Mrs. Dalloway

The prospect of reading my first book by highly-regarded classic writer Virginia Woolf excited me. By the time I had reached page 10, I lost that excitement.

Mrs. Dalloway recounts a day in the life of Clarissa Dalloway. We hear much of her story through flashbacks as the day goes on. Throughout the day, Clarissa plans for and hosts a dinner party. In between the events of the book the reader gets to see inside Clarissa's mind through stream of consciousness narrative. We also get to peer inside the mind of a few other characters, like Septimus Warren Smith, a man with great mental illness who is supposed to be a mirror of Clarissa, Peter Walsh, Clarissa's former lover, and bits and pieces of others.

Clarissa is unhappy with her life, for the most part. She married Richard Dalloway instead of her long-time lover Peter Walsh because Richard was more reliable and therefore better marriage material. However, he's not around much and their marriage is fairly loveless, though still intact. Clarissa still has feelings for Peter (who is married but seeking divorce to pursue a married woman) and for a woman from her college days, Sally Seton. In the end, Clarissa holds the dinner party and it's more or less a success. Most of the characters we meet or are mentioned show up to the party, and there's some mild surprises in store throughout the party.

Woolf wrote Mrs. Dalloway almost like a 180-page poem. It takes a great deal of effort to read the book, and while it's delicately written, it's also tremendously boring and depressing. Clarissa suffers from mild depression and swims around in hopelessness. Woolf apparently put a lot of herself in these pages, and it isn't pretty. Woolf eventually committed suicide - a prospect that Clarissa finds intriguing. There's also a very dismal view of marriage and relationships that exists in these pages. Almost every married couple is close to divorce, and characters pursue one another as if marriage was only a trifle. Clarissa/Woolf also has some very condescending things to say about Christians and God. There's also great emphasis placed on societal position, as if being rich makes you a better person than if you are poor.

I hated this book. I read for basically three reasons: to be enriched (through knowledge), enlightened, or entertained. This book fit none of those categories. I didn't learn anything, found the book to be offensive, and it was absurdly boring. Was it well-crafted? Absolutely. Could I recommend this book to anyone? Not really.

Rating: How can I rate a book so well written in form yet so lacking in anything I can appreciate?

74/100