Mrs Dalloway Read Online Free Page A

RichardDalloway is a Conservative MP with the most conventional opinions on women’s rights, literature, and politics. He vows at one point that he will be in his grave before a woman is ever allowed to vote in England.
    In August 1922, Woolf wrote the short story ‘Mrs. Dalloway in Bond Street,’ with the idea that it might serve as the first chapter of a novel. By the end of the month, she was considering a sequel: ‘Shall I write the next chapter of Mrs. D. – if she is to have a next chapter; & shall it be The Prime Minister?’ 27 In a letter to Lady Ottoline Morrell, whose country house, Garsington, had been a literary salon during the war, Woolf joked about the book as her ‘Garsington novel’ of society high life. 28
    In this early phase, the novel emphasized the ironic social and political contrasts between Clarissa Dalloway, the society hostess in her ‘prime’, and the Prime Minister, who is driving through London, and will be a guest at the party. Each is empowered by an institution, whether the House or the Home; each has found an identity through a ‘party’. The novel was to play with the public and the private, the feminine and the masculine, in broad, almost allegorical terms. A Mrs. Dalloway, buying gloves in Bond Street, is the epitome of the leisured lady of the ruling-class for whom the Empire exists. The Prime Minister is the target of all the feelings of resentment and hopelessness felt by the excluded and deprived man in the street.
    Woolf first imagined the book as a series of vignettes. At the beginning of October 1922, her working title was ‘At Home’ or ‘The Party,’ and she envisioned ‘a short book consisting of six or seven chapters each complete separately.’ 29 Woolf actually blocked out in her notebook the outline for eight chapters: ‘1. Mrs.Dalloway in Bond Street/ 2. The Prime Minister/ 3. Ancestors/ 4. A dialogue/ 5. The old ladies/ 6. Country House?/ 7. Cut flowers/ 8. The Party.’ 30 Yet, as she could see, the separate stories needed to be connected, perhaps by a climactic event: ‘There must be some sort of fusion. And all must converge upon the party at the end.’ 31
    Gradually, throughout the month of October 1922, Woolf became dissatisfied with this plan; the idea of tightly contained chapters seemed to be the opposite of her vision of a web or organism of relations. As she wrote to T. S. Eliot, the novel became ‘too interwoven for a chapter broken off to be intelligible.’ 32 By 14 October Woolf realized that ‘Mrs Dalloway has branched into a book; & I adumbrate here a study of insanity & suicide: the world seen by the sane & the insane side by side – something like that. Septimus Smith? – is that a good name?’ 33 Over the next few days, Woolf played with the idea of Clarissa and Septimus as doubles. On 16 October, she writes in her notebook:
    Suppose it to be connected in this way: Sanity and insanity. Mrs. D. seeing the truth, SS seeing the insane truth. The pace to be given by the gradual increase of S’s insanity on the one side; by the approach of the party on the other. 34
    The novel took shape very slowly, with Woolf making discoveries about its technique a step at a time. By 7 November, she had hit on the idea of the aeroplane as a linking device. ‘I shall try to sketch out Mrs. D. & consult L. & write the aeroplane chapter now’. 35 Perspective was a continual problem, and we can trace her discoveries about it through steady entries over time. On 9 November, 1922, she writes:
    Septimus (?) must be seen by someone. His wife? She to be bounded in S? Simple, instinctive, childless . . . She is to be a
real
character. He only real in so far as she sees him. Otherwise to exist in his view of things: which is always to be contrasting with Mrs. Dalloway. 36
    In May she took on the problem of representing Clarissa’s personality. At first she had