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This test consists of 5 multiple choice questions, 5 short answer questions, and 10 short essay questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What causes Laura's unexpressed desperation?
(a) She feels trapped forever in an ordinary life.
(b) Her sorrows are ordinary and she knows it.
(c) Her realization that Richie will grow up to be gay.
(d) He belief that she will never live like Mrs. Dalloway.

2. With what profession is Nelly's calm compared?
(a) With that of an undertaker.
(b) With that of an executioner.
(c) With that of a test pilot.
(d) With that of a patient nanny.

3. What has made Richard feel wonderful?
(a) The combination of drugs he has taken.
(b) The colors on his robe.
(c) The decision that he has made.
(d) The lovely day outside his gloomy apartment.

4. What does the unusual light in Richard's apartment reveal?
(a) That he really needs to fire his cleaning lady.
(b) His astonishing taste in art.
(c) The way the illness has ravaged his face and body.
(d) The flaws and smallness of his life's detritus.

5. What is the devil Virginia refers to?
(a) Her writer's block.
(b) Nelly.
(c) Her madness.
(d) The man with the satchell.

Short Answer Questions

1. According to Virginia, what makes a person technically insane?

2. What is important about the imagery of the squirrel's tail?

3. What gives Mrs. Latch's garage the look of a miniature house?

4. Why can't Laura take the sleeping pills?

5. Which character does Julia describe as strange?

Short Essay Questions

1. What are some of the ways in which Laura justifies to herself her trip to the hotel just in order to read?

2. What does Louis think of Clarissa?

3. What makes Virginia, at this point, begin to reconsider killing off her character, Mrs. Dalloway?

4. Why does Laura delay joining her husband in bed as his birthday draws to an end?

5. What is ironic about Richard's apartment being open to the light?

6. What is Sally's reaction to Walter's present-buying?

7. What does Virginia see as a kind of devil?

8. What fears does Virginia have at this point in the novel?

9. What writing decision of Virginia's is prompted by her success in her campaign to move back to London?

10. In what ways are Clarissa and Mary different?

(see the answer keys)

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