rainontheroad

It took a while for me to get into Mrs. Dalloway, around twenty or so pages. It's not easy reading but once you get used to Woolf's indirect interior monologue/ stream of consciousness technique/ fragmented reality it really is an enjoyable and profound read. There's lots of advice and insight here, into marriage, life, death, relationships, wealth, empire, mental illness, psychiatry and more. I think part of the reason why Woolf chose to write in this way is to give as complete a picture of the incomplete puzzle of life as possible and to some extent she does manage to accomplish this. There is one glaring deficiency in this project though and that is the lack of sex. I don't mean hot, steaming scenes of love-making but rather the integral part that sex, sexual drive, tension, desire etc play in shaping our motives and being. I think that element would also have helped put a nail through the whole "angel of the house" stereotype that Woolf despised so much. There is a short burst of sexual desire in Sally's "exquisite" kiss but this is not enough.But Woolf like every one of us was a creature of her time and her time (post WW2) was not a liberal one and so even the scant allusions to homosexuality can be considered bold, risky statements. Nonetheless, Mrs. Dalloway is worth the effort but one senses that the book can only be appreciated after multiple readings."...when London is a grass-grown path and all those hurrying along the pavement this Wednesday morning are but bones with a few wedding rings mixed up in their dust and the gold stoppings of innumerable decayed teeth."