Mrs. Dalloway
Virginia Woolf
Mrs. Dalloway
2 chapters
3.77from 375,258 ratingson Goodreads
On a June morning in 1923, Clarissa Dalloway walks out into London to buy the flowers for her party that evening. The day keeps returning her to a summer thirty years earlier and the choice she made in it. Across the city, a shell-shocked veteran named Septimus Smith is moving towards a crisis she will never see and will hear about before the night is over.
About the book
Published in 1925, Mrs Dalloway takes place largely within one day in London. Clarissa Dalloway moves through the city buying flowers and preparing to host a party, while encounters and sensations call up memories of Bourton, her youth, and choices made decades earlier. The narrative also follows Septimus Warren Smith, a veteran suffering after his experiences in the First World War. Virginia Woolf moves fluidly between different minds, allowing clocks, streets, sounds and chance meetings to connect people who may never speak to one another. Public social life and private thought coexist throughout the novel, which examines memory, ageing, marriage, trauma and the distance between outward composure and inner experience.
Characters
Clarissa Dalloway — Protagonist
A London society hostess preparing for a party while revisiting memories, relationships and earlier choices.
Septimus Warren Smith — War veteran
A First World War veteran suffering severe psychological distress while living in London with his wife.
Richard Dalloway — Clarissa’s husband
Clarissa’s dependable husband, a Conservative politician whose affection is often quietly expressed.
Peter Walsh — Old friend
Clarissa’s old friend and former suitor, recently returned to London and still absorbed by their past.
Sally Seton — Friend from youth
A bold friend from Clarissa’s youth at Bourton, remembered for her independence and intensity.
Lucrezia Smith — Septimus’s wife
Septimus’s young Italian wife, isolated in London and deeply worried by his deteriorating condition.
Elizabeth Dalloway — Clarissa’s daughter
Clarissa and Richard’s teenage daughter, thoughtful and increasingly interested in a life of her own.
About the author
Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) was an English novelist and essayist, and one of the central figures of literary modernism. She wrote novels that follow consciousness rather than plot — a day in a city, a decade passing in an empty house — and found a form for the way attention actually moves. With her husband Leonard she ran the Hogarth Press, which published her own books along with T. S. Eliot and the first English translations of Freud. Her work includes Mrs Dalloway, To the Lighthouse, Orlando, The Waves and the essay A Room of One's Own.