Vie des sections
Anglophone, littérature
A Walk with Mrs Dalloway
Paddy Salmon Feb 2007
The Google Earth Dalloway Trip
First of all make sure that Google Earth is installed on the computers. (We have been warned that Active X - whatever that is - must be deactivated. You may want to ask about that and any other technical specifications)
Arm yourselves with the novel. I have not given page references as editions will vary, but the sections are easily identified. When using Google Earth tick on Roads at the bottom and you will get the names of most of the streets and roads under discussion. Clear to see the views better.
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Point out how much London has changed since Woolf’s era, though also how much hasn’t !
Virginia Woolf chooses to set the novel between the “political” terrain of Westminster, which was still, as one sees in the novel, quite residential, and the “literary/artistic terrain of Bloomsbury, where she lived for a time. Central London and Westminster are a little world, quite different from the “City”, which lies to the east and represents big business, the newspapers, the world of money. Further to the east lie the Working Classes, who do not really enter this novel except as servants (Lucy, for exmple).
1 Mrs Dalloway lives very close to Dean’s Yard (College Street ?) right by Westminster Abbey (cf Richard’s walk home after lunch). So let’s start at Westminster Abbey and look at Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament. You can click on photographs of these at the white crosses, if you want to have a look. She crosses Victoria Street and enters the Park (St James’ Park) via Storey’s Garden. She meets High Whitbread with his back to government buildings, which means that she doesn’t cross the Park in the middle over the lake but heads around the lake to the right. Keep to the east (where we visited the Churchill Cabinet Rooms last November !) and pass the Horse Guards’ Parade. Now bend west and follow the lake towards the left, crossing the Mall, and enter Green Park. Now make for the Park Gates in the top right-hand corner. From there Mrs Dalloway can see the omnibuses in Piccadilly, so it has to be Green Park and not St James’ Park where she exits.
- Trafalgar Square 1905
She walks east along Piccadilly on the south side of the road, past Bond Street, which is opposite her going north, until she reaches a bookshop, Hatchards. Then she turns back, crosses Piccadilly and walks up Bond Street to the flower shop.
The car which makes a “violent explosion” goes down Bond Street (the way she has come), turns into Piccadilly and then turns down St James’ Street, heading for Buckingham Palace, where a small crowd has gathered. Look down the Mall, which the aeroplane follows as it heads east towards Greenwich, eventually.
2 Peter Walsh later visits Clarissa at her home. After, he goes along Victoria Street then up Whitehall, where a group of boys is marching. He reaches Trafalgar Square and follows an attractive young woman along Cockspur Street and then up Haymarket.....on and on.. across Piccadilly and up Regent’s Street ; then he crosses Oxford Street and goes up Great Portland Street, where she disappears into one of the small roads. Peter Walsh continues up Great Portland Street until he comes to Regent’s Park, which is where he sees Rezia and Septimus Smith.
The couple are due in Harley Street for the appointment with Sir William Bradshaw. Harley Street runs south from Regent’s Park and parallel to Great Portland Street but just to the west.
3 We next shift to Hugh Whitbread waiting in Oxford Street. He is having lunch with Lady Bruton at her home in Brook Street, Mayfair. This road intersects Bond Street further north ( now New Bond Street). Notice that nearby there is a Bruton Street, which may have given Virginia Woolf the idea of the name. After lunch, both men walk to Conduit Street (probably down St George’s St from Hanover Square). Richard stops to buy flowers at the corner - ironically at the same flower shop where Clarissa was earlier. Then he crosses Green Park and goes straight home bearing his roses.
- Fleet Street in about 1920 looking west
4 At 3.30 pm Elizabeth and Doris Kilman walk to the Army and Navy Store in Victoria Street. Miss Kilman leaves and goes for spiritual comfort to Westminster Abbey. Elizabeth takes a bus from Victoria Street, up Whitehall and along the Strand, getting off at Chancery Lane. She then walks east along Fleet Street and turns right along Middle Temple Lane. We see her in the old inns of court - the Inner Temple and Middle Temple. She thinks of law and administration, the river, and the nearby 13th century Temple Church, which survived the Great Fire of London and is one of the finest specimens of early Gothic architecture in Britain. She then comes back into Fleet Street and walks eastwards a little way towards St Paul’s. This is unfamiliar territory to a Dalloway. It is the vast business world, the world of finance and newspapers, and further east - the Working Classes ! She turns back somewhat intimidated and returns to Westminster and home. Nowadays, of course, Westminster is no longer the residential “village” it appears to be in the novel !
5 Find Bloomsbury, which is where Rezia and Septimus live. Peter Walsh hears the ambulance as he is passing the pillar-box opposite the British Museum (Russell Street). The ambulance crosses Tottenham Court Road. His hotel must be somewhere in Bloomsbury and as he walks through London in the evening he moves from Virginia Woolf’s Bloomsbury - significantly - to Mrs Dalloway’s Westminster. And the Party ! His journey is not detailed in the novel, but you can take the obvious route down Shaftesbury Avenue, Charing Cross Road and Whitehall.
Ci-dessous quelques commentaires par les élèves de 1ere recueillies immédiatement après le cours :
“It is important to figure out the walk of Mrs Dalloway because it really gives us a sense of reality. With the time-keeping, the details of space are linking the book with reality. Our experience of Google Earth was interesting even though the computers weren’t up for the challenge ! Anyway, we now see Mrs Dalloway as a ‘realer’ person. “
“Mrs Dalloway is an intricate novel, realistic and somewhat inspired from Virginia Woolf’s life. By including so many details and references, the story becomes alive and one can truly see the bustling life of this city. Virginia Wolf and Mrs Dalloway’s life spreads to so many other people and places, which illustrate, as we have seen on Google Earth, the extension of her life. She has become the place in which she is so connected to so many people and existences.”
“ It is important to know the geography of London because one can relate to Clarissa’s trip and see that all the characters moved around London in the same neighbourhood, sometimes on the same streets, except for Elizabeth who went to the City, moving out of her comfort-zone. It allows the reader to understand the socio-economic status of each character.”
“Mrs Dalloway is a novel where streets, places, time are very important. They guide us through the book, and it looks as if Virginia Woolf is not just writing about Mrs Dalloway, but also about this London that has changed after the Great War, and she wants to mark it.”
“Mrs Dalloway is a novel which displays many characters from very different backgrounds and from all social classes. They live different lives and don’t have the same everyday path ; studying the geography of London could help us live through their eyes and eventually feel what they felt at these particular moments. It is easier to follow their track of thought, while following them along their geographical routes : you get a notion of time, proportion, light... which helps you visualise the story and differentiate the the working class world in opposition to the cosiness of Westminster, for example, or the upper class surroundings. The Google Earth Walk was highly amusing and helped us visualise the characters’ routes...”
Dernière modification le 23-06-07 par
