The document provides an in-depth summary of Virginia Woolf's 1925 novel Mrs. Dalloway. It discusses the novel's main characters Clarissa Dalloway and Septimus Warren Smith, both of whom struggle with their mental health in post-World War 1 London. Clarissa questions her decisions in life as she plans a party, while Septimus suffers from PTSD. The summary also analyzes Woolf's modernist stream-of-consciousness style, the themes of trauma from the war and gender roles, and how the characters illuminate post-war English society through their perspectives.

1. A presentation by Eve Crosbie.

2. - A really great writer.
- She was born in 1882 to an upper middle-class
socially active Victorian family.
- committed suicide at the age of 59, in 1941 just
after the 2nd World War began.
- Her life was plagued with tragedy: her mother
died when she was 13, and her sister 2 years
later
- She suffered from severe depression and mania
which led her to take her own life.
- Studied at King’s College in London.
- She wrote JACOB’S ROOM, ORLANDO and THE
WAVES to name a few.
- She wrote MRS DALLOWAY when she was 43.
- also wrote the famous feminist essay A ROOM
OF ONE’S OWN about the role of women
throughout history and literature.
- She was a member of the Bloomsbury group
which was made up of of really influential
writers, artists, philosophers and intellectual
people & was close friends with some really
innovative minds.

3. Set in 1923 – five years Follows a turbulent time in Britain’s history – such
after the end of WW1 as the death of Queen Victoria, the industrial
(but written in 1925) revolution and the First World War
Interbellum period
a society speeding headlong
into modernity
But also 17 years
before WW2
It takes place in a single day in
post-war London – you see
glimpses of a variety of lives
and classes as the third-
person narrator takes the
Although throughout the point of view of several
novel, the reader is given characters.
flashbacks of both pre-
war events (such as Most importantly, the scars of
Clarissa’s summers at Conservative Party leading the country the past appear to intermingle
Bourton) and war-time again after 17 years of Liberal leadership with the present a lot of the
Britain time.

4. The novel opens with Clarissa Dalloway declaring that she will go and buy the flowers for her party
she’s hosting that very evening herself. As she sets out, she remembers her youth in Bourton where,
aged 18 she had a premonition that “something awful was about to happen” and this feeling of
impending tragedy returns to her now, aged 51.
Clarissa spends the majority of the novel as she walks around London and her household, recalling
her youth with her friends Peter and Sally at Bourton. These thoughts cause her to question whether
she truly made the right decision to marry the sensible Richard instead of her friend Peter who once
proposed to her. We learn that she also had strong feelings for Sally, who was quite a unique woman
and the reader is given the impression that Sally was the one she truly loved.
Clarissa is shown to be vivacious and very much concerned with what others think of her but is also
self-reflective. She sporadically questions life’s true meaning and her own purpose and happiness and
doesn’t seem to come to a definite conclusion.
She feels both a great joy and a great dread about her life, both of which manifest in her struggles to
strike a balance between her desire for privacy and her need to communicate with others.
When Clarissa has her party in the evening, it turns out to be a success. Both Sally (now married too)
and Peter (returned from India) attend and so does the Prime Minister. She hears about the suicide of
the other main character, Septimus, and feels a strong connection with him despite having never met.
She stands on a windows ledge in her house, but whilst she has admired the way this stranger has
preserved the purity of his soul and memories, she chooses to return to her guests.

5. The perspective also shifts regularly to a man named Septimus Warren Smith, who is a World War
One veteran suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. His storyline begins with him sitting in
Regents park with his wife. He observes a lot of the things going on in London as Clarissa does as she
shops and its quite interesting to observe the pairs sometimes different and sometime similar
reactions to the same events – e.g the aeroplane flying overhead.
He suffers from frequent indecipherable hallucinations about the war and believes he can see
monstrous beings coming towards him. One image that keeps returning to him is that of his fallen
comrade in the war, Evans.
Later in the day, he visits a doctor who tells his wife that Septimus will need to be taken to a hospital
for involuntary commitment for an undefined period of time. Septimus views the doctors he has had
as the “emobodiment of human nature” – which due to his experiences in the war are ugly, twisted
and evil. Septimus views English society in much the same way as Clarissa does, and he struggles, as
she does, to both maintain his privacy and fulfill his need to communicate with others.
Septimus as a character is just as important as Clarissa in the novel and many parallels can be drawn
between them in terms of their attitudes and feelings, although they never actually meet in the
novel.
In the novel there are also sporadic shifts of narration to other minor characters such as Peter Walsh,
Richard Dalloway, Clarissa’s daughter (Elizabeth) and Elizabeth’s tutor as well as nameless observers
and passer-by's.

6. Hugh Whitbread Sally Seton
Doris Kilman
Richard Dalloway Elizabeth Dalloway
Peter Walsh
CLARISSA DALLOWAY
SEPTIMUS
WARREN SMITH
Evans
William Bradshaw
Lucrezia Warren Smith
Dr Holmes

7. In a way, the novel is both similar and different from Woolf’s earlier works in the way that she uses “stream of
consciousness” – revealing Clarissa’s and other character’s interior thoughts with little pause or explanation. So, the
reader follows the characters as they move physically through the world whilst also listening to their private thoughts.
Yet the form of expressing the realities of post-war England in subjective experiences and memories over a single day
was an unusual literary technique. The experimental style was at the time, and still now, is at odds with the typical
Victorian novel.
The book at times focuses on mundane activities such as shopping, eating dinner and organising a party showing that
no act is too small or two ordinary for a writer’s attention.
A lot of the speech in the novel is not provided in inverted commas and continues without pause, even when it’s
between two or more characters, continuing the flow between the interior and exterior mind that Woolf establishes
early on.
By placing so much of the book’s attention on character’s internal feelings, Woolf essentially allows her character’s
thoughts to travel back and forth in time – they reflect and refract their emotional experiences. The result of this is
that Woolf creates complex portraits of the individuals and their relationships.
Some argue that Woolf uses the novel as a vehicle for criticism of the society of her day. The main characters, both
aspects of Woolf herself, raise issues of deep personal concern: in Clarissa, the repressed social and economic position
of women, and in Septimus, the treatment of those driven by depression to the borderlands of sanity.

8. The general tone that Woolf adopts as the novel’s third-person narrator writing about a society still feeling the
effects of a devastating world war can be seen in this one line towards the start of the novel:
“For it was the middle of June. The War was over, except
for some one like Mrs Foxcroft at the Embassy last night
eating her heart out because that nice boy was killed and
now the old Manor House must go to a cousin …”
The sentence is set up with a tone of lightness, joy and relief and ultimate optimism but then it immediately
turns to the horror of war. Just this one sentence contains two totally different tones and suggests that the
war (though over) cannot be easily forgotten: it is still haunting peoples’ daily lives years later. And this tone
basically continues throughout in the third person narration.
Secondly, Woolf manages to capture the very different attitudes of the characters she focuses on in the novel
and manages to move from Clarissa’s delight with beauty to Peter’s feelings of nostalgia and regret; from Miss
Kilman’s murderous hatred to Septimus’ deep anxiety and mad visions.

9. It immediately opens up to the reader one
of the main themes in the novel – that is
Clarissa’s independence.
“Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself”
(Page 1, line 1)
Referred to through her married
name in this first instance
Appears to be a proclamation of
independence - maybe
Recognised through her husband