The analysis of the first part of Mrs. Dalloway

The text:

Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself. For Lucy had her work cut out for her. The doors would be taken off their hinges; Rumpelmayer’s men were coming. And then, thought Clarissa Dalloway, what a morning — fresh as if issued to children on a beach. What a lark! What a plunge! For so it had always seemed to her, when, with a little squeak of the hinges, which she could hear now, she had burst open the French windows and plunged at Bourton into the open air. How fresh, how calm, stiller than this of course, the air was in the early morning; like the flap of a wave; the kiss of a wave; chill and sharp and yet (for a girl of eighteen as she then was) solemn, feeling as she did, standing there at the open window, that something awful was about to happen; looking at the flowers, at the trees with the smoke winding off them and the rooks rising, falling; standing and looking until Peter Walsh said, “Musing among the vegetables?”— was that it? —“I prefer men to cauliflowers”— was that it? He must have said it at breakfast one morning when she had gone out on to the terrace — Peter Walsh. He would be back from India one of these days, June or July, she forgot which, for his letters were awfully dull; it was his sayings one remembered; his eyes, his pocket-knife, his smile, his grumpiness and, when millions of things had utterly vanished — how strange it was! — a few sayings like this about cabbages.

Analysis:

The present text belongs to the first part of Virginia Woolf’s novel (Mrs.Dalloway).

It introduces the topic of the novel, the technique used by the novelist and the protagonist.

Indeed, right from the start and the title, the reader understands Mrs. Dalloway is the protagonist of the novel. She is described on the institutional status(Mrs.) and on the social status (she is rich because she can have servitude). Moreover, she is not described physically but, thanks to the interior monologue, the reader is able to know the psychological aspect of her personality. The interior monologue is revealed thanks to the expressions like “What a lark!” “What a plunge!” “how strange it was!” “was that it?”.

The interior monologue, different from the stream of conscious, allows to mix present and past together, because the time of mind is simultaneous.

A third person narrator introduces her: “Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself“. The narrator seems to be disappeared: he uses reported speed (“as she did”) and he uses short conjunction (for, then, but ,and). The last device is useful to keep the narrator slight , but to tell the truth, it reveals the narrator’s presence.

Furthermore, the novelist applies the poetic language: she uses onomatopoeia (”squeak”) and alliteration (“june and july”).