Mrs. Dalloway at 100: A Conversation with John Whittier-Ferguson and Andrea Zemgulys

Virginia Woolf’s modernist masterpiece Mrs. Dalloway was first published almost 100 years ago in 1925.  Join us for an informal conversation with Professors John Whittier-Ferguson and Andrea Zemgulys about Woolf, her novel, and its historical context. Light refreshments will be served.

 “In the middle of my party, here's death" Clarissa Dalloway thinks to herself, as she hears about the suicide of a veteran that occurred not long before her party began. That veteran's story has unfolded in Woolf's novel in parallel with the story of Clarissa Dalloway's day of preparations for her gala. One of Woolf''s urgent questions in Mrs. Dalloway is whether it's possible to bring the "home front" into some kind of equilibrium or proportion with the "war front" and how (if?) that balance might be struck. This is not only a problem for the millions of veterans and bereaved family members moving through the streets of London (and all the cities and towns of Europe) after 1918; it's also an aesthetic problem for Woolf the novelist. Among other topics we may cover in our conversation will be the challenges Woolf faced in writing this deeply moving and startlingly unusual war novel and the uses she made of the war in her work.

This event is in conjunction with the exhibit Mrs. Dalloway and WWI: Home Front and War Front, on display in the Hatcher Gallery Exhibit Room until Dec. 13th.