Mrs. Dalloway

 

This week in class we are reading Mrs. Dalloway. It's an extremely hard reading, but a very good novel. The book is literally one day in the life of Clarissa Dalloway. It also switches about halfway through the book to talk about Septimus, a poor veteran who suffers from "shell shock." The novel is very successful in comparing two people with very different lives yet showing how they are so alike. It's a novel that ties us altogether as humans and shows us that we all have problems.

 

Here are some of my favorite quotes from this novel.

“She had the perpetual sense, as she watched the taxi cabs, of being out, out, far out to sea and alone; she always had the feeling that it was very, very, dangerous to live even one day.”  

“She thought there were no Gods; no one was to blame; and so she evolved this atheist's religion of doing good for the sake of goodness.”  

 

All the same, that one day should follow another; Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday; that one should wake up in the morning; see the sky; walk in the park; meet Hugh Whitbread; then suddenly in came Peter; then these roses; it was enough. After that, how unbelievable death was!-that it must end; and no one in the whole world would know how she had loved it all; how, every instant . . .”  

 

“To love makes one solitary.”  

 

“But nothing is so strange when one is in love (and what was this except being in love?) as the complete indifference of other people.”  

 

“Fear no more, says the heart, committing its burden to some sea, which sighs collectively for all sorrows, and renews, begins, collects, lets fall”  

 

“Nothing could be slow enough, nothing lasts too long. No pleasure could equal, she thought, straightening the chairs, pushing in one book on the shelf, this having done with the triumphs of youth, lost herself in the process of living, to find it with a shock of delight, as the sun rose, as the day sank. Many a time had she gone, at Barton when they were all talking, to look at the sky; seen it between peoples shoulders at dinner; seen it in London when she could not sleep. She walked to the window.”