How to Read Virginia Woolfs Mrs Dalloway
Like a cubist painting, Virginia Woolf\u2019s narrative style offers multiple simultaneous perspectives on simple objects: dogs, trees, a day in June 1923. Were Woolf a realist writer, Mrs Dalloway would be far more straightforward: a middle-aged woman reflects on her life and reunites with friends as she prepares to host a party; a war veteran, meanwhile, dies by suicide after unsympathetic medical treatment of his PTSD. By using stream-of-consciousness methods for multiple characters in this novel, Woolf grants us access to their minds \u2014 excavating insight and beauty from the very ordinariness of life.
\nIf you like this episode, you\u2019ll also enjoy S02E07, \u201cHow to Read Virginia Woolf\u2019s To the Lighthouse.\u201d