After reading Mrs. Dalloway, I kept having this sense of depression. I would hear modern songs that would depict certain situations within the book. However, I came across a Youtube clip where a few suburban kids created a film clip where they interpreted Mrs. Dalloway. It’s called “Step up 3: Mrs. Dalloway.” This is a play on the movies Step up 1 and Step Up 2, where the main characters involved dancers who seek out to find themselves, but they find a connection or a significant other in the process.
The clip is of mediocre quality and a bit amateur, but I found it interesting that the director enforced the line, “They only had ONE DAY to..” for each character. Mrs. Dalloway had one day to plan the perfect party. This was her job at this time of her life. It didn’t appear that she worked or had any other responsibilities. Because the entire novel based the entire plot into only one day, it is illustrating an entire lifetime into one day. If it is within this one day that Mrs. Dalloway decides to plan a huge party, this tells us a lot about her. Her life is very simple and not meaningful. She is almost the tragic hero in her own story.
For Peter Walsh, the director said “Peter had ONE DAY to get her back..” This cliched line has been used in so many novels and movies before, but it really is true in Mrs. Dalloway. As far as Peter’s story goes in the novel, one almost forgets that the entire time frame is only in one day. Peter is in town and he makes plenty of visits to old friends, including Clarissa. He considers his old love back in India and he decides to move forward with her, but he cannot stop thinking about Clarissa. He goes back and forth about wanting her and not wanting her, but all of these movements are all in one day. Peter mocks and in a sense, pities Clarissa’s simple life with Richard, but he still loves her. He literally had one day to get her back, but Clarissa is in love with someone else.
The Lucrezia character was a bit silly, but for Septimus, he “had one day to die.” Septimus went through a lot of torturous pain throughout the war. However, he went through so much ridicule from the doctors and from society that he was left with not choice. It is remarkable because if we could relate Septimus to a close friend or sibling that we knew, we may see it the same way. If one were in shellshock and society kept pushing unwanted doctors and therapists onto him or her, that is a lot of agony in and of itself. However, when one pushes the idea of solitary confinement onto him, that was the last straw. Septimus did not want any of society’s help. Although he appeared to be needing help, his healing doesn’t work if he doesn’t trust his doctors and if he doesn’t want their help. He has to want it on his own. This is why Septimus “had only one day to die”; Septimus needed to liberate himself from the crooked ideas of society and also to set Lucrezia free. Lucrezia was empathetic to Septimus for so long, but she was going through pain too.
This classic novel, Mrs. Dalloway has older themes but it can be applied to a modern society. I wouldn’t be waiting in line to see Mrs. Dalloway as a dance movie, but it would be interesting to see it in a modern setting, similarly to Clarissa Vaughn’s storyline in The Hours.
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11 comments
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March 10, 2009 at 8:57 pm
q213
in the novel i really never paid attention to the “one day” theme. Very interesting that you pointed that out. It’s crazy to think that in one day all these things happened. At first i questioned why in one day??? After reading your review i realized this was done so that we can see how simple and meaningless Mrs. Dalloway’s life was. Nicely done
March 11, 2009 at 3:44 am
droyalty
I think that the concept of “one day” is important because the events of one day in Mrs. Dalloway show the connection between the lives of people that are considered to be simple and boring to the lives of those that have been affected by traumatic events. I think that Virginia Woolfe is trying to emphasize that everyone has similar thoughts and emotions are similar.
March 12, 2009 at 5:10 pm
Shanzay Sheikh
Human beings are confined by this factor of time. Rich or poor, happy or sad, time is one thing that connects us all. The fact that all these characters only have a day to achieve something shows that they are all runnig out of time. If they had an infinite amount of time, then this book would not have taken place in the course of one day.
March 15, 2009 at 5:04 am
vgmark
Personally, I believe that it is impossible to say that this story truly was just a single day. At points it seems that all the tangents which are taken in the novel indicate that time is not a linear object. Despite the “leaden circles” metaphor that is used throughtout the novel I find that all the days, the moments exist in the span of one moment. Time seems to be everywhere and nowhere.
March 15, 2009 at 10:49 pm
Brad Hutton
I dont really get how the youtube clip relates to movies about dance, but i really like the “…had one day to…” that you used.
March 16, 2009 at 8:34 pm
sarah49
I like the connection with the idea of time and duty, in terms of what each character hopes to accomplish in the time constraints they find themselves in, one day. It makes the reader think about how short life is and how our dreams and goals are controlled by time and how much we are allotted. If this was the character’s last day, hypothetically, it demonstrates their character by how they choose to spend that last day.
March 17, 2009 at 6:30 am
stephanieluber26
It was interesting how when you thought of Mrs. Dalloway, it lead you to youtube.com. That is an interesting video that you found on the site, and I agree with Brad that it really has nothing to do with the dance movies- Step Up 1 and 2. Those movies have very different themes compared to Mrs. Dalloway; generally about a suburban girl that meets a reckless boy and they eventually fall in love through a medium of art (dancing). So in this respect, I don’t see how the video has to deal with Step Up, but I’m glad you linked it to a greater meaning of the presence of time and space through the concept of “one day.” This concept of time seems to be associated with memories as well, as it’s presented in the book, because it switched from past to present times in Woolf’s stream of consciousness technique.
March 17, 2009 at 8:24 am
g190
The fact that Mrs. Dalloway is about the events of only one day still baffles me. I mean after reading it, I felt that I know more about those characters than I ever knew about any other characters in other books I read for this class. Virginia Woolf created a world where there is no boundries between the past and the present, which made it possible for her to tell the story of so many people over the course of just one day. The writing style of stream of consciousness is solely built upon the fact that the past is never separated from the present, and that what defines everyone of us is the events we have gone through and experienced in the past.
March 17, 2009 at 10:22 pm
muschopan
uhhh jedi mind tricks on the youtube clip score hahaha..yes one day is a very important concept in Mrs. Dalloway because it really emphasizes realistic nature of the text. time is also a very important component of realism and one day just captures that. Yet, Mrs. Dalloway is like a criticism of realism and particularly the concept of the objectivity. through multiple perspectives we get different opinions and interpretations which tells us that the only perspective that matters is yours..it’s how you view yourself in essence
March 18, 2009 at 7:27 am
smcolegio
wow ,, the video definitely brings out the
“one day” concept . haha . time is key to
everything .
March 20, 2009 at 5:05 am
tcyharris
the idea of having “one day” to do something was very interesting, since it seems like this particular day also captured the lives of the characters. the idea that a life could be defined by encounters in one single day is definitely somewhat depressing.