Mrs. DallowayThis novel explores the hidden springs of thought and action in one day of a woman's life. Direct and vivid in her account of the details of Clarissa Dalloway's preparations for a party she is to give that evening, the author manages to reveal much more; for it is the feeling behind these daily events that gives Mrs. Dalloway its texture and richness and makes it so memorable. |
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Common terms and phrases
admirable asked Aunt Helena Bartlett pears beauty bedroom Big Ben Bond Street Bourton Buckingham Palace Clarissa Dalloway course cried Dallo dead dear door drawing-room dress Elizabeth Ellie Henderson Evans eyes face feel felt Filmer flowers friends girl gone grey hand happy Harley Street Holmes Hugh Whitbread India Jim Hutton killed knew Lady Bradshaw Lady Bruton laughed London looked lunch married Miss Kilman morning mother motor car never night once one's party perhaps pink pocket-knife poor Prime Minister queer Regent's Park remember Rezia Richard Dalloway roses round Sally Seton seemed Septimus Shakespeare Sir William Bradshaw sitting smoke sofa sort sound stand stood Street suddenly talking tell things thought Clarissa trees turned VIRGINIA WOOLF voice waiting walked wanted Warren Smith wave wife window woman women young
Popular passages
Page 51 - Twere now to be most happy, for I fear My soul hath her content so absolute That not another comfort like to this Succeeds in unknown fate.
Page 47 - It was a sudden revelation, a tinge like a blush which one tried to check and then, as it spread, one yielded to its expansion, and rushed to the farthest verge and there quivered and felt the world come closer, swollen with some astonishing significance, some pressure of rapture, which split its thin skin and gushed and poured with an extraordinary alleviation over the cracks and sores. Then, for that moment, she had seen an illumination; a match burning in a crocus; an inner meaning almost expressed.
Page 3 - Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself. For Lucy had her work cut out for her. The A doors would be taken off their hinges; Rumpelmayer's men were coming. And then, thought Clarissa Dalloway, what a morning — fresh as if issued to children on a beach.
Page 21 - And there the motor car stood, with drawn blinds, and upon them a curious pattern like a tree, Septimus thought, and this gradual drawing together of everything to one centre before his eyes, as if some horror had come almost to the surface and was about to burst into flames, terrified him. The world wavered and quivered and threatened to burst into flames. It is I who am blocking the way, he thought. Was he not being looked at and pointed at; was he not weighted there, rooted to the pavement, for...
Page 280 - He had thrown himself from a window. Up had flashed the ground; through him, blundering, bruising, went the rusty spikes. There he lay with a thud, thud, thud in his brain, and then a suffocation of blackness.
Page 150 - Worshipping proportion, Sir William not only prospered himself but made England prosper, secluded her lunatics, forbade childbirth, penalised despair, made it impossible for the unfit to propagate their views until they, too, shared his sense of proportion...
Page 74 - Ah, said St Margaret's, like a hostess who comes into her drawing-room on the very stroke of the hour and finds her guests there already. I am not late. No, it is precisely half-past eleven, she says. Yet, though she is perfectly right, her voice, being the voice of the hostess, is reluctant to inflict its individuality.
Page 12 - ... somehow in the streets of London, on the ebb and flow of things, here, there, she survived, Peter survived, lived in each other, she being part, she was positive, of the trees at home; of the house there, ugly, rambling all to bits and pieces as it was; part of people she had never met; being laid out like a mist between the people she knew best, who lifted her on their branches as she had seen the trees lift the mist, but it spread ever so far, her life, herself.
Page 70 - It was all over for her. The sheet was stretched and the bed narrow. She had gone up into the tower alone and left them blackberrying in the sun. The door had shut, and there among the dust of fallen plaster and the litter of birds...
Page 199 - She was about to split asunder, she felt. The agony was so terrific. If she could grasp her, if she could clasp her, if she could make her hers absolutely and for ever and then die; that was all she wanted.