Tag: “Mrs. Dalloway” by Virginia Woolf

“Worshipping Proportion”, Connection in Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway

“Worshipping proportion, Sir William not only prospered himself but made England prosper, secluded her lunatics, forbade childbirth, penalised  despair, made it impossible for the unfit to propagate their views until they, too, shared his sense of proportion” (Woolf 99).

Woolf, Virginia. Mrs. Dalloway. Benediction Classics, Oxford, 2017, pp. 99.

Sir William’s intense need for proportion and his abusive treatment methods serves as a comment for English society’s conformist nature and for society as a whole. In treating his patients, Sir William is oppressing them and worsening their conditions, as he alienates them from others, punishes their emotions and regards them as lesser beings. This is a comment for how English society forces conformity amongst its citizens, to display only the best of themselves and to deny any negative or unpleasant feelings they may have, especially those who had returned from WWI. But, it also shows how societies in general expect its peoples to maintain certain ideas and behaviors, and anything less will have them deemed at sick, undesirable, and unfit to participate with others.

Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf

“Indeed, his own life was a miracle; let him make no mistake about it; here he was, in the prime of life, walking to his house in Westminster to tell Clarissa that he loved her. Happiness is this, he thought” (Woolf 61).

Woolf, Virginia. Mrs. Dalloway. Benediction Classics, Oxford, 2017, pp. 61.

Woolf, “Mrs. Dalloway”, A Moment of Connection to Literature

“She could not even get an echo of her old emotion. But she could remember going cold with excitement, and doing her hair in a kind of ecstasy (now the old feeling began to come back to her, as she took out her hairpins, laid them on the dressing-table, began to do her hair), with the rooks flaunting up and down in the pink evening light, and dressing, and going downstairs, and feeling as she crossed the hall “if it were now to die ’twere now to be most happy.” That was her feeling–Othello’s feeling, and she felt it, she was convinced, as strongly as Shakespeare meant Othello to feel it, all because she was coming down to dinner in a white frock to meet Sally Seton!” (Woolf 38).

Woolf, Virginia, and Bonnie Kime Scott. Mrs. Dalloway. A Harvest Book, Harcourt, Inc., 2005.

Clarissa recalls her past affection and feelings for Sally Seton, connecting their strength to Shakespeare’s Othello. She insinuates that her love for Sally was as deep and passionate as Othello’s for Desdemona (at the start of the play), furthering the reader’s understanding of the nature of their relationship.

Mrs. Dalloway Virginia Woolf Commonplace Past – Bryant Magdaleno

“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.” (Woolf 7)

Woolf, Virginia, and Bonnie Kime Scott. Mrs. Dalloway. A Harvest Book, Harcourt, Inc., 2005.

Within this text we can gain glimpse to the mindset of Mrs. Dalloway, where she contemplates her past with Peter Walsh. She speaks of how life had passed them by with her never marrying a Prime Minister and him never marrying her, life as she put it was not done the way they spoke of. He was a failure to her for never really making it, she reflects on this idea of the past and ones place to the future, how they promise and hope for the best but she is angry at the thought of not completing what they set out, it brings to mind if she is angry of her past promise or her future never getting it done.