MRS
DALLOWAY di VIRGINIA WOOLF
Mrs. Dalloway is the
most important Woolf's novel. It is a modern novel because she wants to express
the inner world of characters. The protagonist is Clarissa Dalloway, a wife of
Richard Dalloway, a Member of Parliament. Clarissa a day goes to buy some
flowers for a party, that she's organizing. During the street odors, noises
remember to Clarissa events of the pass. She is in anxiety for this party, she
is fragile, is insecure. While she is in a flower shop a car driven noisily,
shifts the attention to the street, where Septimus and Lucrezia Smith are
walking. When she returned at home received a visit from Peter Walsh, her old
boyfriend. When he leaves Clarissa's house goes to Park where meets Septimus
who is going to Sir Bradshaw, a doctor that said to Septimus that he must go to
clinic to nurse his mental illness. So Septimus jump out of a window and commit
suicide. In the evening during Clarissa's party, Bradshaw arrive by the new of
septimus's death, that brought Clarissa to reflect on death and to feel a
connection with Septimus.
The story took place in
a small area of London, on a single day. There isn't a chronological time, are
intermingle past, present and future. The time is both objective and
subjective. Objective time is given by clock, noise of cars, the flowers, the
street . and it's expresses by third person. Subjective time given by activity
of mind, by stream of thoughts and emotions, moments of being (memories that
return in mind when lessens a noise, smell odor . ) and it's expresses by first
person and the interior monologue. So the omniscient narrator disappears. The
plot is tenuous, is useful to remember pass events of characters, it's useful
to put moments of being. Clarissa conceals a profound dissatisfaction,
inability, anxiety, insecurity behind the fact that she continues to give
party, this inability reflects itself also in sensuality, in Clarissa's
rigidity. Septimus is a man that suffered mental illness after the shock of the
death of his best friend during the war. He isn't able to insert himself in the
society, and this inability reflected itself in Septimus's importance. Clarissa
and Septimus are in common: their emotional, her dependence from Richard for
stability, his dependence upon Lucrezia for protection. Their marriages are
founded on need and no on love; Clarissa's fragility and Septimus's impotence.
But the difference between Clarissa and Septimus is that inability of Septimus
brought he to commit suicide, he isn't able to distinguish between external
reality and his personal mind, thoughts; instead Clarissa accepts the idea of
death and to go on.
