读后感：达洛维夫人

Comments about Mrs. Dalloway

Mrs. Dalloway, published in1925, is the masterpiece of Virginia Woolf. As we all know, it is a classic novel of stream of consciousness. Besides, I think the novel is very unique because the whole story takes place in a single day and two seemingly unconnected story lines are inter weaved in the novel.

Obviously, from the title we can know that Mrs. Dalloway is the most important character who catches reader's eyes from the beginning to the end. She can be viewed from many angles. As far as I am concerned, she is a woman of contradictions. The character in her youth is in conflict with that of her later life. When Mrs Dalloway was young, or we should call her Clarissa, she had a close friend called Sally Seton, who was an adventurous, active girl with independence. Clarissa showed her strong appreciation about Sally and even fell in love with the girl, from which we can learn that she herself is also a vivacious girl with a sense of rebellion. She was sensitive to the "moment"and to the "poetry of existence". She also fell in love with Peter, who was the one that really understood her.

However, she was a woman full of ration and self-consciousness as well. The excitement went only to Clarissa's own boundaries. Here is the contradiction. That's also the reason why Peter once told Clarissa disparagingly that one day she would become "the perfect hostess". It became more and more clear that his prediction was accurate. According to what she knew about herself, Clarissa realized that she would never be able to marry Peter because their values were too different. She believed that she would never be able to break away all of the fears she had about men and women and life, set herself free, and be happy. So she married Richard Dalloway, who could make her feel secure although she didn't love him. She tried hard to train herself to respond like a lady, a lady who was ambitious to gain in material things and locked "Clarissa" in the inner depths of her mind. Then she became Mrs. Dalloway.

When Peter met Mrs. Dalloway again after many years, he was disappointed and irritated. "here she's been sitting all the time I've been in India; mending her dress; playing about; going to party; running to the House and back and all that, he

thought, ... For there is nothing in the world so bad for some women as marriage, ...So it is, so it is, he thought..." Peter thought that Mrs. Dalloway should not spend her whole life like this, for she was such a lovely girl and she should be better. She should live a more meaningful and wonderful life.

It suddenly recalls me of women in China. They may also like Mrs. Dalloway, full of passion and dreams in the youth but after marriage, they have to lock themselves to the boring life. It's hard to say whether their lives or Mrs. Dalloway's life is of happiness or misery. Maybe that's the blend of ideal and reality.