Narrative Style in Mrs. Dalloway

            Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway follows several characters through a single day in London in June of 1923. It being set shortly after the end of the First World War, its characters all represent a post-war society bent on reflection and reminiscence. We are made aware of this, however, not through the plot of action—for as far as action goes, not much occurs—but through Woolf’s style of narration through the characters’ “stream of consciousness,” or narration of their thoughts and memories as they occur.

            Mrs. Dalloway is told through an omniscient third-person narration—one which delves deeply into the characters through a combination on dialogue, interior monologue, and free indirect discourse. The novel begins,

                        Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself.

            For Lucy had her work cut out for her. The doors would be taken off their hinges; Rumpelmayer’s men were coming. And then, thought Clarissa Dalloway, what a morning—fresh as if issued to children on a beach (3).

While the first line is presented in the third person, the sense of being plunged into this character’s day, without introduction gives us the sense that we are plunging directly into Clarissa’s mind. The second line is in the free indirect style— giving us Clarissa’s thought without any narratorial indication such as “she thought”—which continues through the third line. The fourth pulls the narration back out a step, by assuming an authorial presence, giving us Clarissa’s full name, and telling us what she thought.

            Without even leaving this first page, the next paragraph takes us into another powerful aspect of Mrs. Dalloway’s narration: memory. It continues,

What a lark! What a plunge! For so it had always seemed to her, when, with a little squeak of the hinges, which she could hear now, she had burst open the French windows and plunged at Bourton into the open air. How fresh, how calm, stiller than this of course, the air was in the early morning; like the flap of a wave; the kiss of a wave; chill and sharp and yet (for a girl of eighteen as she then was) solemn, feeling as she did, standing there at the open window, that something awful was about to happen (3).

Without any indication, Woolf has taken shifted us in this scene from Clarissa’s present to her past—just as a mind shifts on a morning that reminds one of a past morning—where she muses on days spent at a place called Bourton during her eighteenth year.

            We later find out what Bourton is, and what went on during Clarissa’s time spent there. We learn of it through the presentation of her memories—such as the one presented above, unannounced, streamed—as well as through those of characters who share them, mainly Peter Walsh (who was madly in love with Clarissa at the time).

            Another striking aspect of Woolf’s style is her sentences. They grow long by what seems their own accord, whirling up like breezes and creating not only tones but entire scenes, entire characters, entire worlds. One example from early on in the novel occurs as Clarissa walks through bustling London on her way to the flower shop:

And everywhere, though it was still so early, there was a beating, a stirring of galloping ponies, tapping of cricket bats; Lords, Ascot, Ranelagh and all the rest of it; wrapped in the soft mesh of the grey-blue morning air, which, as the day wore on, would unwind them, and set down on their lawns and pitches the bouncing ponies, whose forefeet just struck the ground and up they sprung, the whirling young men, and laughing girls in their transparent muslins who, even now, after dancing all night, were now taking their absurd woolly dogs for a run; and even now, at this hour, discreet old dowagers were shooting out in their motor cars on errands of mystery; and the shopkeepers were fidgeting in their windows with their paste and diamonds, their lovely old sea-green brooches in eighteenth-century settings to tempt Americans (but one must economise, not buy things rashly for Elizabeth), and she, too, loving it as she did with an absurd and faithful passion, being part of it, since her people were courtiers once in the time of the Georges, she, too, was going that very night to kindle and illuminate; to give her party (5).

This sentence describes the scene before Clarissa, while—in its seemingly infinite run—also creating the very sense of it all, the endless impressions and turns of walking through a city and seeing all the bustle at once and more broadly about being alive on a morning such as this one. We also get in this sentence not only a description or impression of her surroundings but from within Clarissa herself—her reminder to herself to “economise” and not impulse buy for her daughter, her sense of pride over the history of her family’s royal proximity, and ultimately it leads back to the party—the essence of Clarissa’s purpose and part in it all.

            Woolf’s style in Mrs. Dalloway shifts endlessly in a masterful manner. Her ability to convey her characters’ thoughts and impressions so seamlessly and honestly requires a knowledge of them that lingers above the narrative, an existence from which to pull that I hope to be able to formulate and convey. 

Mrs. Dalloway

Amy Hoagland

Mrs. Dalloway was published in 1925 and written by Virginia Woolf, an English writer and critic. One of the most interesting things about Mrs. Dalloway, and all of Virginia Woolf’s work is the culture in which it was written.  In England in the early nineteen hundreds, writing was a profession that was left for the men. Women were not encouraged to educate themselves rather their place in society was to marry and provide care to children and their husbands. She is a revolutionary and a feminist idol because of her persistence to write, despite the culture in which she lived. Virginia Wolf started publishing her writing in 1904. Her experience as woman living in this society shows in her writing, and perhaps Mrs. Dalloway is one of the best examples of the this perspective. Mrs. Dalloway is set in 1923 and exposes realities about gender roles, and many other themes surrounding post-war England.

Throughout this novel there were many references to the British Empire. The 1920’s and even the 1930’s was a tumultuous time for the British Empire and this was seen in Mrs. Dalloway. Clarissa Dalloway is the man character of especially the beginning of this book. When learning about this character, in conjunction with my previous knowledge of Virginia Woolf, I couldn’t help but see similarities in the two women. Both trapped by a society that refuses to give them any respect of treat them like equals to the men they do so much for

 For this assignment I want to focus on the role culture and society plays in the novel, particularly in the characterization of Clarissa and Septimus. Both of these characters seem to view the English society in a similar way, despite their extremely different backgrounds. It seems as though both characters had lost the illusion they once had involving the British Empire. Perhaps this is less the case with Clarissa; however Septimus is a WW1 veteran and feels as though the war has changed him as a person and utterly made him numb to the world around him.  “It is I who am blocking the way” (206). It is clear that Septimus knows he has been wounded by the war and this has changed his opinion of the British Empire, as well as his opinion of himself and his capabilities. Septimus is very private and introspective, searching for meaning and a solution to his PTSD. Which is this period would not have been a possibility nor would anyone have any idea how to treat it. Ultimately, Septimus was a victim of the British Empire, and seen in the novel as a long-term casualty of the war.

Clarissa Dalloway, much like Septimus struggles with how to match her outside appearance and her inner strength and feelings about the world around her. She is trapped in a revolving door of parties, shopping and cleaning. However this lift does not satisfy her in the way she would like and she struggles internally with keeping up appearances, while being herself. She is plagued by her decisions, especially her decision to marry Richard instead of Peter Walsh. She feared that she chose passion over financial stability. Perhaps this is her feeling as though British culture had impacted her decision. Thus leading to her unhappiness and uncertainty

One thing I took from this Novel that I would like to incorporate into my own writing is her brilliant use of stream of consciousness. She truly mastered this technique in Mrs. Dalloway as she was able to convey a sense of plot an organization while keeping the sense of stream of consciousness. 

Mrs. Dalloway

In her 1925 novel Mrs. Dalloway, Virginia Woolf traces a day in life of a upperclass housewife and the heroine of the novel, Clarissa Dalloway, who strolls through the streets of London in order to prepare for a party she is to host that evening. Clarissa Dalloway bumps into many different characters throughout the story, including Peter Walsh, her former lover. However, never does she actually meet Septimus Smith, a World War I veteran who suffers from post-war trauma of being shell shocked by explosions. In fact, it is only through Sir William Brandshaw, Spetimus’s psychiatrist and a guest at Clarissa’s party, Clarissa ever hears of Septimus: of Septimus’s death to be more precise. However, it can be argued that Septimus nonetheless is the character who influences Clarissa the most in the novel. Upon learning about Septimus’s death, Clarissa faces an epiphany and doubts the validity of English society and meaning of life.

Readers are first introduced to Septimus at Regent’s Park as he observes an explosion of a car, which reminds him of the war where he lost many of his comrades, including Evans, the ghost of whom he talks to regularly. Septimus have fought in the war in order to save his country, but affected greatly by the war, he no longer finds joy, nor meaning in life in England. Although readers find Septimus’s grief perfectly reasonable, the English society does not; in fact, even his wife Lucrezia seems to believe that Septimus needs help. Septimus then visits Sir William Brandshaw, a renown psychiatrist, who decides to admit Septimus into a mental asylum.

However, Septimus is never admitted to the hospital because he chooses to rather kill himself. Septimus and Lucrezia returns to their apartment as Septimus must get ready to go to the hospital. When one of the doctors come to their house to take Septimus, however, he jumps out of the building and kills himself in order to preserve the integrity of his soul.

Mrs. Dalloway only hears of Septimus’s demise later that evening at the party when Sir William Brandshaw and his wife joins her party. A typical of upperclass English housewife, Clarissa is shocked to find out about what happened to Septimus. The disparity between Clarissa and Septimus is great on the surface, for Clarissa stands for a sheltered upperclass woman whilst Septimus stands for a middle class war veteran. Nevertheless, they share the common sense of oppression. Upon learning about Septimus’s demise, Clarissa is shocked and applauds Septimus’s integrity to preserve his soul. She also pities Septimus and condemns the society that left an exemplary war veteran like Septimus misunderstood and isolated.  However, then she also realizes that she must keep on living, and her life as it is will have to be endured.

Two Sides of the Same Coin

The Mrs. Dalloway Reader follows a day in the life of Clarissa Dalloway. It begins with her shopping in London as she prepares for a party followed by interactions with other characters such as Septimus, a World War II vet. My essay will focus on Clarissa’s relationship to Septimus. 

Septimus is introduced with him observing the same event as Clarissa, the explosion coming from a car.  The story shifts to focus on him waiting for an appointment with Sir William Bradshaw. Bradshaw is a psychiatrist and a friend of Clarissa who later attends the party. Septimus is as the psychiatrist’s office because he is a World War II vet. He was injured during the war and suffers from PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder). This is evident on page 206 after the loud explosion, “Septimus thought…as if some horror had come almost to the surface and was about to burst into flame, terrified him.” But we can see that Septimus is aware of his own problem when he further goes on to think, “It is I who am blocking the way” (206). However, even the doctor and his wife dismisses Septimus’ grief and sorrow as nothing more than just him being irrational, “He was selfish. So men are. For he was not ill. Dr. Holmes said there was nothing to the matter with him” (213).

Clarissa does not become aware of Septimus’ existence until Bradshaw’s arrival at the party. However, it is the news of Septimus’ suicide. Septimus is suicidal because he no longer sees the same London around him. He does not see the London he fought for. Daily life is agony and he lives in constant fear. This is quite in contrast to the outlook on life Clarissa possesses. She wants to have this positive outlook on life. She’s always buying flowers and throwing parties while trying to mingle with high society. She is always concerned with her outward appearance and how others perceive her. This is something that Septimus does not concern himself with as Septimus is part of the working class and does not experience the luxuries that Clarissa enjoys. However, there is a similarity between the two characters. Septimus also find beauty in the world around him, in the same way that Clarissa buys flowers. They both appreciate what exists in the world around them.  Also, they both seem to be concerned with the world around them and about themselves. They are both concerned about death.

In this novel, one can say that Septimus and Clarissa are like two sides of the same coin. Both inevitably have the same fear of death, but the way they confront it is vastly different. The two characters also complement each other quite well. I think this is really interesting what Woolf has done. With these two characters, she was able to present the same topic through two different perspectives with two different characters. To emphasise the differing viewpoints, she uses two characters who have no direct relationship to each other. In the end, the only relationship between the Septimus and Clarissa is the topic of life, and accepting death.

Streaming Consciousnesses and Butterfly Effects

            Mrs. Dalloway, a novel written by Virginia Woolf, delves into the lives of the main characters, jumping into their individual minds. The main character, Clarissa Dalloway, is a spirited woman with her own wants and needs and yearns to find a way to be herself without forgoing her social life and status. Another important character, Septimus Smith, whose problems resemble a more extreme version of Clarissa’s, is a veteran of World War I who suffers from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and is condemned by doctors, society, and his own wife for his internal ailment. The novel is set in 1923 in London, England, and is focused on the timeless dilemma of whether or not one should forgo their wants and needs in order to stick to the status quo or vise versa. To conform or not to conform, that is the essential question Clarissa struggles to answer for herself, and the question Septimus answers for himself by committing suicide.  Woolf conveys this theme to her readers through her unique style of writing.

            Virginia Woolf uses a stream of consciousness writing style while narrating in the third person point of view throughout Mrs. Dalloway. This style effectively pulls her audience into the minds of her characters in a way that no other style can. At times this style makes it a bit difficult to follow and/or understand, and it definitely makes it so that one cannot read the novel without being completely focused on the story. It is because of her use of the streaming consciousness style that a story about a single day from the perspectives of numerous characters could be so captivating. Had she used a different style, readers might not have been able to become as attached to, or sympathetic towards, the characters Woolf introduces them too. While her streaming consciousness style greatly contributes to the overall depth of the story, it is also the underlying tone she has consistently throughout the story that makes this story so interesting.

            There are moments of humor and some moments of joy in Mrs. Dalloway, but overall the major tones in this story are sorrow, confusion, and resignation. These tones reflect the negative feelings held by the characters and by Virginia Woolf at the lives and situations the characters are forced to carry on through. Without these underlying tones carrying consistently through the novel, the themes would not be as clear or powerful. For example, had Septimus Smith not have eventually become resigned to his fate, thereby making him decide to end his life rather than have his soul be crushed by society, than Clarissa would have never thought about how much she agreed with and condoned his decision, which would have made her own struggle with the societal pressure to conform much less clear. In a way, this story illustrates the existence of the butterfly effect. Septimus and Clarissa had never met, yet his actions and emotions had a profound effect on hers and changed the course of her life, thereby changing the course of the lives of those whose lives are touched by hers, thereby changing the course of the whole story.

Learning Mrs. Dalloway

Published in 1925, Virginia Woolf’s novel Mrs. Dalloway has long since been considered one of the finest English-language novels written. It details a day in the life of high-society Briton, Clarissa Dalloway, but it is more than a slice of life novel—it is a full-on commentary, rich in both writing and substance, and indeed, the writing is one of the more striking parts about it. Stream-of-consciousness is a valuable tool for characterization without active description, and Woolf manages to pull this off in a way that is both subtle and effective.

One of the clearest examples of the switch between character mindsets, and thus, writing styles, comes in the conversation between Clarissa and Peter Walsh—Clarissa, even before this moment, is often surrounded by text that is somehow equally languorous and fleeting. Her ideas are short but connected, leading to lengthy, saltatory sentences that are still constructed with poetic diction. We find one such example on page 229, reading “Now the door opened, and in came—for a single second she could not remember what he was called! so surprised she was to see him, so glad, so shy, so utterly taken aback to have Peter Walsh come to her unexpectedly in the morning! (She had not read his letter.)”

This particular section manages to stylistically lead the reader through Clarissa’s emotions: there is a definite buildup in the repetition of “so (adjective),” and then the sentence leads up to an abrupt cliff in ending it with the afterthought, almost, of “she had not read his letter.” Through this, we see the kind of person Clarissa is; she finds delight in the small things, but not necessarily a satisfaction. She can lead up and up and up, but when the crucial moment of catharsis comes, she is unsatisfied—“cold,” as Peter Walsh later describes her, though his words must be taken with a grain of salt considering his relation to Clarissa.

 

With Peter in mind, because of the back-and-forth exchange between the two characters, he provides a good contrast to who Clarissa is, through the differences in narrative:

Here she is mending her dress; mending her dress as usual, he thought; here she's been sitting all the time I've been in India; mending her dress; playing about; going to parties; running to the House and back and all that, he thought, growing more and more irritated, more and more agitated, for there's nothing in the world so bad for some women as marriage, he thought; and politics; and having a Conservative husband, like the admirable Richard. So it is, so it is, he thought, shutting his knife with a snap. (230)

Peter’s monologue is not nearly as jumpy as Clarissa’s—though they both share the repetition (in construct, rather than specific words, for Peter), Peter descriptions and observations feel insistent, moving forward with the constant sense of frustration that Peter seems to exemplify, and, occasionally, evoke in the reader for his hypocrisy. Where Clarissa’s thoughts ended abruptly, in a way that would suggest that she has, in some way, detached herself from Peter, Peter’s thoughts end “with a snap,” but it feels definitive and yet ongoing, as opposed to dismissive.

 

Woolf has certainly mastered the usefulness of stream-of-consciousness writing in this novel and, through that, has mastered the art of characterization. To even be able to incorporate a fraction of that would be immensely useful, as someone who writes a lot of character-driven things, and I think I would help break the monotony of the usual tactics of bringing a character to life.

Clarissa Dalloway's Stream of Consciousness

Mrs Dalloway written by Virgina Woolf details one day in the life of Clarissa Dalloway, a high society woman, as she takes a walk through her neighborhood to prepare for a party that she is going to host later that evening. In the novel, Woolf also focuses on the character of Septimus, who is a World War II veteran, suffering from shell shock.

Virginia Woolf is one of the leading modernists of the 20^th century and she wrote this novel using the stream of consciousness mode of narrative. Stream of consciousness, coined by psychologist William James is a narrative device that can be best described as an interior monologue in which the story is presented through the continuous flow of thoughts and feelings. In Mrs Dalloway, Virginia Woolf makes use of the indirect interior monologue—which is a type of monologue in which the author writes the unspoken material like its part of the character’s consciousness and by providing descriptions acts as a guide for the readers.

For example, “Was Evelyn ill again? Evelyn was a good deal out of sorts, said 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 job at Court) that his wife had some internal ailment…” (Woolf, 198).

In the passage above, when Woolf writes, “he was almost too well dressed always, but presumably had to be, with his job at Court” its written in a way which seems like the aforementioned sentence is part of Clarissa Dalloway’s inner monologue, however, it is Woolf acting as a guide for the readers by passing commentary and providing description, to provide a better understanding of the character.

A direct example of Clarissa Dalloway’s inner monologue would be the reaction that the character Hugh evoked in her, “…internal ailment, nothing serious, which an old friend Clarissa Dalloway would quite understand…Ah, yes she did of course; what a nuisance; and felt very sisterly and oddly conscious at the same time of her hat. Not the right hat for the early morning, was that it? For Hugh always made her feel…that she might be a girl of eighteen…” (Woolf, 198).

In such form of writing, where the line between author’s commentary and the characters conscious thoughts is extremely confusing, punctuation marks provide the signal as to where the writer’s commentary finishes and where the character’s thoughts start. For example, in the sentence, “what a nuisance; and felt very sisterly and oddly conscious at the same time of her hat” (Woolf, 198), the semi colon after “what a nuisance” (that being Clarissa’s thought) signals the change from Clarissa to the writer.

Additionally, it can be seen from the passage above, in the novel, external events take secondary importance and are in fact almost dissolved—or ignored—as the next few paragraphs succeeding the one above, go through Clarissa’s line of thought as she thinks about her party in the evening—and in relation to that Peter Walsh (an old friend) who promises to attend and so on and so forth. Therefore, in the stream of consciousness mode of narrative, Virginia Woolf gives more importance to the reactions of the external environment, than the environment itself.

For someone who wants to try it, the novel provides an excellent model on using the stream of consciousness mode of narrative—with its sophisticated intermingling of the writer’s and characters thoughts together.

--Smriti Bansal

Works Cited:

Woolf, Virginia. "Mrs Dalloway." The Mrs Dalloway Reader. Orlando: Harcourt, 2003. 195-371. Print.

Mrs. Dalloway

Jack Breene

             In Mrs. Dalloway, there really isn’t much in terms of plot. Within the first 20 pages, I realized that the events happening during the present don’t serve the reader’s understanding of the book.  Instead, Woolf chooses to tell the story in the form of stream of consciousness, a style that follows the characters throughout their lives and their thoughts tell the story. This is very interesting style but also makes it very difficult to read because if one were to not pay attention, it would simply tell the story of a day in the life of a high society housewife and a former solider. Woolf’s style works because of her subtle and accurate descriptions of the characters and the world around them.

 The most important aspect of this novel has been the characters and how their past has come to define who they are today. And two characters that stand out are Clarissa Dalloway and Septimus Warren Smith. While both characters seems to have very little in common with one another, they both have fair skin and beak noses, their personal trials and tribulations make them mirrors of each other as the story continues.

            Clarissa’s problems in this story are born out of her regret. Years ago she has a choice between the adventurous Peter and the safe Richard. While she doesn’t suffer externally to the degree while Septimus does, her poor decisions have made her a cold and impassionate person. When Peter Walsh returns, we learn about the night when Clarissa ended things with her old flame and how the choice continues to haunt her. Septimus on the other hand, has been damaged in a more violent way. Coming home from World War I, he has lost both himself and his belief in the good in humanity. He too is haunted by his past which come in the form of many visits from the spirit of Evans, a fallen commander.

            In both cases, the characters are both deeply unhappy and the prospect of suicide is never far off. In Septimus’ case, his depression gets to the point where he knows he will never be able to recover mentally from the atrocities that he has seen and decides to kill himself. While these two characters never actually interact, Septimus’ decision comes to deeply effect Clarissa’s actions. When feeling depressed and lost while contemplating upstairs, alone, at her party, Clarissa remembers the rumored version of Septimus’ tale and decides that her decisions are worth living with.

Difference in Thought

Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway (1925) explores the inner workings of a cast of characters and follows their thought processes as they move through a day culminating in a party thrown by Clarissa, the title character. Virginia Woolf takes a third person narrative and alternately sets it down inside of each of the heads of four characters: Clarissa, Peter, Lucrezia and Septimus. By using specific vocabulary and sentence structure for each character’s internal thoughts the stream-of-consciousness narrative is differentiated, which allows the reader to delve into each character’s mindset. This technique can be seen most clearly on pages 1-78.

The first character we are faced with is Clarissa. Woolf uses Clarissa to ease the reader into her style. This section is still disjointed and fluid and hard to manage, but it is considerably less so than the subsequent musings of her companions. The fact that she hid her feelings actually makes her feel less on the inside, and it’s only when she’s thinking about Sally that the tone becomes emotional instead of reminiscent. Clarissa is always thinking about other people, their propriety and the parties they throw, her internal mind revolves around surface matter just as much as her external persona.

Lucrezia’s inner thoughts are much more desperate, to reflect her much more desperate situation. The language used is paranoid about other people finding out her situation: “People must notice.” (23). She is otherizing herself through their eyes, is determined to draw a line between her private anguish and the public view. There is significant emphasis put on herself, how Septimus’s illness has affected her life. This obsession with how her life has been torn asunder and her fear of letting other’s see it creates a sense of desperation that is different from the other character’s tone.

The flow of Peter’s mind is more emotional and obsessive that Clarissa’s. Woolf uses his shared memory with Clarissa to bring out their differences. When Clarissa recalls him visiting her at her family home, she remembers his words to her and the details of what happened, how everyone else interacted. But when he begins to reminisce on page 64, he thinks only of his own feelings and how the action affected him. He is being shown as selfish and self-absorbed. Woolf also uses repetition in his thought process to show the way he obsesses over things. “Remember my party, remember my party, said Peter…” (52). He has a series of refrains throughout the portion that focuses in his mind, which is effective in showing the reader the things he thought were important and the way he turned them over in his mind.

Septimus was by far the most erratically written thought process. He also repeats sentences and thoughts, but it is in a more circular way. He wanders away from “No crime; love…”(75) to think about the pain of extracting these truths, just to cycle back to it. Woolf also separates Septimus’ voice from the others through a much shorter average clause length. “The was cut; he mounted;he was free, as it was decreed that he, Septimus, the lord of men, should be free; alone…” (75) The shorter clauses not only speed up the pacing to make the reader feel like their own mind is racing, but differentiates between Lucrezia’s much longer, questioning phrases.

These techniques result in a stream-of-consciousness narration that feels significantly less self-indulgent than many other works with this style of narration. I am going to try to adapt something similar for my next piece, by using a different method of thought for each character. Hopefully I will be able to play with these subtle voice variations to make the characters feel distinct but real.

This Week's Literary Events

If you have some extra time this week, you might want to check out some of these readings. Remember, you're required to go to two readings during the semester and write a short review of each on this blog, so this is a good opportunity to get one or both of those done. If you're planning to go to any of these, feel free to leave a comment, and perhaps a few of you can go together.

Reading: Jeffrey W. Rubin & Emma Sokoloff-Rubin “Sustaining Activism” 
Sunday, March 3rd @ 7PM – Blustockings Books (172 Allen St.). Free
In 1986, a group of young Brazilian women started a movement to secure economic rights for rural women and transform women’s roles in their homes and communities. Together with activists across the country, they built a new democracy in the wake of a military dictatorship. In “Sustaining Activism: A Brazilian Women’s Movement and a Father-Daughter Collaboration,” Jeffrey W. Rubin, Professor of History at Boston University, and Emma Sokoloff-Rubin, Howland Research Fellow in Buenos Aires, tell the behind-the-scenes story of this remarkable movement. As a father-daughter team, they describe the challenges of ethnographic research and the way their collaboration gave them a unique window into a fiery struggle for equality.  

Monday, March 4th @ 7PM – Blustockings Books (172 Allen St.). Free 
Reading: Sari Botton “Get Out of My Crotch”
with Elissa Bassist, Betty MacDonald & Mira Ptacin In “Get Out of My Crotch: 21 Writers Respond to the War on Women’s Rights and Reproductive Health,” a group of fearless essayists examine reproductive rights, access to health care, violence against women, and the rise of rape apologists in twenty-first century United States. Illuminating intersections of gender, class, and race, these stories speak to the challenges women routinely face, attempts to undermine their rights, and the deliberate, systemic erosion of their agency and their existence as equals. Join editor Sari Botton and contributors to the anthology as they revisit what’s at stake, what could still be lost, and why we must continually fight for equality and freedom for all.

The Moth StorySLAM! 
Monday, March 4, 8pm, The Bell House (149 7th St, Brooklyn). $8 
Ten stories. Three teams of judges. One winner. The outrageously popular (deservedly so) spontaneous storytelling series pits local raconteurs against one another, challenging them to come up with an impressive work based on a specific theme.

Sam Lipsyte Reading 
Tuesday, March 5, 7pm - BookCourt (163 Court Street, Brooklyn). Free. 
Lipsyte's acidic and pitch-black satires keep getting better—The Ask, about a middle-aged failure called Milo, was one of the best books of 2010. His new collection, The Fun Parts, contains many of the short stories he's published in The New Yorker.

Rita Moreno in conversation with Lin-Manuel Miranda
Tuesday, March 5, 7pm - Barnes & Noble on 86th St & Lexington Ave. Free
The musical theater and film star, who has won an Emmy, a Grammy, a Tony and an Oscar, tells her life story in Rita Moreno.  


Tuesday, March 5th @ 7PM – Blustockings Books (172 Allen St.). Free Reading: Lillian Faderman “My Mother’s Wars” Join acclaimed writer Lillian Faderman for the release of her newest book, “My Mother’s Wars,” tracing the story of a Latvian girl who left her village for New York in 1914 with dreams of a life on the stage and encountered the realities of her new world. In this work of reconstructed memoir, Faderman delves into her mother’s past and offers an extraordinary lens onto the battles she was forced to fight as a woman, an immigrant worker, and a Jew with family left behind in Hitler’s deadly path. Lillian Faderman is an internationally known scholar of ethnic and lesbian history, and the author of many books, including “To Believe in Women,” “Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers,” “Surpassing the Love of Men,” and “I Begin My Life All Over.”

Wednesday, March 6th @ 7PM – Blustockings Books (172 Allen St.). Free 
Reading: “The Feminist Porn Book”
with Tristan Taormino, Constance Penley, Celine Parrenas Shimizu & Mireille Miller-Young We all know that everyone watches porn, even (or especially) feminists. But porn has long been branded anti-feminist, and some have even made a crusade out of trying to save women (and men) from it. “The Feminist Porn Book: The Politics of Producing Pleasure” tackles the issues from the inside out, wrestling with these central questions: Can porn be feminist? Do feminists make porn differently? How do feminists reconcile being aroused by sexist images? How can we discuss the pervasiveness of porn in the classroom? And how can we use porn to further the goals of feminism? Join Taormino, Penley, Shimizu, and Miller-Young as they discuss putting female desire in focus for the biggest entertainment industry in the world.

 Thursday, March 7th @ 7PM – Blustockings Books (172 Allen St.). Free 
Reading: David McConnell “American Honor Killings”
In “American Honor Killings: Desire & Rage Among Men,” David McConnell explores the roots of hatred and male sexual violence by examining a series of murders of gay men that are among the most notorious crimes of our era. Through jailhouse interviews and painstaking research, McConnell creates shockingly intimate portraits of the killers’ inner lives. The resulting stories play out exactly as they happened, an inexorable sequence of events – grisly, touching, disturbing, sometimes even with moments of levity – and together form a secret American history of rage and desire. David McConnell is the author of the acclaimed novels “The Silver Hearted” and “Firebrat.” He is the former cochair of the Lambda Literary Foundation, and lives in New York City.  

Friday, March 8th @ 7PM – Blustockings Books (172 Allen St.). Free 
Reading: Adriana Páramo “Looking for Esperanza”
Inspired by a story about an immigrant mother who walked the desert from Mexico to the USA with the dead body of her baby strapped to her own, Adriana Páramo immersed herself in the underground world of undocumented women toiling in the Florida fields. This fieldwork and the anonymous voices of the women she encountered while looking for the mother in the story are captured in “Looking for Esperanza: The Story of a Mother, a Child Lost, and Why They Matter to Us,” winner of the 2011 Social Justice and Equality Award in creative nonfiction. Join cultural anthropologist Páramo for a discussion on the process of gathering information and transforming anthropological field work into a work of creative nonfiction, and using creative nonfiction as a vehicle of social activism.