As Mrs Dalloway works on the preparations for a dinner party, her thoughts
throughout the day wander from memories of the past to interrogations
about the present and lead her to assess the choices she has made in life
and love. Her monologue interweaves with the account of the distress, on
that same day, of the shell-shocked veteran Septimus Warren Smith, whose
trauma and hallucinations end in tragedy, as the links between the two
characters unfold.
One of Virginia Woolf’s most celebrated novels,
Mrs Dalloway is a triumph of
experimentation, a cornerstone of Modernism and a subtle examination of
love, freedom, mental illness and the female condition in society.
________
'She was doing with language something like what Jimi Hendrix does with a guitar.'
Michael Cunningham
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Read an excerpt from
Mrs Dalloway
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