Week 16: Mrs Dalloway
So... first impressions:
Well, clearly it's the best example of the stream-of-conciousness narrative that I've seen, moving back and forth in time, and in and out of different characters' heads to construct a single (complete) image. Woolf seems to have a broader scope than Joyce did; not to say that one is better than the other, but I do appreciate Woolf's ducking and weaving around her characters.
The trouble I have is that picking up on one thing from the novel is like pulling threads - it's so well constructed, to put it clearly, that I feel uneasy picking on one thing and leaving the others. I mean - feminism, sexuality, madness, sexual/economic repression, colonialism, commercialism, medicine, politics - it's all there. Where to begin?
Well, to start with, as we did in class, I'll look at the video we saw. To be honest, I think too much of the class discussion we had was focussed on the treatments that the characters of the film/ video/ book received, and not enough on the book itself. Not that my comments were any different - I loved the book, with the fluid dipping in and out of different characters, and all I could think about was how jarring it felt to have the characters actually speaking out loud what I had always envisaged being purely in their heads - not even spoken sotte voce, but speaking clearly. But I digress, as I usually do.
Another digression: Vanessa Redgrave has become the quintessential Mrs Dalloway to me now. I think there was just something in her carriage that dovetailed perfectly with the character in the book, something wistful and forgetful and sad, but still endearing.
Case in point:
Well, clearly it's the best example of the stream-of-conciousness narrative that I've seen, moving back and forth in time, and in and out of different characters' heads to construct a single (complete) image. Woolf seems to have a broader scope than Joyce did; not to say that one is better than the other, but I do appreciate Woolf's ducking and weaving around her characters.
The trouble I have is that picking up on one thing from the novel is like pulling threads - it's so well constructed, to put it clearly, that I feel uneasy picking on one thing and leaving the others. I mean - feminism, sexuality, madness, sexual/economic repression, colonialism, commercialism, medicine, politics - it's all there. Where to begin?
Well, to start with, as we did in class, I'll look at the video we saw. To be honest, I think too much of the class discussion we had was focussed on the treatments that the characters of the film/ video/ book received, and not enough on the book itself. Not that my comments were any different - I loved the book, with the fluid dipping in and out of different characters, and all I could think about was how jarring it felt to have the characters actually speaking out loud what I had always envisaged being purely in their heads - not even spoken sotte voce, but speaking clearly. But I digress, as I usually do.
Another digression: Vanessa Redgrave has become the quintessential Mrs Dalloway to me now. I think there was just something in her carriage that dovetailed perfectly with the character in the book, something wistful and forgetful and sad, but still endearing.
Case in point:
posted by David | 11:07 PM
<< Home