Mrs. Dalloway

There is a bookstore in a college town (the same college I attended) that sells novels and,then, exclusively books on how to garden. It's called Mrs. Dalloway's. On one of the walls of the store is painted the first sentence of the book,"Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself." I used to ride my bicycle by that store a lot, and I would wonder how they got away with calling the store Mrs. Dalloway's. What about copyright? What about decency? I mean, I wandered in the bookstore once to look around. I was just totally grossed out. To reduce the book, Mrs. Dalloway, to a story about flowers and then to build a store around it seemed sacrilegious. Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf is not really at all about flowers. And, it is certainly not about gardening.

I read this book in my junior seminar of an English Literature program at school. We were encouraged to explore Woolf's mindset at the time of writing this, along with pertinent themes in the novel. I went wild with that freedom, writing a convoluted, lengthy paper about not only the female relationships in Mrs. Dalloway, but about how Virginia Woolf, herself, actually cherished, appreciated, and respected intimate relationships that women (in general) had with each other over Woolf's respect for the boring relationships between men and women.

I can't even believe I not only worked long and hard on such an absurd topic, but that I had the audacity to turn it in. My professor, after allowing me to drone on and on, finally looked at me and asked, "What is it about female relationships that YOU see as so appealing?" and "What about the intimacy of two women potentially in love is so daunting to you? Could it be that it is too close to your own feelings?" She really didn't have to say more. I was spending lots of time pouring over Mrs. Dalloway, searching for the legitimization of female relationships. I did this not to understand Woolf's frame of mind or her writing style, but to understand my own mindset.

That is what Mrs. Dalloway may do for you. There are so many layers to this novel (and even the connotation of layers has layers) that you may find yourself reading it all the way through only to highlight especially touching phrases. I know that it must have helped me tremendously to study this book in a class and have my professor on hand for discussion and questions. But, you can still read this on your own. When, after you get done reading all the way through, you go back and look at sections you starred or underlined, ask yourself why that particular passage meant so much. Maybe you won't have Professor Abel asking you the tough questions, but, when it comes right down to it, you are already asking them of yourself for yourself.