Book Review: Mrs Dalloway: Biography of a Novel

Mitchell Alcrim reviews Mark Hussey, Mrs Dalloway: Biography of a Novel (Manchester University Press, 2025)

Appearing one hundred years to the day since Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway was published, Mark Hussey’s Mrs Dalloway: Biography of a Novel is a dazzling, engrossing read. Following ‘the novel’s biography from conception to realisation; from publication to reception; and from dissemination around the globe to its reimagination in myriad forms and contexts,’ (xi) Hussey unearths new ways of thinking about the ‘life’ of Woolf’s landmark novel and how it continues to captivate readers’ imaginations a century after its publication.

Woolf’s second novel, Jacob’s Room, represented a personal and artistic breakthrough. Delighted to have developed ‘the kind of short experimental fictions she had been writing since 1917 into the longer form of a novel’, she also had finally discovered ‘how to begin (at 40) to say something in my own voice.’ (4) Even before the publication of Jacob’s Room in October 1922, Woolf was already thinking about her next book and had determined that ‘all must converge upon the party at the end.’ (ix) From the very beginning, then, Woolf recognised the opportunities that social gatherings afforded the novelist’s eye: ‘[s]he liked the way that at a party “individuals compose themselves differently from what they do in private.”’ (69) (This theme of ‘party consciousness’ would be further explored in the stories written after the publication of the novel.)

On 14 October 1922, Woolf confided in her diary that in her new book ‘I adumbrate here a study of insanity & suicide: the world seen by the sane & the insane side by side—something like that. Septimus Smith? — Is that a good name?’ (25) By June 1923, she felt that she had ‘almost too many ideas. I want to give life & death, sanity & insanity: I want to criticise the social system, & to show it at work, at its most intense.’ (19) That October she declared that ‘I am stuffed with ideas for it. I feel I can use up everything I’ve ever thought.’ (41) She described her new novel as ‘too interwoven’ for any part to stand on its own when T. S. Eliot asked to publish an extract in the Criterion (36-37). Hussey offers an incisive key to reading and appreciating Woolf’s innovative approach:

[W]e need to understand that everything is related to everything else, that she is trying to achieve something that the necessarily sequential nature of reading works against. Woolf often uses repetition as a form of patterning, so that certain phrases will resonate with one another. (41)

Woolf makes demands on her readers; as Hussey explains, ‘there is no helpful narrator pointing out what we should pay more or less attention to.’ (40) In crafting her novel, Woolf was actively striving ‘to capture “life or spirit, truth or reality” as it was experienced in the contemporary world,’ something she believed the Edwardian writers such as H.G. Wells, Arnold Bennett, and John Galsworthy had been unable to achieve.

Woolf, however, did agree with Bennett that ‘the essence of the novel is character-making. Their difference lay in what each considered “real.”’ (21) Hussey argues that ‘therein is the fundamental point that determines whether readers love the work of Virginia Woolf or cannot understand what her admirers see in it: what seems “real” to us in the creation of a character such as Clarissa Dalloway?’ (22)  In his essay ‘Is the Novel Decaying?’ Bennett had offered Jacob’s Room as evidence that ‘the new generation of writers could not create characters that “vitally survive in the mind.”’ (19) As Hussey writes, ‘this was an existensial issue as far as Woolf was concerned,’ for, as she declared in the 1923 essay ‘Mr Bennett and Mrs Brown’, ‘to disagree about character is to differ in the depths of the being.’ (21) In her essay, Woolf’s narrator is left alone in a train carriage with a Mrs Brown and ‘describes what she imagines to be the character of her travelling companion, because this is what novelists do.’ (22) In Woolf’s view, the Edwardian novelists ‘would not notice Mrs Brown at all’; instead, she argues, they would be ‘more interested in all kinds of things extraneous to her character.’  To support her opinion, Woolf goes on to quote passages from one of Bennett’s novels, writing that ‘[o]ne line of insight would have done more than all those lines of description.’ (21-22) Without a narrator, Woolf explored possible methods for conveying a sense of her characters. As Hussey explains:

One means was through other perspectives: ‘Septimus … must be seen by someone. His wife?’; ‘Mrs D must be seen by other people’; ‘Every scene should build up the idea of C’s character’. (44)

Hussey captures perfectly the effect produced by such an approach when he states that ‘[t]here is a strong sense throughout the novel not only of communication without words but also of how no one is complete in themselves, that our “selves” are in part created from the selves of others. (45)

Woolf ‘wrestle[d] with finding ways to make the design of her novel work with her vision’ (36) – as Hussey points out, she considered ‘form’, a term borrowed from the visual arts, as possibly too concrete to use with regard to literary art. (40) This notion of form ‘gets between her experience as a reader and what she is reading.’ (40) As she stated in her 1922 essay, ‘On Re-Reading Novels,’ ‘[w]hen we finish a book … “there is nothing to be seen; there is everything to be felt.”’(40) In a letter of September 1924 to Roger Fry, she explains that, to her, form in fiction meant ‘emotion put into the right relations’ (40) – emotions that resonate in the reader’s mind long after the last page is read.

In August 1923 she had a revelation, ‘envision[ing] “beautiful caves” behind her characters:

I think that gives exactly what I want; humanity, humour, depth. The idea is that the caves shall connect, & each comes to daylight in the present moment. (43)

In October of the same year, she described ‘a tunnelling process, by which I tell the past by instalments, as I have need of it.’  As Hussey explains: 

[These] metaphors convey her sense of an archaeology of the self, the way in which memories are like veins of ore hidden deep within us until they are suddenly exposed, brought to the surface … Woolf was conceiving of human subjectivity in new ways, trying to create fictional narratives that would communicate that conception. (36)

Hussey helps us to see how Woolf’s novel was taking shape.

Clarissa Dalloway and Septimus Smith were always linked in Woolf’s mind and ‘entirely dependent on each other’;  in a letter to an American student in 1932, she wrote that ‘the character of Septimus … was invented to complete the character of Mrs Dalloway; I could not otherwise convey my whole meaning about her.’ (26) Hussey describes the effect of this interweaving:

Although they never meet, these characters are linked in a reader’s mind by their awful fear of what might be about to happen, and by their mutual longing for release. (x)

Woolf understood that her twin narratives posed significant challenges for readers. She feared that ‘[they] would not be able to understand that these different strands were supposed to be woven together, culminating in the complex emotional reaction Clarissa has at her party to hearing about Septimus’s suicide.’ (73) One of the most intriguing aspects of Woolf’s novel is that there is no clear, definitive answer to the question of why Clarissa responds so viscerally to the death of someone she has never met. What does it mean? Woolf trusts her readers to make their own judgements.

Clarissa’s musing that she ‘would not say of anyone in the world now that they were this or were that’ is an apt reflection of how Woolf thought about character. Apart from the Doctors Holmes and Bradshaw, who, in their treatment of Septimus, represent the ineptness and brutality of the medical profession, all the major figures in Mrs Dalloway emerge as multi-faceted individuals.

At first, Woolf considered Clarissa as ‘in some way tinsely’ but added substance and dimension to her by inventing her memories. (86) Hussey points out that readers might initially agree with Doris Kilman’s assessment that Clarissa ‘came from the most worthless of all classes – the rich with a smattering of culture.’ (62) Clarissa cares nothing about the slaughter of the Armenian people (she confuses them with Albanians) and complacently lends support to the political system which sent thousands of young men to fight in a senseless war. She hosts a party at which the villainous Sir William Bradshaw, Septimus’s tormentor, is a guest. Indeed, as Hussey points out, in The Voyage Out (the novel in which the Dalloways first appeared), Clarissa is credited by her husband with making his life as a politician possible ‘by the domestic hearth tended by his wife, to which he returns at the end of each day.’ (9) However, Clarissa’s remembrances of her past (a product of Woolf’s ‘tunnelling process’) provide an opportunity for further insight into her character as she looks back on her youth at Bourton, her relationships with Peter and Sally, and the life choices she has made. These glimpses at her rich inner life also find her contemplating death yet finding solace in feeling as if she were ‘laid out like a mist between the people she knew best, who lifted her on their branches as she had seen the trees lift the mist, but it spread ever so far, her life, herself.’ (71) These alterations in perspective are subtle and require careful reading. Hussey observes that ‘[t]hroughout Mrs Dalloway, if we read attentively, the question of where we are supposed to position ourselves morally recurs, and the narrative gives us little or no help, insisting that we take responsibility for our own judgements.’ (63)

One of the highlights of Hussey’s book is his reading of Doris Kilman. Usually regarded as ‘a monster of spite, envy and unfulfilled desire’ or as a ‘pitiful, grotesque, vampirine governess’, she is often used as evidence of Woolf’s snobbery and class prejudice. (117) Hussey writes that ‘[f]or a sizeable number of critics, this was the view that Woolf took of the character, and therefore intended her readers to take.’ (117) He argues:

To discern a conclusive attitude toward Kilman in the prose through which she is created is to overlook the way in which Woolf’s free indirect discourse creates a space that must be occupied by each reader, each time the novel is read, a space in which the reader is invited to become … the writer’s ‘accomplice.’ (120)

Hussey points out that we are given Clarissa’s perception of Kilman, but critics have mistaken this for Woolf’s own feelings about her. Clarissa finds Kilman’s green mackintosh a ‘positive torture’ but also admits that perhaps it is not Kilman she despises but simply ‘the idea of her.’ (121) She reminds her of the world’s injustices and causes an attack of conscience on Clarissa’s part – ‘[i]n just a few paragraphs Woolf reveals aspects of Clarissa’s character by way of her thoughts about Kilman.’ (121) Similarly, according to Hussey, Clarissa serves as a kind of symbol or totem for Kilman: ‘”she pitied and despised” women like that.’ And yet, ‘with another throw of the dice’, things may have been different between them. (122) Perspectives are constantly shifting in Woolf’s text, so that if Clarissa is infuriated by Kilman’s attempt to grasp and possess Elizabeth, she also thinks that ‘her daughter’s “odd friendship” with Miss Kilman at least “proves she has a heart.”’ (64) Woolf does not impose her own views on the reader – rather, she provides the materials with which to make up their own minds. (65) Later, at the party, Clarissa suddenly thinks of Kilman and confesses: ‘She hated her; she loved her.’ (65) In his marvellous reading of Doris Kilman, Hussey elegantly illustrates the complexity that lies at the heart of Mrs Dalloway, for ‘[i]f [Clarissa] can both hate and love Kilman, it is because Clarissa recognises her humanity in all its complexity.’ (125) ‘Is the point not, perhaps, that Kilman is just as complex a character as Clarissa Dalloway, marked by ambivalence, by contradictions, by, in effect, humanity?’ (123)

Woolf’s creation and characterisation of Septimus Smith were deeply informed by her own battles with mental illness as well as by her reading of Lord Southborough’s articles in The Times in September 1922. These pieces recounted the work done by the Parliamentary Commission investigating shell shock. (28) A committed pacifist herself, it is likely that Woolf was also inspired by her brother-in-law, Clive Bell’s 1915 pamphlet Peace at Once in which Bell launched an impassioned attack on the Government’s assertion that the War was being fought to safeguard ‘national honour.’ (32) Woolf referred to the War as ‘this preposterous masculine fiction’, (12) a sentiment which finds its echo in Septimus’s biting description of the War as ‘that little shindy of schoolboys with gunpowder.’ Hussey asserts that:

Mrs Dalloway is a great war novel, an early instance of those works of the 1920s which made clear that the effects of war continue to reverberate throughout society long after the guns fall silent and the treaties are signed … in showing how war’s aftermath echoes through daily life, Mrs Dalloway was groundbreaking. (35)

‘Woolf’s Septimus’, Hussey writes, ‘is one of the very earliest representations of a “shell-shocked” veteran—someone enduring what is now termed PTSD.’ (13) Woolf captures the prevailing attitudes regarding those suffering from shell shock when Dr Holmes belittles Septimus’s suffering by heartlessly remarking ‘[i]n a funk, eh?’ and calls Septimus a coward. (30. 28) Haunted by his experiences as a combat soldier and the loss of his dear friend, Evans, Septimus is emblematic of the ‘thousands of poor chaps’ who were ‘shovelled together, already half-forgotten’, victims of a post-war amnesia emphatically embodied by the callous ‘tut-tutting’ of the minor character, Mr Bowley. (58-9)

Many writers, composers, and visual artists have been inspired by Woolf’s novel. Hussey writes that ‘Woolf’s language lingers in the mind of countless readers and writers, who continue to incorporate it in their own creations in ways both large and small.’ (x) Thus, art engenders art. Art may also give rise to countless internet memes or be linked with Miley Cyrus in a publisher’s attempt to promote Woolf’s novel to younger readers in 2023. (150, 174)

Perhaps the work most responsible for the renewed popularity of Mrs Dalloway is Michael Cunningham’s 1998 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, The Hours. Both Cunningham’s book and its 2002 star-studded film adaptation introduced Woolf to many readers who may not otherwise have read her. (166) The novel was ‘generally positively received as a fine piece of literary fiction,’ (163) – indeed, as Hussey tells us, the BBC Culture website heralded it as ‘the book that changed how we see Virginia Woolf.’ (151) The film, however, was critcised, particularly by academics and writers, for perpetuating the image of Woolf as ‘the invalid lady of Bloomsbury, a frail, snobbish madwoman.’ (161) The writer, Doris Lessing, expressed her feelings about Nicole Kidman’s portrayal of Woolf:

It was inevitable that Woolf would end up as a genteel lady of letters, though I don’t think any of us could have believed that she would be played by a young, beautiful, fashionable girl who never smiles, whose permanent frown shows how many deep and difficult thoughts she is having. (161)

Despite the film’s shortcomings, Cunningham’s book demonstrates ‘how [Woolf’s] novel circulates in readers’ imaginations at different times.’ As Hussey points out: ‘[a]daptations refract their source texts in ways that can sometimes bring into the foreground elements hitherto buried or unnoticed.’ (157) Cunningham replaces the AIDS crisis for the First World War as ‘the source of trauma and suffering,’ (158) while also giving more prominence to the ‘same-sex love that is so vital a part of both Clarissa and Septimus.’ (156) ‘The kiss between Richard and Clarissa, two queer characters, echoes the kiss between Sally and Clarissa in Woolf’s novel.’ (156) Cunningham characterised his book as standing in relation to Woolf’s as of ‘a variation, an homage, a new interpretation that testifies to the potency and scope of the original.’ (160) ‘For, as Woolf wrote in A Room of One’s Own, books continue each other.’ (144)

Mark Hussey’s biography of Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway is a treasure. Impeccably researched and beautifully written, it is an essential contribution to Woolf studies. Hussey’s passion and admiration for Woolf and her work shine through on every page. The scope of the book is astonishing yet never overwhelms the reader. He elegantly shows how books can mean different things at different times and how our own individual readings and feelings may change over a lifetime. We feel privileged to accompany Hussey as he maps the life and afterlives of Woolf’s masterpiece, from its earliest conception to its renewed visibility during the 2020 pandemic. Most importantly, he inspires us to return to Woolf’s novel and to experience it in new, perhaps, unexpected ways.

Mitchell Alcrim
Cambridge, Mass.

Image 2: Mark Hussey in conversation with Claire Nicholson, Chair of the Virginia Woolf Society of Great Britain and Lecturer at Literature Cambridge, Hart’s Books, Saffron Walden, July 2025. https://hartsbooks.co.uk/. Please support local bookshops and https://uk.bookshop.org when you buy books. Thank you.