First the The York Times and now The New Yorker: both in recent days have had essays on Virginia Woolf's 1925 novel "Mrs. Dalloway," and you can read what I had to say about the NYT piece in my preceding post.
The occasion for this appears to be a new edition of the book by Penguin due out Jan. 5, 2021 and, indeed, the New Yorker piece is a review of author Jenny Offill's forward to the new offering. The introduction to the book, by noted feminist Elaine Showalter, is not without merit, but it isn't new. It accompanied Penguin's 1992 publication of "Mr. Dalloway."
While Showalter notes that Clarissa and Richard Dalloway first appeared (in about 50 pages) in Virginia Woolf's first novel, "The Voyage Out" (1915), she doesn't mention Woolf's essay "Street Haunting," written in 1927 and published in 1930, that arguably sheds some light on how Clarissa Dalloway, the character, may have come into Virginia's head.
Offill's forward serves Penguin well in that it argues that readers can benefit from reading "Mrs. Dalloway" more than once -- indeed possibly several times -- because something new emerges each time one considers the text. In other words, if you don't have a copy on hand, buy another one and read it again.
Interestingly, she quotes the same passage from Woolf's essay "Modern Fiction" that I did in my preceding post in explaining the nature of the book as being about ordinary life.
Since "Mrs. Dalloway" is a book about which I have written extensively, I was eager to read what Offill might have to say. It was a disappointment. Although she claims to have found something new every time she read the book (it appears she has read it three times), she offers no new insights on the work.
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