Mrs Dalloway Quotes

Question 1

a touch of the bird about her, of the jay, blue-green, light, vivacious (3)

Answer 1

Bird imagery LINKS TO TESS

Question 2

The leaden circles dissolved in the air (4)

Answer 2

Time

Question 3

he had no heart, no brain, nothing but the manners and breeding of an English gentleman (5)

Answer 3

Description of Hugh as someone who perpetuates all standards of typical Englishman, Class

Question 4

She felt very young; at the same time unspeakably aged. (6)

Answer 4

mortality, passing of time

Question 5

loving it as she did with an absurd and faithful passion (4)

Answer 5

Clarissa identifies very closely with all of the material objects – the “stuff” of British society. The fact that her family has been important for generations is something she thinks reflects well upon her.

Question 6

like an arrow sticking in her heart, the grief; the anguish (6)

Answer 6

Pain of her memories/ relationship with Peter

Question 7

Cold, heartless, a prude, he called her. (6)

Answer 7

Peter/Clarissa

Question 8

the sense of being out, out, far out to sea and alone (6)

Answer 8

Loneliness

Question 9

Fear no more the heat o’ the sun Nor the furious winter’s rages! (7)

Answer 9

Cymbeline, Shakespeare as a motif

Question 10

one of those spectres with which one battles at night (9)

Answer 10

Clarissa, religion, Ma Kilman, Class

Question 11

…ridiculous little face, beaked like a bird’s (8)

Answer 11

Bird imagery

Question 12

She had this oddest sense of herself being invisible, unseen, unknown…this being Mrs Dalloway; not even Clarissa…this being Mrs Richard Dalloway. (8)

Answer 12

Role of women in society, marriage

Question 13

There were flowers: delphiniums, sweet peas, bunches of lilac, and carnations, masses of carnations. (10)

Answer 13

motif of flowers to represent femininity

Question 14

some horror had come to the surface and was about to burst into flames (12)

Answer 14

Septimus, PTSD

Question 15

but they were ‘people’ now (12)

Answer 15

Society + Judgement

Question 16

…like a mellow organ…like a grasshopper’s

Answer 16

Septimus + sensory imagery

Question 17

the human voice can quicken trees into life! (17)

Answer 17

Madness

Question 18

(for one must be scientific, above all, scientific) (17)

Answer 18

Science vs humanity

Question 19

To love makes one solitary, she thought. (17)

Answer 19

Love + Loneliness

Question 20

Her words faded. So a rocket fades. (18)

Answer 20

Septimus’s detachment from reality, stream of consciousness

Question 21

Pity, for the loss of the roses. (20)

Answer 21

Flower motif

Question 22

Away and away the aeroplane shot; an aspiration, a concentration, a symbol (21)

Question 23

like a nun who has left the world…familiar veils…old devotions…blessed…purified (22)

Answer 23

Religious imagery acts as antithesis to Clarissa’s atheism

Question 24

moments like this are buds on the tree of life, flowers of darkness they are…as if some rose had blossomed for her eyes only (22)

Answer 24

natural imagery, motif of flowers

Question 25

But she feared time itself...as if it had been a dial cut in impassive stone, the dwindling of life (23)

Answer 25

Her worth in society is diminishing, fear of her mortality, time as an external force that has a hold over her life- comparison to Fate in Tess

Question 26

There was an emptiness about the heart of life... (23)

Answer 26

loneliness in her marriage- detachment in family

Question 27

a match burning in a crocus (24)

Answer 27

love for Sally- flower motif

Question 28

like a faint scent, or a violin next door (24)

Answer 28

sensory imagery can be compared with Septimus

Question 29

read Plato in bed before breakfast; read Morris; read Shelley (25)

Answer 29

Motif of Literature

Question 30

..if it were now to die 'twere now to be most happy

Answer 30

love as an intense passionate concept

Question 31

in a white frock to meet Sally Seton! (26)

Answer 31

purity

Question 32

a diamond, something infinitely precious, the religious feeling! (26)

Answer 32

homosexuality is compared to religious epiphany

Question 33

Fear no more, says the heart. Fear no more, says the heart. (29)

Answer 33

Cymbeline

Question 34

She made to hide her dress, like a virgin protecting chastity... (30)

Answer 34

She feels assaulted by Peter's presence, even mending a dress in his presence seems too intimate.

Question 35

grief, which rose like a moon looked at from a terrace (31)

Answer 35

Memories of Bourton overwhelm him

Question 36

...as a bird touches a branch and rises and flutters away. (32)

Answer 36

bird imagery

Question 37

like a Queen whose guards have left her unprotected (32)

Answer 37

vulnerability of women

Question 38

plumes like pampas grass in a tropic gale in her breast (34)

Answer 38

Clarissa's feelings for Peter

Question 39

...Big ben striking the half hour...all the clocks striking... (35)

Answer 39

Time, Big Ben as a motif

Question 40

The leaden circles dissolved in the air. (36)

Answer 40

time

Question 41

He was a bucaneer.

Question 42

women live much more in the past than we do, attach themselves to places

Question 43

sank into the plumes and feathers of sleep

Question 44

they stood with the fountain between them

Question 45

To be rocked by this malignant torturer was her lot.

Question 46

surrounded by the enormous trees, vast clouds of an indifferent world

Question 47

time' split its husk, poured its riched over him

Question 48

Nobody believed a word against Hugh, of course.

Question 49

a doomed race, chained to a sinking ship

Question 50

decorate the dungeons with flowers

Question 51

flowered from vanity, ambition, idealism, passion, loneliness, courage...

Question 52

congratulated himself himself upon feeling little and reasonably

Question 53

But beauty was behind a pane of glass.

Question 54

Could she not read Shakespeare too/.

Question 55

Once you stumble, human nature is on you. (blood red nostrils)

Question 56

wedged on a calm ocean, where only spice winds blow

Question 57

the criminal who faced his judges; the drowned sailor; the fugitive

Question 58

They fly screaming in the wilderness. Human nature is remorseless.

Question 59

Conversion is her name and she feasts on the wills of the weakly

Question 60

only the slow sinking, water-logged, of her will into his.

Question 61

shredding and slicing, the clocks of Harley Street nibbled at the June day

Question 62

a hyacinth which had no sun

Question 63

Her life was a tissue of vanity and deceit.

Question 64

she was like a wheel without a tyre

Question 65

a pirate it was, reckless, unscrupulous...she was a pioneer, a stray, venturing, trusting.

Question 66

She was a flowering tree; through her branches was the face of a lawgiver

Question 67

the light high bell of the ambulance - swiftly, cleanly

Question 68

kissing her [...] punish her for saying women should have votes

Question 69

She must assemble.

Question 70

She was like a poplar, she was like a river, she was like a hyacinth

Question 71

Friends without names, song without words

Question 72

Are we not all prisoners? One scratched on the wall.

Question 73

For there she was.