63 pages • 2 hours read
Virginia WoolfMrs. Dalloway
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1925A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Pages 92-130Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Pages 92-114 Summary
Dr. Bradshaw himself lives by his philosophy of healing: “Proportion, divine proportion” (92). The principles of all of the doctors in the area appear reflected in the clocks on Harley Street, which “pointed out in chorus the supreme advantages of a sense of proportion” (95).
As the clocks chime, Hugh Whitbread lingers in front of a nearby shop window before going to Lady Bruton’s for lunch with a handful of red carnations. At Lady Bruton’s luncheon, Richard Dalloway also partakes in the “casseroles [where] severed chickens swim” (97). Lady Bruton asks after Clarissa, which reminds her that Peter Walsh is in town, and “[t]hey all smiled” (99) and “remembered the same thing—how passionately Peter had been in love” (99). Richard decides that as soon as he gets home that afternoon, he will locate his wife and tell her “in so many words, that he loved her” (99). While waiting for coffee after the lunch service, Lady Bruton thinks of her impulse to write, though “one letter to the Times […] cost her more than to organize an expedition to South Africa (which she had done in the war)” (101). She consults Hugh, who has a particular talent for writing letters to newspapers “until, finally, [Hugh] read out the draft of the letter which Lady Bruton felt certain was a masterpiece” (103). While leaving, Richard reminds Lady Bruton of their party that evening, and before going home, he somewhat unwillingly accompanies Hugh to the shops to find Mrs. Whitbread a necklace. When Richard is able to get away, he walks home; on his way, he buys “red and white roses together (a vast bunch in tissue paper)” (107) to give to Clarissa upon his arrival.
As Richard approaches his house, Clarissa sits in her drawing room “ever so annoyed, at her writing table” (109) resisting the pressure to invite “all the dull women in London” (109) to her party. Richard enters the room and delivers the flowers “([b]ut he could not bring himself to say he loved her, not in so many words) (110). Clarissa appears to understand and they talk about Peter’s visit and Hugh Whitbread, who “was getting absolutely intolerable. Buying Evelyn necklaces; fatter than ever; an intolerable ass” (110). As they discuss other details of their household and the evening’s party, Richard wonders “[d]id she wish she had married Peter?” (111) before taking a rest. While Richard rests, Clarissa ponders his work at the House of Commons, feeling very suddenly unhappy. She remembers when Richard and Peter “criticized her very unfairly, laughed at her very unjustly, for her parties” (113). She defends herself in her own mind, reflecting that “[w]hat she liked was simply life” (113), a concept that she doubts “any man [could] understand” (113).
Pages 114-130 Summary
17-year-old Elizabeth quietly interrupts Clarissa as Miss Doris Kilman waits outside the door to Clarissa’s drawing room, “in her mackintosh, listening to whatever they said” (115). Miss Kilman “had never been happy, what with being so clumsy and so poor” (115), and being of German origin, she “would not pretend that the Germans were all villains” (115). When she found the Lord two years earlier, she learned not to “envy women like Clarissa Dalloway; she pitied them. She pitied them and despised them from the bottom of her heart” (115-16). Because of the bad feelings between her mother and Miss Kilman, “[Elizabeth] could not bear to see them together” (116) so Elizabeth goes to find her gloves before she and Miss Kilman leave to go to the shops. As they leave, Clarissa reminds Elizabeth about the evening’s party.
Miss Kilman struggles with her hostility towards Clarissa as she accompanies Elizabeth through London to the shops, calming herself when she remembers that “except for Elizabeth, her food was all that she lived for” (120-21). The two women have tea after Elizabeth buys a petticoat, and Elizabeth watches Miss Kilman eat. Elizabeth reflects on the fact that “[the Dalloways] lived with everything they wanted—her mother had breakfast in bed every day” (122), and as Miss Kilman takes another cup of tea, Elizabeth expresses her desire to go. To hold Elizabeth back, Miss Kilman asks her about the party that evening; when Elizabeth admits she does not enjoy parties much, Miss Kilman is moved to speak openly: “I never go to parties […] People don’t ask me to parties […] Why should they ask me? […] I’m plain, I’m unhappy” (123). Elizabeth leaves “bowing her head very politely” (124), leaving Miss Kilman “at the marble table among the éclairs, stricken once, twice, thrice by the shocks of suffering” (124). To soothe herself, Miss Kilman goes to the Abbey of Westminster Cathedral to pray.
Elizabeth, in the meantime, goes to catch a bus, unsure of where she wants to go. She has a passive nature and a very attractive appearance, and “when she was interested, for she never seemed excited, she looked almost beautiful” (126). Suddenly, Elizabeth chooses a bus at random and “boarded, in front of everybody” (126), and while seated on the bus, she reflects on her future as “every profession is open to the women of your generation, said Miss Kilman” (127). As the bus approaches Chancery Lane, Elizabeth gets off and walks on the Strand towards St. Paul’s Cathedral, Elizabeth realizes that “no Dalloways came down the Strand daily; she was a pioneer, a stray, venturing, trusting” (128). With thoughts of her mother in mind, her mother who “would not like her to be wandering off alone like this” (129), she turns back, walking down the Strand in the opposite direction and soon, “[c]almly and competently, Elizabeth Dalloway mounted the Westminster omnibus” (130).
Pages 92-130 Analysis
The character of Lady Bruton resembles Virginia Woolf in both her compulsion to write and in the great effort writing requires of her. That Lady Bruton works so hard to write letters to the newspaper is perhaps a tongue-in-cheek comment on Woolf’s own ambitions as a writer. Woolf may have seen the woman writer’s position as undermined by the restrictive nature of patriarchal England, and at times perhaps felt that her work as a novelist and essayist is regarded with as little significance as a letter-writer like Lady Bruton might receive. This cynical moment in the novel is one that may reveal insight into Woolf’s self-perception of her work and her potential to impact society.
Richard Dalloway, Elizabeth Dalloway, and Miss Kilman all struggle to break free of the constraints of their own personalities, temperaments, and upbringings. At the luncheon with Lady Bruton and Hugh Whitbread, Richard decides that he wants to tell Clarissa how he feels about her, but he is unable to make the words come out and instead he allows the cliched symbol of roses, a purchased gift, to do the talking for him. Elizabeth rebels in her gentle and tentative way by taking a bus to a part of London that her mother might consider less savory than Westminster, but returns home quickly. Miss Kilman quietly rages about her poverty and limited resources while admiring Elizabeth and then prays to soothe herself. These struggles reflect the struggles all individuals have when they confront parts of themselves they don’t like or cannot accept, serving as glimpses into the psychological awareness Woolf brings to her writing.
Miss Kilman’s feelings towards Elizabeth cannot be mistaken as sisterly, nor can they be interpreted as maternal. The strength of Miss Kilman’s attraction to Elizabeth and her inability to do anything about it is striking. That she goes to church and seeks counsel from God suggests that Miss Kilman feels her same-sex attraction is sinful and that she must atone for it somehow. This negativity contrasts with the jubilant description of Clarissa’s romantic encounter with Sally Seton at Bourton, causing the reader to wonder if violations of heteronormative behaviors are only allowed by the privileged classes.
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