Episode
Who’s afraid of realism? ‘Mrs Dalloway’ by Virginia Woolf
- Podcast
- Close Readings
- Published
- May 27, 2026
- Duration seconds
- 1270
- Processing state
not_requested
Actions
POST https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/close-readings-6008264/episodes/who-s-afraid-of-realism-mrs-dalloway-by-virginia-woolf/transcription-requests
Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode.GET https://stenobird.com/podcast/close-readings-6008264/who-s-afraid-of-realism-mrs-dalloway-by-virginia-woolf.md
Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource.
Summary
In August 1923, halfway through writing ‘Mrs Dalloway’, Virginia Woolf recorded a new idea in her diary: she would ‘dig out beautiful caves’ behind her characters, and ‘the caves shall connect, and each comes to daylight at the present moment’. This was Woolf’s ‘tunnelling process’, a transformative approach that led to the novel's celebrated modernist innovations, with its depiction a group of circulating consciousnesses in London over the course of one day. But underlying these innovations are the techniques of 19th-century realism, and in this episode James Wood explores what Woolf owes to Dickens and Flaubert, and the ways she breaks down these certainties to arrive at the ultimate unknowability of character. Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from the episode. To listen in full, and to all our other Close Readings series, sign up: Apple Podcasts: https://lrb.me/applecrwaor Other podcast apps: https://lrb.me/closereadingswaor Read more the LRB: Jacqueline Rose on Woolf: https://lrb.me/realismep601 Gillian Beer on Woolf‘s essays: https://lrb.me/realismep602 David Trotter on ‘Mrs Dalloway’: https://lrb.me/realismep603 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices