Author Topic: Mrs. Dalloway  (Read 10462 times)

Offline Mandy21

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Re: Mrs. Dalloway
« Reply #10 on: January 13, 2010, 06:20:34 am »
Hey Amanda, yes, I watched it directly after I said I would and wrote down several comments and questions I'd like to discuss with you.  However, I was waiting for the other ladies here to watch it before I put forth any spoilers.  I'll throw my two-cents' in as soon as others do:)
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Offline Front-Ranger

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Re: Mrs. Dalloway
« Reply #11 on: January 13, 2010, 09:16:36 am »
I secured a VHS copy of it and plan to watch it today!

The best laid plans...a strenuous hike plus my rock climbing class interfered, and now I'm off for snowshoeing and ice climbing. But I plan to see it this weekend.
« Last Edit: January 14, 2010, 12:37:12 am by Front-Ranger »
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Offline Front-Ranger

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Re: Mrs. Dalloway
« Reply #12 on: January 16, 2010, 10:43:58 pm »
My first impression was...the young Clarissa....I've seen her somewhere before! Yes, it's that woman from Solaris!! Saschca something. This is only the second role I've seen her in. She's awesome!!
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Offline Front-Ranger

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Re: Mrs. Dalloway
« Reply #13 on: January 18, 2010, 11:21:43 pm »
I'm very interested to hear what your questions are, Mandy!
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Offline Mandy21

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Re: Mrs. Dalloway
« Reply #14 on: January 19, 2010, 12:02:03 pm »
All right, Lee, you're forcing my hand here, so I'll go ahead.  Amanda and others, please respond at will.  To those that haven't seen, please forgive me -- ********SPOILERS AHEAD***********

1.  I absolutely love, love, love the actor Michael Kitchen, who plays the older version of Peter.  To me, he defines Britishness.  Did anyone else see him in "Out of Africa", playing opposite Robert Redford?  I thought he was even more brilliant in that, which was a hard thing to do.

2.  The name "Septimus" -- why would a British man have such a name?  It's a Roman name, which means "seventh" in Latin, generally used to describe the seventh son in a family.  If he came from such a large family, what's happened to all his brothers during his time of struggle?  Why did he have to go mad from the war, with only his wife by his side, trying to no avail to save him from the brink?  How should that particular choice of name be significant to us?  What are we to think?  Did his lovely wife just give him that name as a term of endearment, or was that name actually given to him by his parents?  Where is his family, in the end?  And for those that have seen "The Hours", what correlation are we to take from the Richard / Ed Harris character throwing himself out a window?  If Virginia was so obsessed with that manner of suicide, why didn't she do it herself that way?

3.  Sally -- do we believe that she is Clarissa's first love?  Or do we believe she fell for Peter first?  We see the very sensual but all-too-brief kiss between the two lady friends, and we see her rapturous reaction to Sally's kiss, yet do we ever see reactions of like to Peter's kisses?  In another day and age and place, do we think Clarissa might have been better off if she had embraced her feelings for that woman, and perhaps all women, rather than following the status quo and marrying a good, solid, upstanding man?

4.  Virginia Woolf is such a hard author to read.  She can write for 5 or 6 pages, sort of rambling with miniscule things, and then, out of the blue, she'll come up with one sentence right in the middle of a paragraph, that will literally knock your socks off and almost make you rethink your entire life and every choice you ever made.  I believe she was a genius.  Someday, in a future life, I'd be happy to be just like her.

That's all.  I hope I haven't given too much away for those that haven't read it or seen it yet.  I'd love to hear people's perceptions on my questions and thoughts, and throw in even more.

Amanda, once again, thanks for starting this intriguing thread.
   :-* 
Dawn is coming,
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Offline Brown Eyes

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Re: Mrs. Dalloway
« Reply #15 on: January 19, 2010, 12:05:50 pm »

Heya Mandy!
Thanks for your great post!!  :D  I'll respond in much greater depth once I'm home from work today.  I can't really tackle this big topic here at my work desk.

I've been meaning to write a bit about the "balcony scene" at the end of the film... which, I find so interesting.  I'll do that later this evening too.

the world was asleep to our latent fuss - bowie

Offline Mandy21

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Re: Mrs. Dalloway
« Reply #16 on: January 19, 2010, 12:11:20 pm »
Heya bud!  Of course I understand.  Didn't mean to hit you up with so many questions all at once.

As I said, Virginia is such an obscure, rather obtuse-at-times writer, I am often confounded by what her thoughts might have actually been.  And to turn any book into a film, only adds more players and interpretations into the scenario, with directors, actors, producers, etc.  So I think this will be a great dialogue of thoughts.  Have a great day.
Dawn is coming,
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Offline Front-Ranger

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Re: Mrs. Dalloway
« Reply #17 on: January 19, 2010, 02:05:22 pm »
The movie opens with a war scene of battle, and we see Septimus enduring a vision of death that scars him. Then we segue to Mrs. Dalloway who is planning a lovely party. This disconnect gave me an immediate dislike for Mrs. Dalloway as a first impression. Is that the way Wolff intended it, or was that the intention of the filmmaker?
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Offline Brown Eyes

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Re: Mrs. Dalloway
« Reply #18 on: January 19, 2010, 02:39:15 pm »
The movie opens with a war scene of battle, and we see Septimus enduring a vision of death that scars him. Then we segue to Mrs. Dalloway who is planning a lovely party. This disconnect gave me an immediate dislike for Mrs. Dalloway as a first impression. Is that the way Wolff intended it, or was that the intention of the filmmaker?

Hey there Lee,

Well, that decision by the filmmakers, to begin the film by showing Septimus, was a significant departure from the book.  The book is definitely about how the narratives of Clarissa Dalloway and Septimus interconnect throughout the one day... but, that is not how the book opens.

The book opens with the famous descriptions of Clarissa going to buy the flowers.  The parts in the beginning of the movie showing Mrs. Dalloway going out on her errand are closer to the actual beginning of the book.

I don't know if Woolf would have had any specific intention about readers liking or disliking Clarissa or the other characters.  I think they're all meant to be ambiguous (neither perfectly good/ likable or otherwise).  I do think we're supposed to understand that Clarissa Dalloway has a lot of sympathy for Septimus.. that somehow turns into empathy by the end... Death comes to Clarissa's party (even if only in the form of the news about what happened to Septimus).

I'm curious about why that opening made you dislike Clarissa?  

To me the opening just underscores the reality of wartime... during times of war or in the aftermath of war, people all over the world go about their normal, everyday business.  It's a brutal thing, but it happens all the time (even now) as wars go on in other parts of the world. The story of Mrs. Dalloway, as I understand it is meant to happen just as the war has ended.  

Virginia Woolf (and pretty much everyone in the Bloomsbury Group) were serious pacifists and many of the men in the group were conscientious objector at the time of WWI.  So, Woolf tackling the topic of war would have been a serious thing.




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Offline Mandy21

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Re: Mrs. Dalloway
« Reply #19 on: January 19, 2010, 03:23:12 pm »
Even though I have read the book and seen the movie dozens and dozens of times, I found this interesting thread today. Even though it was from CliffsNotes, and it's not very short at all, I found it quite insightful:

While Mrs. Dalloway selects flowers for the party, we leave her for awhile and consider a new character: Septimus Warren Smith. The change of focus is brief, but it is important because Clarissa is only one half of the design for Mrs. Dalloway. While she worked on this novel, Virginia Woolf jotted in her diary that she wanted to sketch, in a shadowy way, "the world seen by the sane and the insane." The book was to be more than a story about Clarissa Dalloway; it would be a novel with two main characters and two stories alongside one another. The two characters — Clarissa and Septimus — never meet in the novel, yet they are linked to one another through various characters and because of the value they both give to that "leaf-encumbered forest, the soul."

Both Mrs. Dalloway and Septimus Smith are intense and sensitive — especially about the privacy of their souls — that collection of qualities which make up a personality's essence and individuality. Mrs. Dalloway has a veneered composure; she attempts to keep her most serious thoughts, dreams, and musings to herself; no one else would treasure or understand them. She restricts the boundaries of her secret world. She lives with her husband and her daughter and among her friends; she is wife, mother, and hostess, but she is never completely relaxed and open with anyone. No one sees the dark depths of Mrs. Dalloway's soul. And when Clarissa uses dark to describe her soul, she does not mean dark to connote something necessarily evil or fearful; dark simply means that the soul is not open for public view. Mrs. Dalloway's soul is a place of retreat, like a private garden. Perhaps this is not the healthiest attitude to take towards oneself, but Mrs. Dalloway is considered sane.

Septimus Smith, on the other hand, is insane. He has almost wholly retreated into his private world. Notice, for example, how his reaction to the noise of a car backfiring echoes and amplifies, but differs from, Mrs. Dalloway's reaction. Clarissa immediately thinks that she has heard a gun shot. There is nothing pathological about this association. The Great War is just over. An era of terrifying death and violence has officially ended, yet the fearful sounds of war remain in the unconscious. England still trembles; the sound stills the rush and hubbub of the streets.

Ironically, it was a gunshot — a multitude of them — which cut Septimus Smith's contact with reality. He is a casualty of the Great War, a victim of shell-shock, Nevertheless, he does not imagine the car's backfiring to be a gunshot. To him, the noise is the sound of a whip cracking ("The world has raised its whip; where will it descend?"). Everyone else is only startled; Septimus is terrified.


In this crowd scene of London, we have gone beyond the exterior of appearance and have had a glimpse into two private, inner worlds — Clarissa Dalloway's and Septimus Smith's. We have seen two confused and frightened people. They differ in degree, of course. Clarissa has been weakened by an illness and she is frightened and furious about Miss Kilman's "possession" of Elizabeth. But, as best she can, she attempts to keep her fears corralled and orderly. In contrast, Septimus' fears cannot be governed; they are too overpowering and chaotic. London, through Clarissa's eyes, is familiar and reassuring; for Septimus, it is only fragments of sensation. To Lucrezia, Septimus' wife, London seems totally alien. She is a stranger in a strange land, with no friends, and with a husband who threatens to kill himself.

Focusing on a simple morning scene, Virginia Woolf has challenged us with a many-prismed view: we wandered through Clarissa's wonderland of past and present thoughts; we drew back and saw the citizens of London react like one unified organism to a car backfiring; then we were jolted by the jagged reality of Septimus Smith's thoughts. Now we see what is happening through the eyes of a foreigner. So what is the "real world" like? Each person has a different idea of what truth and reality are. There is a general, agreed sense of what is true and real in a given situation but there are always highly individual interpretations. Virginia Woolf continually reminds us of such individual intricacies. One of the characters will frequently show us a sense of what is extraordinary in even the most mundane occurence. A car's backfiring is only a loud noise, yet it has unusual effects, individually, and it does something unusual to the mass of people who happen to be together on a London Street. The noise catches their attention, then the important-looking car mesmerizes them with awe. The car does not, for certain, contain anyone important, but everyone has deep veneration for it. And, from far above the story itself, we hear Virginia Woolf meditating, reflecting on the crowd's need to be associated with Greatness. The car is just a car — and even the Queen, if she be inside, is only a woman.

Yet this potent mystery takes the crowd away from its sense of being ordinary. The car endows each person with an Extraordinary Moment. Everyone feels individually distinguished because they have encountered the possibility of being in the same street with royalty, with England. We observe the blind awe of the crowd and listen to Virginia Woolf comment that only historians will know for sure who is in the mysterious car. Her attitude is like the attitude of Clarissa when, earlier, she was crossing London streets. Both women smile at the comic folly of us mortals.

 The novel continues on its course as Clarissa's momentarily conferred "dignity" passes. The thought of the queen in the mysterious car reminds her of the queen's party which reminds her of her own party, and thus she is reminded once again of Peter Walsh's taunt — that she would eventually define herself as a Hostess. The pleasant, patriotic, quasi-dignity is replaced by the dread of a more sterile dignity, the dignity of a Hostess.

Suddenly our attention is drawn to something else. Something else mysterious has appeared. A plane discharging white smoke is passing overhead. The instant patriotism for Royal England that held the public spellbound only minutes before is gone — but the awe of the unknown remains. No one knew who was in the black car before; now no one knows what the skywriting says, yet both forces have a similar compelling power over the public. The skywriting letters form words but the message is blurred and indecipherable. What the public is watching is only an advertising gimmick, but they don't seem to recognize it as such. They are enchanted by this riddle of a commercial message in the heavens. Their attempts to read the sky-writing are wryly described, as though there were an oracular significance to the enigmatic letters.

At this point we learn that not everyone agrees that Septimus Smith is insane. Septimus' doctor, for instance, thinks that Septimus' problem is only habitual, obsessive introspection. This is Lucrezia's reason for trying to interest Septimus with the words written in the sky. But we know that Septimus is insane because we enter his mind and are shown the sad beauty of his madness. Time is dispersed; it is stretched, lengthened, slowed down. The smoke shapes do not mean anything to Septimus; they simply are. They are modulating colors of white, rising and tumbling.

Sounds around Septimus are amplified and richly suggestive. The movement of Septimus' sight and sound experiencings are wave-like: the smoke languishes, melts; sounds converge, then break; the light on the elm leaves rises and falls. This water imagery has been used before. It punctuated Mrs. Dalloway's morning walk and the journeys back and forth from her past to the present. The rising and falling is the rhythm of waves and it is also the same rhythm of a throb, the beat of a heart — the beat of the individual heart and the beat of our primeval mother, the sea. The rhythm beckons mightily to Septimus; the metaphorical rhythm of the great Unconscious, of the sea, is like a siren's song to Septimus' unconscious, and the remnant of his rationality fights to preserve itself. He pleads with himself that he will not go mad. Septimus is struggling to be the master of his own destiny, just as Clarissa is still struggling (in a parallel, though much less intense way) to be master of her destiny.

We draw away from Septimus' intense inner conflicts and Lucrezia's fears, and catch a glimpse of the Smiths from another side — from Maisie Johnson's point of view. Like Lucrezia, she is foreign to London. She is Scottish, just down from Edinburgh, and the men and women and the "prim" flowers of London — all the things that thrilled Clarissa — seem odd to Maisie. Especially odd are the Smiths, she thinks. Then we look at Maisie through Mrs. Dempster's eyes. We observe old Mr. Bently. The scene is blurring. Life has gone awry for most of the people we have met since Clarissa Dalloway stepped out of her house this morning to go shopping for flowers. The scene ends with the sky-writing airplane still noiselessly spilling blurred letters onto the sky. What do they say? They might say "toffee" but the message is still incomplete. We can interpret its blurred image any way we choose, just as Clarissa, Septimus, Lucrezia, and Maisie, Mrs. Dempster, and Mr. Bently can each decide differently about London, Londoners, and life. Human beings interpret moments of reality variously; we have seen several striking instances through the perceptions of the sane, the insane, the foreigner, the newcomer, and the elderly.

 
Dawn is coming,
Open your eyes...