How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
The name Mrs. Dalloway had been Richard's idea—a conceit tossed off one drunken dormitory night as he assured her that Vaughan was nor the proper name for her. She should, he'd said, be named after a great figure in literature, and while she'd argued for Isabel Archer or Anna Karenina, Richard had insisted that Mrs. Dalloway was the singular and obvious choice. There was the matter of her existing first name, a sign too obvious to ignore, and, more important, the larger question of fate. (1.4)
As he creates his late twentieth-century echo of Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway, Michael Cunningham offers a plausible reason why Clarissa Vaughan can be called Mrs. Dalloway. According to Richard Brown, "[s]he, Clarissa, was clearly not destined to make a disastrous marriage or fall under the wheels of a train. She was destined to charm, to prosper. So Mrs. Dalloway it was and would be" (1.4).
Quote #2
"Nice to see you," Walter says. Clarissa knows—she can practically see—that Walter is, at this moment, working mentally through a series of intricate calibrations regarding her personal significance. Yes, she's the woman in the book, the subject of a much-anticipated novel by an almost legendary writer, but the book failed, didn't it? It was curtly reviewed; it slipped silently beneath the waves. She is, Walter decides, like a deposed aristocrat, interesting without being particularly important. (1.11)
Richard Brown doesn't just rename Clarissa Vaughan after "a great figure in literature" (1.4): he also tries to immortalize her in a novel of his own—one that also sounds like it has a whole lot in common with Mrs. Dalloway, by the way.
Quote #3
Richard will never admit to nor recover from his dislike of her, never; he will never discard his private conviction that Clarissa has, at heart, become a society wife, and never mind the fact that she and Sally do not attempt to disguise their love for anyone's sake, or that Sally is a devoted, intelligent woman, a producer of public television, for heaven's sake […]. Never mind the good, flagrantly unprofitable books Clarissa insists on publishing alongside the pulpier items that pay her way. Never mind her politics, all her work with PWAs. (1.29)
Clarissa Vaughan seems to be a professional literary editor and publisher, and it's clear that her life is as tied up in literature and writing as are the lives of the novel's author figures, Virginia Woolf and Richard Brown. Like Virginia Woolf's husband, Leonard, Clarissa devotes herself to the task of getting worthwhile books printed and out into the world.
Quote #4
Leonard looks up at her, still wearing, for a moment, the scowl he has brought to the proofs. It is an expression she trusts and fears, his eyes blazing and impenetrably dark under his heavy brows, the corners of his mouth turned down in an expression of judgment that is severe but not in any way petulant or trivial—the frown of a deity, all-seeing and weary, hoping for the best from humankind, knowing just how much to expect. It is the expression he brings to all written work, including, and especially, her own. (2.8)
Like Clarissa Vaughan, Leonard Woolf is a devoted editor and publisher, and he cares deeply about the cultural and artistic value of great literature. Unlike Clarissa, he tends to scowl and brood grumpily over stacks of proofs.
Quote #5
She stands tall, haggard, marvelous in her housecoat, the coffee steaming in her hand. He is still, at times, astonished by her. She may be the most intelligent woman in England, he thinks. Her books may be read for centuries. He believes this more ardently than does anyone else. And she is his wife. (2.26)
Leonard Woolf's opinion about Virginia Woolf's writing isn't wrong—at least, not that we can see so far. Although it hasn't yet been centuries since Woolf's books were published, we're coming up one the one-century mark now, and she's still going strong.
Quote #6
This morning she may penetrate the obfuscation, the clogged pipes, to reach the gold. She can feel it inside her, an all but indescribable second self, or rather a parallel, purer self. If she were religious, she would call it the soul. It is more than the sum of her intellect and her emotions, more than the sum of her experiences, though it runs like veins of brilliant metal through all three. It is an inner faculty that recognizes the animating mysteries of the world because it is made of the same substance, and when she is very fortunate she is able to write directly through that faculty. (2.28)
For Michael Cunningham's Virginia Woolf, there is nothing better than the moments when her writing seems to emerge from this "parallel, purer self." As the novel's narrator puts it: "Writing in that state is the most profound satisfaction she knows" (2.28).
Quote #7
Laura Brown is trying to lose herself. No, that's not it exactly—she is trying to keep herself by gaining entry into a parallel world. She lays the book face down on her chest. Already her bedroom (no, their bedroom) feels more densely inhabited, more actual, because a character named Mrs. Dalloway is one her way to buy flowers. (3.4)
Whereas Virginia Woolf is a professional writer and Clarissa Vaughan is a professional editor and publisher, Laura Brown is an avid reader. Literature is just as much a part of her life as it is part of Virginia's and Clarissa's: on good days and bad, reading is the only thing that lets Laura feel like herself. No wonder she chooses to become a librarian after she leaves her life in Los Angeles behind.
Quote #8
He could (in the words of his own alarmed mother) have had anyone, any pageant winner, any vivacious and compliant girl, but through some obscure and possibly perverse genius had kissed, courted, and proposed to his best friend's older sister, the bookworm, the foreign-looking one with the dark, close-set eyes and the Roman nose, who had never been sought after or cherished; who had always been left alone, to read. (3.8)
Before she got married and became Laura Brown, Laura Zielski was a "solitary," "incessant reader" (3.9). Laura believes that, "[i]n another world, she might have spent her whole life reading" (3.8). When she eventually leaves her life in Los Angeles behind and moves to Toronto to become a librarian, that's exactly what she does.
Quote #9
It is only after knowing him for some time that you begin to realize you are, to him, an essentially fictional character, one he has invested with nearly limitless capacities for tragedy and comedy not because that is your true nature but because he, Richard, needs to live in a world peopled by extreme and commanding figures. Some have ended their relations with him rather than continue as figures in the epic poem he is always composing inside his head, the story of his life and passions; but others (Clarissa among them) enjoy the sense of hyperbole he brings to their lives. (4.62)
Who wouldn't love to feel as if they're a character in an epic poem being composed by one of their friends?
Quote #10
She would like to take him by his bony shoulders and shake him, hard. Richard may (although one hesitates to think in quite these terms) be entering the canon; he may at these last moments in his earthly career be receiving the first hints of a recognition that will travel far into the future (assuming, of course, there is any future at all). (4.112)
Just as Leonard Woolf believes that his wife's books "may be read for centuries" (2.26), Clarissa Vaughan believes that Richard Brown may earn a kind of immortality through his writing.