Mrs Dalloway
While writing and revising Mrs. Dalloway, Virginia Woolf was corresponding with E.M. Forster, who was working on A Passage to India. In September of 1921, she records in her diary: ``A letter from Morgan [Forster] this morning. He seems as critical of the East as of Bloomsbury, & sits dressed in a turban watching his Prince dance ' ' (Diary 2.138). His novel came out well before she finished hers; she read it and noted, ``Morgan is too restrained in his new book perhaps ' ' (Diary 2.304). A note of the Anglo-Indian society that dominates A Passage to India resonates in Mrs. Dalloway 's background, sounded in part by returning Indian traveler, Peter Walsh, but also heard and overheard in conversations and oblique references scattered throughout the narrative. Reinforcing its literal presence in the novel, an echo of India appears in Mrs. Dalloway 's narrative rhythms. Like the intricate percussion of the Indian tabla, the fabric of Woolf 's narrative comprises a polyrhythmic texture that subtly undermines London 's booming metronome: Big Ben.
The beautiful and complex narrative of Mrs. Dalloway seems to defy readers ' powers of description. David Dowling 's Mapping Streams of Consciousness exemplifies a sense one must ``reconstruct ' ' the text in order to understand it. In a section entitled ``A Reading, ' ' Dowling dissects the novel into neat structural packages so the reader can easily study its anatomy. He includes maps of London showing various characters ' movements and intersections, an hourly chronology of the day of Clarissa 's party, character sketches condensed from details scattered in the text, and, in the appendix, a kind of ``miniature concordance ' ' that provides counts for some 32 words (``India ' ' appears 25 times).
Other studies of Mrs. Dalloway are less detailed but serve as well to illustrate the difficulties of describing its narrative patterns. In ``Metaphor, Metonymy, and Ideology: Language and Perception in Mrs. Dalloway, ' ': Teresa
The beautiful and complex narrative of Mrs. Dalloway seems to defy readers ' powers of description. David Dowling 's Mapping Streams of Consciousness exemplifies a sense one must ``reconstruct ' ' the text in order to understand it. In a section entitled ``A Reading, ' ' Dowling dissects the novel into neat structural packages so the reader can easily study its anatomy. He includes maps of London showing various characters ' movements and intersections, an hourly chronology of the day of Clarissa 's party, character sketches condensed from details scattered in the text, and, in the appendix, a kind of ``miniature concordance ' ' that provides counts for some 32 words (``India ' ' appears 25 times).
Other studies of Mrs. Dalloway are less detailed but serve as well to illustrate the difficulties of describing its narrative patterns. In ``Metaphor, Metonymy, and Ideology: Language and Perception in Mrs. Dalloway, ' ': Teresa
Cited: Dodd, Elizabeth. ```On the Floor of the Mind ': Sentence Shape and Rhythm in Mrs. Dalloway. ' ' The Midwest Quarterly 36:3 (1995): 275-288. Dowling, David Ebert, Teresa. ``Metaphor, Metonymy, and Ideology: Language and Perception in Mrs. Dalloway. ' ' Language and Style 18:2(1985): 152-164. Forster, E.M Hart, Mickey. Drumming at the Edge of Magic: A Journey Into the Spirit of Percussion. San Francisco: Harper, 1990. Schulze, Robin Gail Stockton, Sharon. ``Turbulence in the Text: Narrative Complexity in Mrs. Dalloway. ' ' New Orleans Review 18:1 (1991): 46-55. Webb, Caroline Woolf, Virginia. Mrs. Dalloway. San Diego, New York, London: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1925. --.The Diary of Virginia Woolf: Volume Two, 1920-1924