Harare Review of Books

104 pp. September 2, 2025, Columbia University Press. Non-fiction.

---

I found this short text illuminating on that staple of the Western canon, Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway.
It’s always instructive to hear from a scholar who has dedicated significant time to studying an author: they are able to excavate themes that are consistent in that author’s work, and to point out things of relevance that may be hidden to the casual reader—as I was when I read Mrs Dalloway.

Mendelson breaks up this analysis of Mrs Dalloway into three broad areas: “Medicine,” or how Woolf shows her ambivalence (possibly from her own experiences) towards doctors in the character of Sir William and how he handles Septimus’s PTSD; “Empire,” which echoes in Mrs Dalloway’s glimpse of the car with ‘dove-grey upholstery,’ in the scene with Peter standing under the statue of Charles Gordon, the imperial general who died in Sudan, in the encounter in the drawing room between the Prime Minister and Lady Bruton, and more; and “Love,” where Mendelson examines the various romantic interactions in the novel.

Mendelson takes great care to explain how he arrives at his analysis of Mrs Dalloway and ensures that his text is eminently readable. Again, this is a very illuminating and interesting exposition which should help readers contextualise the importance of Mrs Dalloway, and of Virginia Woolf, to Western literature.

Thanks to Columbia University Press and to NetGalley for DRC access.

Affiliate link: Support independent bookshops and my writing by ordering it from Bookshop here.