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MRS. DALLOWAY STANDS AS ONE OF THE FIRST "anti-novels" written in the Modernist period of British literature. Devoid almost entirely of plot or action, Virginia Woolf instead draws in her reader's gaze through exploring the interior of the human mind—specifically, that of Clarissa Dalloway. We, as were readers of Woolf's time, are immediately put on guard at the novel's malleable prose. Time, location, and especially thoughts are not specific to one character or individual. Rather, we are thrown interchangeably into the minds of various mundane people: Clarissa Dalloway, Septimus Smith, Peter Walsh, and Doris Kilman, among others. Their opinions are not unique to them, and Woolf's prose often relocates us between the characters in the middle of paragraphs and even sentences. This effect, and the streams of consciousness it provides, can be unsettling for Woolf's readers at times; we observe the bursts of manic joy the characters feel, the bitter anxieties, and even their occasional thoughts of suicide, all of which eventually lead to the novel's enigmatic ending where we witness the death of Septimus Smith and the success of Mrs. Dalloway's party. In each of these moments, Woolf tells us that life, even at its brightest and darkest moments, is nevertheless mundane and must still carry on.
In light of the COVID-19 global pandemic, my own personal interest in Mrs. Dalloway has been renewed as well. As I read through the novel's monologic narration and extraordinarily long sentences, I am reminded of day-to-day duties that I can no longer perform—duties that Woolf writes about with ecstatic joy and meaning. Clarissa Dalloway, for all her flaws and reputation as a trivial and snobbish socialite, embodies an uninhibited joy for life. She exclaims that she will "buy the flowers herself,"1 making a day of preparing for her party, and is overcome with melancholic pleasure as she encounters various people in her life throughout her London excursion. Woolf's prose is bristling with delight over these so-called trivial matters, but in our current year, as thousands of people across the planet are confined indoors, barred from society or civil interaction out of concern for each other's welfare, I (and perhaps other readers of the novel) cannot help but feel a nostalgic sense of grief at our...