still, better poor Grizzle than Miss Kilman; better distemper and tar and all the rest of it than sitting mewed in a stuffy bedroom with a prayer book!  Better anything, she was inclined to say.  But it might be only a phase, as Richard said, such as all girls go through.  It might be falling in love.  But why with Miss Kilman? who had been badly treated of course; one must make allowances for that, and Richard said she was very able, had a really historical mind.  Anyhow they were inseparable, and Elizabeth, her own daughter, went to Communion; and how she dressed, how she treated people who came to lunch she did not care a bit, it being her experience that the religious ecstasy made people callous (so did causes); dulled their feelings, for Miss Kilman would do anything for the Russians, starved herself for the Austrians, but in private inflicted positive torture, so insensitive was she, dressed in a green mackintosh coat.  Year in year out she wore that coat; she perspired; she was never in the room five minutes without making you feel her superiority, your inferiority; how poor she was; how rich you were; how she lived in a slum without a cushion or a bed or a rug or whatever it might be, all her soul rusted with that grievance sticking in it, her dismissal from school during the War, poor embittered unfortunate creature!  For it was not her one hated but the idea of her, which undoubtedly had gathered in to itself a great deal that was not Miss Kilman; had become one of those spectres with which one battles in the night; one of those spectres who stand astride us and suck up half our life-blood, dominators and tyrants; for no doubt with another throw of the dice, had the black been uppermost and not the white, she would have loved Miss Kilman!  But not in this world.  No.

    It rasped her, though, to have stirring about in her this brutal monster! to hear twigs cracking and feel hooves planted down in the depths of that leaf-encumbered forest, the soul; never to be content quite, or quite secure, for at any moment the brute would be stirring, this hatred, which, especially since her illness, had power to make her feel scraped, hurt in her spine; gave her physical pain, and made all pleasure in beauty, in friendship, in being well, in being loved and making her home delightful rock, quiver, and bend as if indeed there were a monster grubbing at the roots, as if the whole panoply

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