Mrs. Dalloway 36-136

Mrs. Dalloway 36-136

Peter

-       What role does Peter’s knife play? 39-40

-       “What an extraudinary habit that was, Clarissa thought; always playing with a knife. Always making one feel, too, frivolous; empty-minded; a mere silly chatterbox, as he used.” 43

-        “For why go back like this to the past? He though. Why make him think of it again? Why make him suffer, when she had tortured him to infernally? Why?” 41

-       What is their history and why did they not get married?

-       “And she would think me a failure, which I am in their sense, he thought; in the Dalloways’ sense.” 42

Time

-       The Sound of Big Ben striking the half-hour struck out between them with extraordinary vigor, as if a young man, strong, indifferent, inconsiderate, were swinging dumb-bells this way and that.” 47

Death

-       Why does St. Margaret’s Bell make him think of Clarissa’s death?

-       “The death of the soul.” 57

-       “I will tell you the time,” Said Septimus, very slowly, very drowsily, smiling mysteriously. As he sat smiling at the dead man in the grew suit the quarter struck-the quarter to twelve.” 69

o   How and why are dead figuratively and literally so closely connected?

Water

-       “But he himself remained high on his rock, like a drowned sailor on a rock. I leaned over the edge of the boat and fell down, he thought. I went under the sea. I have been dead, and yet am now alive, but let me rest still; he begged (he was talking to himself again---it was awful, awful!)” 67

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Miss. Kilman

-       Compare Mrs. Dalloway and Miss. Kilman

o   “Miss Kilman took another cup of tea. Elizabeth, with her oriental bearing, her inscrutable mystery, sat perfectly upright; no, she did not want anything more. She looked for her gloves—her white gloves. There were under the table. Ah, but she must not go! Miss Kilman could not let her go! This youth, that was so beautiful, this girl, whom she genuinely loved! Her large hand opened and shut on the table.”

Septimus

-       “His wife was crying, and he felt nothing…he descended another step into the pit…now he had surrendered; no other people but help him. People must be sent for. He gave in” 88