Mrs Dalloway

Question 1

Section 1

Answer 1

“Mrs Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself”
“Big Ben”
“First a warning, musical; then the hour, irrevocable. The leaden circles dissolved in the
air”
Drunk homeless women “love life”
“Mrs Foxcroft… eating her heart out”
“It was over; thank Heaven – over”
“She felt very young; at the same time unspeakably aged.”
“Out, out, far out to sea and alone”
“Trees at home” + “Mist between the people she knew best, who lifted her on their
branches as she had seen the trees lift the mist”
“This being Mrs Dalloway; not even Clarissa anymore; this being Mrs. Richard Dalloway”
“It rasped her… this brutal monster”
“Oh - a pistol shot”

Question 2

Section 2

Answer 2

“Veil-like”, “voice of authority”, “the spirit of religion was abroad”
“The world wavered and quivered and threatened to burst into flames”
“Letters in the sky … everyone looked up”
“All taken together meant the birth of a new religion”
“From trees in the meadow of life beyond a river where the dead walk”

Question 3

Section 3

Answer 3

House was “cool as a vault” + “there was an emptiness about the heart of life”
“Moments like this are the buds on the tree of life”
“The dwindling of life; how year by year her share was sliced”
“Shriveled, aged, breastless”
“Smoking a cigarette”, “cut their (flowers) heads off”, cycling (Sally)
“Sally stopped; picked a flower; kissed her on the lips”
“Diamond”, “radiance burnt through”
“Large pocketknife”
“Tilting his pen-knife towards the green dress”
“Queen whose guards have fallen asleep”, “Before a battle begins”
Peter “burst into tears” – stereoty

Question 4

Section 4

Answer 4

“Fingering his pocketknife, he started after her to follow him woman”
“Red carnation”, “making her lips red”
“As one makes up the better part of life”

Question 5

Historical context

Answer 5

• from Edwardianism to Modernism -> growth of Liberalism, increase of radical thinkers (Freud, Marx)
• increase of technology
• aftereffects of WW1, horrific change and haunting everyone’s consciousness
• shifting roles of women due to First Wave Feminism

Question 6

Literary context

Answer 6

• modernism: (eg cubism) due to increase of uncertainty
• focus on the internal instead of external due to impact of the war, focus ofn collective consciousness

Question 7

Entire novel summary

Answer 7

• Clarissa walks around London and buys herself flowers
• motor car scene + airplane scene
• Peter’s visit to Clarissa
• Peter’s walk in Regent’s Park (follows a young woman)
• Septimus & Rezia in Regent’s Park- imagines Evans
• Septimus with Bradshaw (diagnosis)
• lunch at Lady Bruton’s, rose scene
• Elizabeth with Ms Kilman
• Elizabeth’s bus ride
• Septimus kills himself
• Peter hears ambulance - wonders of civilisation
• Clarissa’s party

Question 8

Section 5

Answer 8

“But to whom does the solitary traveller make reply?”

Question 9

Section 6

Answer 9

“The death of the soul… the death of her soul”

Question 10

Section 7

Answer 10

“The rope was cut; he mounted; he was free” –
“First that trees are alive; next there’s no crime; next love”
“It was horrible, terrible to see a dog become a man”
“Watch a leaf quivering in the rush of air was an exquisite joy”
“Nobody believed a word against Hugh of course” … “Kissing Sally in the smoking-room”
“But women, he thought, shutting his pocket-knife, don’t know what passion is”

Question 11

Section 8

Answer 11

Septimus as a “blossom on his plant – it has flowered; flowered from vanity” – garden imagery, linking between human life and nature
“He developed manliness”, “congratulated himself upon feeling very little and very reasonably”
“How Shakespeare loathed humanity”
“Human nature is on you. Homes is on you.”

Question 12

Section 9

Answer 12

Repetition of proportion by Bradshaw + “made England prosper, secluded her lunatics”
“Conversion, fastidious Goddess, loves blood … and feasts most subtly on the human will”
“Infliction of her unliveable body, which people could not bear to see”
“Why should she have to suffer, when other women, like Clarissa Dalloway, escaped?”
“IF she could grasp her, if she could clasp her”
Septimus’ death scene: would rather die than be dominated/controlled, more methodical before his death than in his madness

Question 13

Section 11

Answer 13

“Hugh kissing Sally in the smoking-room to punish her for saying that women should have votes” (Sally’s view)
“In the middle of my party, here’s death” (Clarissa)
“She felt glad that he had done it; thrown it away” + “Made her feel the beauty, made her feel the fun”