Mrs Dalloway Society and Class Quotes

How we cite our quotes: (Section.Paragraph)

Quote #4

[…] Hugh, intimating by a kind of pout or swell of his very well-covered, manly, extremely handsome, perfectly upholstered body (he was almost too well dressed always, but presumably had to be, with his little job at Court) […]. (1.9)

Hugh takes Britishness to the extreme. He embodies the absurdities of making his identity all about the customs. Basically, he tries too hard. We all know the type.

Quote #5

She had the oddest sense of being herself invisible; unseen; unknown; there being no more marrying, no more having of children now, but only this astonishing and rather solemn progress with the rest of them, up Bond Street, this being Mrs Dalloway; not even Clarissa any more; this being Mrs Richard Dalloway. (1.18)

Clarissa feels that as she’s aged, that she has become invisible. Youth is behind her and now she’s known as the wife of Richard Dalloway and not as Clarissa.

Quote #6

Year in year out she wore that coat; she perspired; she was never in the room five minutes without making you feel her superiority, your inferiority; how poor she was; how rich you were; how she lived in a slum without a cushion or a bed or a rug or whatever it might be, all her soul rusted with that grievance sticking in it, her dismissal from school during the War – poor embittered unfortunate creature! (1.21)

Miss Kilman is defined by feeling rejected by society. She considers herself to always be on the outside – resentful, impoverished, and inferior.