Vit Babenco's Reviews > Mrs Dalloway

“Shape without form shade without colour,
Paralyzed force, gesture without motion…” The Hollow Men by T. S. Eliot
Modernism, as a literary genre, was mostly introspective… It was directed into the inner world of human beings… So Clarissa – Mrs Dalloway – appears right away full of thoughts, reminiscences and musings and we see everything through her consciousness…
Now she contemplates her married life and her choice of a husband…

For in marriage a little licence, a little independence there must be between people living together day in day out in the same house; which Richard gave her, and she him. (Where was he this morning, for instance? Some committee, she never asked what.) But with Peter everything had to be shared; everything gone into. And it was intolerable, and when it came to that scene in the little garden by the fountain, she had to break with him or they would have been destroyed, both of them ruined…

She is out to buy flowers… In evening she gives a party… She is all in anticipation of festivity…
And as if in contrast to her elation somewhere nearby there is a former soldier traumatized by the war… He is full of angst and despair…

The world wavered and quivered and threatened to burst into flames. It is I who am blocking the way, he thought. Was he not being looked at and pointed at…

Thoughts and recollections of many other characters are revealed as well… The past is revisited… Hour by hour time moves inexorably… The world stirs… 
And Clarissa is waiting for her party to begin… Her life is her parties… She considers her parties as her offering…

And it was an offering; to combine, to create; but to whom?
An offering for the sake of offering, perhaps. Anyhow, it was her gift. Nothing else had she of the slightest importance; could not think, write, even play the piano.

We live in the world of opposites so while one feels joy there is always the one who weeps.