Mrs Dalloway (Legend Classics)
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Mrs Dalloway is a novel that features two main characters and two different worldviews. On the one hand, there is Clarissa Dalloway, who being labelled as Mrs, symbolises her marital and social confinement. On the other, the readers meet Septimus Warren Smith, who is suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. The lack of conventionally linear narrative and the stream of consciousness embedded in the text represents the author’s take on the complexities of human existence and the ambiguity of reality. While Septimus appears mad as the war memories are haunting him, Clarissa is assumingly sane, with her existential troubles being centred around the midlife crisis – both, however, share an astute sensibility about societal maladies of post-war Britain. Even though the two characters never meet, they are inextricably connected. The story takes a twist when Clarissa in her quintessential midlife meets her first love, Peter Walsh and Septimus madness takes a dramatic manifestation. Will Clarissa take any steps for the sake of her first love, or will she stay devoted to the societal pressure and her status as a statesman’s wife? What will become of Septimus’ madness?
The novel was developed from Woolf’s earlier short story entitled ‘Mrs Dalloway in Bond Street’. It takes you to the industrialised society, the hustle and bustle of London to represent the surface, the wrapper of modern society. The internal side is represented by ambiguous dark desires and fears of the characters. The passion and dramatic events in this whole novel take place over the course of a single day and the novel has been compared to poetry for being packed with meaning and intensity. How can a day change your whole life, how can a life built for years, crumble in the blink of an eye? This text is an exciting journey in itself with stylistic symbiosis, making it a true modernist classic.
hrThe Legend Classics series:
Around the World in Eighty Days
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
The Importance of Being Earnest
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
The Metamorphosis
The Railway Children
The Hound of the Baskervilles
Frankenstein
Wuthering Heights
Three Men in a Boat
The Time Machine
Little Women
Anne of Green Gables
The Jungle Book
The Yellow Wallpaper and Other Stories
Dracula
A Study in Scarlet
Leaves of Grass
The Secret Garden
The War of the Worlds
A Christmas Carol
Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde
Heart of Darkness
The Scarlet Letter
This Side of Paradise
Oliver Twist
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Treasure Island
The Turn of the Screw
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
Emma
The Trial
A Selection of Short Stories by Edgar Allan Poe
Grimm Fairy Tales
The Awakening
Mrs Dalloway
Gulliver’s Travels
The Castle of Otranto
Silas Marner
Hard Times
Rreth autorit
Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) is widely regarded as the most prominent modernist female author. She received a home education and was writing from a very young age. A series of untimely deaths in her family had a long-term impact on the author’s creative psyche as well as her mental state in general. She tried to commit suicide multiple times and was sent to sanatoriums which she dreaded. Her novel Mrs Dalloway is often read autobiographically as it evolves around the duality of a sane person and a shell shocked war veteran – the work is also commonly seen as the writer’s magnum opus. Among her other renowned titles are To the Lighthouse, Orlando and landmark feminist essay A Room of One’s Own. Woolf committed suicide shortly after World War II erupted as she fell into depression yet again – the chaotic political climate in Europe coincided with Woolf’s mental turmoil and conscious unwillingness to be a millstone around her husband’s neck.
