Mrs. Dalloway: Flowers

Reading this book is difficult, especially only a few pages in. Every passage seemed like a blur to me as I tried to piece together what exactly was happening. The first passage that really stuck out to me was on page 12, starting with "Nonsense!". This struck me because that's exactly what I felt like the whole book had been about so far, nonsense. It also is repeated twice, "Nonsense! Nonsense!", as if Mrs. Dalloway is shaking herself from an idea, which she is. This diction and repetition shows the seamless transition through Mrs. Dalloway's thoughts and her surroundings, which has happened throughout the novel so far. It seems to be a stream of consciousness style of writing, which I believe is highly affective to show a character's inner thoughts, especially if they have a mental illness which I believe Mrs. Dalloway does. To me, it was interesting how Mrs. Dalloway could say "Nonsense!" and be shaken out of her daze while also having the same effect on the reader. By including this command, the reader also gets pulled out of Mrs. Dalloway's daze, making it seem like they were Mrs. Dalloway.
I also liked the next paragraph that followed, the one that began with, "There were flowers". If I was Mrs. Dalloway and had a mental disease that I knew about, I would probably dream that I were something more beautiful than myself. Sure, this may come from being self-conscious about it if that were the case, but I'd want to see beauty in other things and have people see beauty in me, just like a flower. From this paragraph, I felt like Mrs. Dalloway was comparing herself to a flower, or at least imagining herself as one, again getting caught up in her dreams versus her surroundings. She personifies the flowers, "holding their heads up. . . as if it were the evening and girls in muslin frocks came out. . . every flower seems to burn by itself" (Woolf 13). She may be comparing the flowers to herself, reminding herself to hold her head up even though she has an illness. The "evening and girls" phrase may show how she is a party planner, and the burning may show that her illness is really hurting her. Perhaps this is foreshadowing through flowers, and if that's the case, then I think that's pretty cool.