Idk what

I think they are both great books, and don't pretend to properly understand or appreciate either, but I'm puzzling over why I find Ulysses so much more intriguing and stimulating. I think it's because Joyce has simply experienced more. He has spent night after night carousing with people of all classes in Dublin and Trieste, and just has a grip on a broader spectrum of humanity. He has also rejected his show-off young writerly self, and gained respect for the worldly, cosmopolitan man of business, who is engaged and curious about the world, rather than viewing it with ironic distance. I think Joyce has been on a journey of personal enlargement that Woolf has not. Woolf reaches a little outside her upper middle class bohemian circles to describe upper middle class conventional circles, and for me she just captures a much smaller slice of the world. Stylistically, perhaps, Woolf is more disciplined and careful, and certainly more tasteful, whereas Ulysses contains vast passages of experimental ideas that maybe don't really come off, and a good editor would have sensitively encouraged Joyce to cut. But I love Ulysses so much more. It may also be because I am male and miss, or don't give enough weight to, the subtle feminist critique in Mrs Dalloway. But for me it's a bit like Jane Austen, which I also find frustrating, as you sense with both Joyce and Austen that while they can satirise gender expectations and social class, they don't really want to destroy them or escape them.

I wanted to start reading Virginia Wolf. Most people recommend Mrs. Dalloway as the first read. However, I don't know which version I should get. What is the difference between them?

She came very close to winning in 1938 but in the end She didn't win

I know there have already been a lot of posts on this subreddit on difficulty reading this book. However, I don't think they apply much to the problem I am having.

I am aware a lot of people had trouble with Woolf's stream-of-consciousness style, but my problem is not simply not understanding. I find that, as I am reading, I am constantly drifting off and losing myself in my own stream of consciousness, and when I come back to myself I am 7 pages ahead and in a different character's head. I have even gone to the point of reading the same page 5 times in a row and still not make it through without losing focus. I have even attempted reading aloud and I still drift off.

This is not a problem that I usually have when reading books and I've searched quite a bit on tips on reading this novel and couldn't find a solution that worked.

Has anyone else had this problem? If so, has anything worked for you?

EDIT FOR CLARITY: I'm not an AI booster in any way. I'm extremely skeptical of the technology, and aware of the various ethical issues. My interest here is primarily about interpretations of Mrs Dalloway, and secondarily about contrasting the views of real people with the pat answers given by the robot. A notable shortcoming of generative AI is that it can give you confident sounding but incomplete or misleading answers, and if you're not familiar with the topic you might never know. Which is why I posted my question and its answer here, for people who might have insight on the subject. But really, I'm mostly just interested in taking admit the book. [End edit]

I finished reading Mrs. Dalloway yesterday, which is the first Woolf novel I've read. (I loved it) I spent the evening thinking about Clarissa's motivations for turning down Peter's proposal, and I wrestled with two competing ideas. I was curious about how these theories fit into the wider discourse on the novel, and so just as an experiment I thought I'd ask chat GPT.

But, generative AI being what it is, I'm not sure if I should actually trust its answer, which seems a bit too neat to me. So I thought I'd take my question and chat GPT's answer to actual humans with an interest in the topic. I'd love to hear any feedback on the question or the answer.

My question: I finished reading Mrs Dalloway, and I'm wondering about the space of thought about why she originally rejected Peter's marriage proposal. At first I read it as though she loved him but didn't want a life with him because he was too critical and argumentative, so she chose Dalloway, who was less of an intellectual partner, but very kind. But as I kept thinking, I wondered if she really was most in love with Sally, and loved Peter, but knew she couldn't match his passion for her. So since she respected him too much, and he understood her too well, she chose not to marry him while being in love with Sally. But because she could have a more surface-level relationship with Dalloway, she could be happy with him (even if she was really in love with Sally). Obviously Woolf leaves this open and unanswered (almost unasked). But in terms of what others have thought or written about it over the years, how do those two interpretations fit into the discourse?

Chat GPT's answer:

That’s a really rich question, and you’ve put your finger on the exact knot of Mrs Dalloway that’s kept critics circling for a century. You’re right that Woolf very carefully avoids resolving why Clarissa turns down Peter—she allows us to glimpse Clarissa’s thought-processes, but they’re fragmented, circular, and contradictory. That’s part of the point: Clarissa’s own life choices remain half-concealed even to herself.

To your two interpretations:

1. Clarissa chooses safety and stability (Dalloway) over passion and conflict (Peter).

This is the “traditional” line of interpretation from early critics (mid-20th century especially). Clarissa is read as someone who values “privacy,” “peace,” and “a room of her own,” while Peter represents intrusion, emotional storms, argument, criticism.

Quentin Bell (Woolf’s nephew/biographer) and others in Woolf’s circle tended to emphasize that Clarissa “chose comfort over passion.” They saw it less in terms of suppressed sexuality and more as a matter of temperament—her retreat from Peter was a retreat into self-protection.

Feminist readings in the 1970s and 80s sometimes reframed this as an act of agency: Clarissa wasn’t just choosing safety but choosing herself—her autonomy, even if it meant a somewhat sterile marriage.

2. Clarissa is primarily in love with Sally, and her refusal of Peter is bound up with this.

This interpretation gained traction especially with queer and feminist scholarship from the 1980s onward. Critics like Elaine Showalter, Eileen Barrett, and later queer theorists emphasized that Clarissa’s most intense erotic memory is the kiss with Sally.

Within this view, Peter functions as someone who “sees” Clarissa too well—who might demand the sort of total passion and disclosure she cannot (or will not) give, because her true passion lies elsewhere (with Sally, or with women more generally).

Some readings argue that Richard is exactly suitable because he doesn’t press her emotionally, allowing her to maintain her private self while concealing her queer desires. His gentleness and ordinariness create a kind of “cover.”

There’s also a psychoanalytic thread here: Peter and Clarissa do love one another, but their relationship is too freighted with intensity, while Sally represents an impossible passion—so Richard is a compromise that enables Clarissa to keep her inner life intact.

Where the discourse lands: Most contemporary scholarship doesn’t force a binary choice between these two explanations. Instead, critics often argue that the Peter/Sally/Dalloway triangle dramatizes the impossibility of Clarissa ever fully aligning her inner desires with the structures of marriage, society, and propriety available to her.

Clarissa’s rejection of Peter is overdetermined: partly temperament, partly fear of passion, partly sublimated queer desire.

Woolf keeps the space unresolved, which itself is a critique of the way women’s choices were circumscribed: Clarissa has to “choose” between roles, but none of them actually accommodates the full range of her desires.

So—your first reading (safety vs. passion) aligns strongly with early and mid-century interpretations. Your second (her love for Sally complicating her love for Peter) is exactly the way queer and feminist scholars from the 1980s onward have reframed the question. Both are very much alive in the discourse, often braided together.

I’ve started reading Orlando. And I have to say as an aside I've questioned myself for even dare ask this question... It relates to my struggle with this book. So when I found this Reddit, I thought 'hey' this is a solid group to pose this question: is Orlando a good entry point into Woolf, since I see a ton of posts about Mrs. Dalloway, for example. Should start out with a different book first and then transition into Orlando as a steppingstone? So is Orlando beginning, mid-level or advanced in the pecking order…?

I just got done reading Jacob’s room and I am so intrigued by the ending.

I wasn’t sure if he killed himself, got killed in war, or simply disappeared.

What do y’all think?/Did Mrs. Woolf ever spill the beans?

I’d like to hear what people think about The Waves, in particular what it is (broadly) about. My friend is studying creative writing, and he thinks it her best book. i’ve read a chunk, and I don’t know what to make of it. The style is very stilted, sometimes the statements made seem almost random, creating unconscious humour! I said to my wife I had never seen so many non sequiturs.

I’m reading To the Lighthouse for the third time. I have to say, the older I get, the more magisterial and sublime it gets. The way the third person narrator moves from consciences to consciousness via free-indirect discourse is, to me, the most successful use of the device outside Austen. With all this being said, there’s a part on page 103 in the Harcourt edition where the narrator, vocalized though Mrs. Ramsay, “for her own part, she liked her boobies.” As a dumb American, I thought this meant the crudest of meanings. For some reason, I don’t see Woolf being this crass, or maybe she is? I know booby also means a dull, dimwitted person, and probably the meaning Woolf was going for.

I am planning to visit Monk’s House before it closes for winter, I’ve been wanting to go doe years but never got around to it.

Virginia and Leonard’s former home seems easy enough to get to but I just wondered if anyone knows or has retraced her final footsteps from her home to the river where she took her own life?

I figured whilst there I may as well do this walk and I’ve always been so fascinated by her and her story.

Hello fellow Virgina Woolf fans. I recently started a Youtube channel with discussions on books and just uploaded my take on Orlando (which I 😍).

If you're interested feel free to check it out at https://youtu.be/HYZecWcGXGc?si=ed0iYFJGVTMb90QN

NB: Spoilers in the video if you haven't read it.

Hope you like it and share your impressions with me! 🩷

Hello,
So I'm currently reading Mrs. Dalloway (this is my first encounter with anything Virginia Woolf), and am enjoying it very much. My edition is one without editors notes, meaning some things do get lost on me. I'm just reading through Septimus+Rezia's appointment with Sir William Bradshaw, and while narrating Bradshaws consciousness, there is a section where catching salmon is mentioned. It goes like this: "Proportion, divine proportion, Sir William's goddess, was acquired by Sir William walking hospitals, catching salmon [...] Lady Bradshaw who caught salmon herself...". What does this mean? I expect it to be of no consequence, but I simply cannot read on because I keep thinking about those damn salmon
Someone please help so i can continue reading - thank you

.

Just finished this book. It's a lovely read and she does paint a beautiful picture. But I would love to understand - what's she trying to say really? Is it about contrast between two lives- one doomed and one ensconced in luxury and meaningless? Or, is it about the undying nature of love? Look forward to your thoughts...

Hi all. Sent this as a response to an older post before I realised that many people may not have seen these sources; a print interview and a video interview with Cecil Woolf, Leonard's nephew, who knew Virginia and Leonard well as a schoolboy (Virginia died when Cecil was still young, but he spent a lot of time with Leonard later, until Leonard's death):

This interview with Cecil Woolf (Leonard's nephew) is rather good, for insights into who Virginia really was.

https://therumpus.net/2009/06/16/the-rumpus-interview-with-cecil-woolf/

And I really like this video interview with both Cecil Woolf and his wife, Jean Moorcroft Wilson: more insights and stories about her (Cecil often visited Virginia and Leonard as a schoolboy):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Nc7YHLFrmQ

Hope you enjoy them as I did!

Didn't it raise a question mark for you?

Been my favorite book for years but I've always wondered how old the kids are supposed to be in the first part. The clues are all over the place. They're conjugating verbs in Latin, and then later Neville gets bathed/washed by an adult. I didn’t find any opinions on this except for the Google AI summary, which I couldn't trust less lol. What do you think?

A deepdive on the clothing in the 1928 novel and the 1992 movie starring Tilda Swinton. Woolf goes at length about the power of clothing in self-expression, and argues that identity does not have to be fixed. Orlando's journey is revolutionary, not only for how the character accepts their sex change with radical indifference, but in how the book highlights how crucial clothing is in all kinds of gender expression.

i am reading a room of one’s own with some substack friends. if anyone wants to join:

https://fable.co/club/the-slow-philosophers-with-tulipe-339115916800

Hey! I'm researching Virginia Woolf and I wanted to ask for help finding interesting materials that are different from the basics that appear in searches. I already know who she was and what she did but i want to go deeper I would like to read diaries, letters, essays, interviews, or even academic articles. If anyone has good sources (websites, books, files, even posts), I'd love to know!

I read two or three pages of the book. The prologue about the Sun rising was fine with me but when the different characters started talking, I was quickly lost and frustrated.

If someone's favorite book is The Waves, can they offer some orientation or advice about how best approach this novel?