Mrs Dalloway is a novel by Virginia Woolf. It was published in 1925.
Clarissa Dalloway is the the
wife of British MP Richard Dalloway. She is also a fashionable London
hostess and about to give an important party.
The character of Mrs Dalloway is gradually revealed through her
thoughts and her memories of the past. This internal thought process is made possible by an inner monologue and stream of consciousness, of which Virginia Woolf is famous for.
The people who have touched her life are: her one-time suitor Peter Walsh, lately returned from India after five years' absence; her childhood friend Sally Seton; her daughter Elizabeth and spinster tutor Miss Kilman; and a political hostess, Lady Bruton. A complimentary character is Septimus Warren smith, a shell-shock victim who has retreated into a private world and ends the day by committing suicide. He and Clarissa Dalloway never meet, but their lives are connected by external events and news of his death is casually mentioned by a guest at Clarissa's party. It provokes in her thoughts her own isolation and loneliness: "Death was an attempt to communicate, people feeling the impossibility of reaching the centre which, mystically, evaded them; closeness drew apart; rapture faded; one was alone."