acommonreader.st
Virginia Stephen (Woolf) in disguise on the far left, William Horace de Vere Cole in tophat on the far rightSomething a little lighter for today… On February 7, 1910, the HMS Dreadnought hosted a hastily arranged tour of four Abyssinian princes, or so they had been told. It turns out to have been an elaborate […]
Links to the Mrs. Dalloway posts are below, but I thought I would spend a little space on some works that pay homage to the novel and to Woolf herself. (section deleted) The Hours was also made into the 2002 movie with Nicole Kidman, Julianne Moore and Meryl Streep. While I haven’t read any of […]
A woman throws a party, sees some old friends, and thinks of times gone by. The storyline by itself of Mrs. Dalloway makes for a challenging transition from book to screen. Factor in the novel’s use of n internal dialogue to represent consciousness and I didn’t expect much from the movie. Fortunately the film was […]
Draft for Mrs DallowayThis post covers the last third of the book, starting from the narration returning to Septimus and Rezia in the late afternoon and going through the end. Septimus briefly returns to some semblance of sanity, content at home and making Rezia happy as well. His reflections on marriage provide an interesting contrast: […]
The London Walks of Mrs. Dalloway by E.K. Sparks, Clemson UniversityThis post will cover from the old woman singing outside the Regent’s Park Tube station at approximately noon to the narration leaving Elizabeth on the Westminster bus in the late afternoon. This middle third of the novel fleshes out many of the themes and begins […]
Big Ben clock tower from Westminster Bridge Picture source Guidedrius: Fear no more the heat o’ th’ sun, Nor the furious winter’s rages, Thou thy worldly task has done, Home art gone and ta’en thy wages. Golden lads and girls all must, As chimney-sweepers, come to dust. Arviragus: Fear no more the frown o’ th’ […]
Mrs. Dalloway, London: Hogarth Press, 1925. Dust jacket designed by Vanessa Bell. Picture source It is difficult–perhaps impossible–for a writer to say anything about his own work. All he has to say has been said as fully and as well as he can in the body of the book itself. If he has failed to […]
Many posts related to Woolf and To the Lighthouse, so here goes… Virginia Woolf online resources Woolf’s “Modern Fiction” and How Should One Read a Book?” essays Audio recommendation To the Lighthouse: The Window, Chapter 1 To the Lighthouse: The Window, Chapters 2 – 9 To the Lighthouse: The Window, Chapters 10 – 16 To […]
The IMDB page for the movie can be found here. An adaptation of Virginia Woolf’s work is going to be a challenge. How to capture the consciousness of the characters that fills the majority of the book? Despite the massive changes to storyline, wholesale additions and omissions, and a pared down character list, the movie […]
Godrevy Island lighthouse (Source)“The great revelation had never come. The great revelation perhaps never did come. Instead there were little daily miracles, illuminations, matches struck unexpectedly in the dark; here was one. This, that, and the other; herself and Charles Tansley and the breaking wave; Mrs Ramsay bringing them together; Mrs Ramsay saying, “Life stand […]