Like many of my classmates, I found Mrs. Dalloway a difficult read. For the most part, however, it was enjoyable. I felt the highs and the lows along with the characters. Even if I had never shared an experience with the characters, the writing sucked me into a position of empathy that was hard to shake.

In my review of the novel, I want to draw from two phrases on the back cover of my Harcourt edition of the novel. Perhaps it’s because I’m studying post-structuralism and Foucault in a theory class, but the reviews in the back seem just as much a part of the text as the actual book does.

The two phrases come from Michael Cunningham, author of The Hours. His praise for the novel included admiration for the “enormous within the every day” and the suggestion that the book was worth reading if just for “some of the most beautiful, complex, incisive and idiosyncratic sentences ever written in English.” Frankly, I agree with his analysis. The tale as a whole was somewhat underwhelming. It turns out I don’t care much for the comings and goings of the London Elite in the 1920’s.

(Brene Brown narrates this short video on empathy created by RSA It’s worth a watch.)

The passages that did grip me with a sense of empathy made novel worth reading. The conversation between Peter and Clarissa had me imagining my own lost loves (though I have none). When Rezia felt the terror of abandonment, I felt like a foreign but determined companion, terrified of my own committments. I imagined the failure of Sally and Peter like it was my own. How often does it feel like I’m the only one living below my potential?

Like Cunningham says, Virginia Woolf finds grandeur and critical importance in everyday occurrences and trials. Or, to say it more concisely as Walt Whitman did, “I (or any person) contain multitudes.”

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