Mrs Dalloway
There’s a line in one of Alan Bennett’s plays: “The best moments in reading are when you come across something – a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things – which you had thought special and particular to you. Now here it is … and it is as if a hand has come out and taken yours.” I didn’t know what this meant until I read Mrs Dalloway.
Virginia Woolf’s 1925 novel is about a woman walking around London, preparing for a party. It also features a shell-shocked war veteran, whose mind deteriorates throughout the day. I know – it doesn’t sound thrilling. But, as with other modernist texts, ‘story’ isn’t the selling point.
The novel’s perspective is dynamic, flitting from person to person. A London street holds dozens of stories; Woolf gives an impression of each one. The effect is equally disorientating and exhilarating.
As Mrs Dalloway walks, the city sparks thoughts and memories, linked in a free-associative, unstructured way. She’s alive, in the same way that you and I are alive. That feeling of seeing another’s inner life so completely is something I haven’t found elsewhere in art.
