“Mrs. Dalloway” Virginia Woolf’un en ünlü eserlerinden biridir ve modernist edebiyatın klasiklerinden sayılır. Roman, Clarissa Dalloway’in bir gününü, Londra’da bir partiye hazırlanırken yaşadığı düşünceleri ve duyguları iç içe geçmiş bir akışla anlatır. Woolf’un karakteristik iç monolog tekniği ve zamanın akışı üzerine derinlemesine odaklanmasıyla bilinir. İşte “Mrs. Dalloway” kitabından bazı özlü sözler:
1. “She had the perpetual sense, as she watched the taxi cabs, of being out, out, far out to sea and alone; she always had the feeling that it was very, very dangerous to live even one day.”
2. “For now she need not think of anybody. She could be herself, by herself. And that was what now she often felt the need of – to think; well not even to think. To be silent; to be alone.”
3. “She always had the feeling that it was very dangerous to live even one day.”
4. “But she could remember happier things, could remember their being happier; could remember the old days at Bourton, and her own feeling as a girl of twenty.”
5. “Life is made intolerable; they make life intolerable, men like that.”
6. “One must not let oneself be overwhelmed by sadness.”
7. “She felt somehow very like him—the young man who had killed himself. She felt glad that he had done it; thrown it away.”
8. “The compensation of growing old, Peter Walsh thought, coming out of Regent’s Park, and holding his hat in his hand, was simply this; that the passions remain as strong as ever, but one has gained—at last!—the power which adds the supreme flavour to existence,—the power of taking hold of experience, of turning it round, slowly, in the light.”
9. “She had a perpetual sense, as she watched the taxi cabs, of being out, out, far out to sea and alone; she always had the feeling that it was very, very dangerous to live even one day.”
10. “Did it matter then, she asked herself, walking towards Bond Street, did it matter that she must inevitably cease completely; all this must go on without her; did she resent it; or did it not become consoling to believe that death ended absolutely?”
Bu alıntılar, Woolf’un karakterlerin iç dünyalarını ve insan psikolojisini derinlemesine inceleme yeteneğini gösterir. “Mrs. Dalloway” kitabı, bireyin içsel yaşamı ve dış dünyayla olan karmaşık ilişkisi üzerine zengin bir meditasyon sunar.