Mrs Dalloway First Impressions

Since the beginning of the year we were warned about how difficult Mrs Dalloway by Virgina Woolf was going to be. I wasn’t sure if it was because of the plot or because of the writing, but now I know it’s both. Straight from the beginning the setting was clearly placed in London, and the character of Mrs Dalloway was introduced. The first line of the first chapter says, “Mrs Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself” (1). A couple sentences later it says, “And then thought Clarissa Dalloway…” (1). Woolf continuously switches names from Clarissa to Clarissa Dalloway to Mrs Dalloway. There seems to be no pattern yet, but maybe that will become clearer as I read on. It might be that when she is in a certain place or doing something in particular then she would have to be called a particular name.
Something I found interesting how Woolf literally wrote her words in a train of thought, as in sometimes completed and sometimes not. For example, Clarissa says, “For it was the middle of June. The War was over…John, her favourite killed; but it was over; thank Heaven–over. It was June. The King and Queen were at the Palace” (2). I had to read that sentence twice or three times just to understand it. She keeps jumping around thoughts and mentioning different people so that I don’t really know whom I should be paying attention to. Will there ever be just one main character?
This takes place after WWI, maybe this is a sign of how it affected the people. For example, Septimus Warren Smith was in WWI and when he got back started to talk to himself and get stressed out easily. His wife, Lucrezia is frustrated because the doctors say there is nothing wrong with him, but she heard him say, “I will kill myself” (12). I don’t blame her for being upset. It’s sad that the doctors didn’t know what Post-traumatic stress disorder was. There are so many different characters introduced to the readers within the first 20 pages. It’s hard to follow who’s who, but also difficult that they don’t interact with each other and there is very little dialog. It seems like there’s a person thinking per paragraph, for example the bottom of page 21, Maisie Johnson is thinking and then it moves to Mrs. Dempster thinking about Maisie Johnson. I feel that this is most likely a reflection on society at the time, because people were confused about the war and violence that had happened.
I sincerely hope that I get used to this book quickly and can understand what I read within the first time of reading it. I hope that I learn to love Woolf’s writing style and maybe pick up a few traits for myself.