- The novel starts very much “in the middle of things” with no obvious gestures of orienting readers to the who/what/where/when. In this light the detail of the “doors being taken off their hinges” on p. 3 seems telling: the “house” of this novel is going to be dismantled, expanded, somewhat open to the air in ways that make the stable “inside/outside” opposition much fuzzier. What are some of the “data” you are able to collect in the first few pages–especially about the title character–that help you locate yourself in the novel?
- Who is Clarissa Dalloway? How old is she? What’s her social position, roughly? What do we learn about her though observing who and what she “loves” (one of her favorite words)?
- Big Ben, the massive clock tower in London’s center, tolls throughout the novel, first on p. 4. What is the significance of these moments? How do the “leaden circles” of the toll spread throughout the novel in the form of musing on or thematizations of time?
- How would you describe the narrative voice of this novel? What are some of its powers, so to speak? How does it differ from the kind of “realist” narrator that James gives us in Masie? You might look especially at pp. 20-29, as the backfiring car passes and the skywriter works overhead.
- Who is Septimus Smith? What is distinctive about his inner landscape? Why might Woolf have chosen to feature this kind of character in her novel?
- How does the first part of the novel thematize gender and sexuality? What evidence can you find of the novel’s investment in gender differences, in differences between a masculine and feminine “voice”? You might look especially at the depiction of Sally Seton and the relationship between Seton and Clarissa Dalloway.
- Who is Peter Walsh? What kind of social “type” might he embody? What do we learn from his relationship to Clarissa, “then” and now?
The Modernist Novel
ENGL 387, Professor Allred, Spring 2021
