Mrs. Dalloway

Since my final paper is Michael Cunningham’s The Hours, which discribes three female figures based on Virginia Woolf and her representative novel Mrs. Dalloway, I determine to watch the movie of Mrs. Dalloway. Mrs. Dalloway is a movie talks a woman’s one day, but shows her lifetime. Virginia Woolf amplifies a unique way to depict Mrs. Dalloway, which is called stream of consciousness storytelling: which is characterized by associative leaps in syntax and punctuation that can make the prose difficult to follow(Wikipedia). Mrs. Dalloway’s narration throughout the movie is blur since the speech is alternating between direct and indirect monologue. As far as I’m concerned, both the novel and the movie contribute to our contemporary literal and social life. The significance of the movie and the novel should not be ignored by people who admire and praise them. Mrs. Dalloway was like a literal bomb, shocked and surprised the society in the early 20th century.

In the movie, some aspects riddled with the themes Feminism and Homosexuality.

Feminism

A steady underlying theme in the book is feminism, the roles of women of the time period and their seeming insignificance. Take an inner sight of the movie, Clarissa Dalloway's character emphasis the strong role of women and embodies both sexual and economic repression. The plot paints the protagonist, a charmed and attractive woman that all the men around her are obsessed with her. This shows the women’s social situation gradually become important and high-valued in her time. She deliberately holding a party, which she thinks, can content everyone’s satisfy. She is able to express herself and be outstanding in the parties she throws and embraces the high social expectations. In addition, in the opening of the movie, Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy flowers herself,

Another woman figure, Sally Seton, an old friend of Clarissa whom Clarissa admires dearly,is also thought to be a powerful and independent woman. For example, she smoked, she ran down a corridor naked, and she shows her unladylike quality which gives people a man feeling. Sally should be treated as a feminist since her motivations and behaviors act against those traditional and constrained women in the early 20th Century in England.

Confusion of Life

In the movie, we see that Clarissa is struggling to find her roles and positions in the society. She keeps thinking her purpose in life that day. She recalls the good old time with Peter Walsh and Sally Seton. The time that she was in a relationship with Peter until the appearance of Richard Dalloway. She decided to marry “safe” but “stodgy” Dalloway instead of energetic but progressive Walsh. Is she regret now? Her life will be totally subverted if she marry Walsh but she is aware of having compromised by marring Richard, is less challenging and risky. The safe marriage makes her hiding her real feeling. As we saw in the party, she hides her uncomfortable feeling no matter how uneasy she feels about her life. Even though she is tired of repeating the same thing days by days and her brain start moaning people she dislikes, she is stilling hanging a polite but fake smile on her face. Her actions make me feel sad, I interpret this scene as a sense of isolation and disconnect of life. Beneath the appearance of this splendid party, only loneliness and another part of ourselves(which is not exposed in front of the public) left. When Clarissa stands by the window in her solitary room, she contemplates the suicide of a Veteran named Septimus. She admires and respects the death of Septimus, his suicide is an cat of embracing life which saves himself from constraint, he is free from pain and torment which is caused by war. Septimus’s actions drag Clarissa into shame, as an upper class woman, she desires and schemes for social success despite her life is dull and tedious. Clarissa is longing for a passionate life inside her heart, however, she does not dare to violate her seemingly wonderful life. Therefore, Clarissa considers Septimus’s death as her disgrace. Clarissa realises that her life is almost end, and she is capable of enduring her farce marriage.