Riassunto
Riassunto di Mrs. Dalloway
A chi è rivolto
For readers who love character, mood and language, and anyone curious about London after the Great War. Its interwoven lives explore memory, love, time and the gap between public appearance and private feeling.
Che cos’è questo libro
Mrs. Dalloway is a novel by Virginia Woolf, published in 1925. It follows a single day in London in June 1923, five years after the First World War ended. Clarissa Dalloway, the wife of a member of Parliament, is fifty-one. She is giving a party that evening, and she spends the day getting ready for it. Woolf wrote the book in the middle of the Bloomsbury circle and printed it through the Hogarth Press, which she ran with her husband Leonard. Clarissa first appears in her earlier novel, The Voyage Out, and in a short story about a walk down Bond Street.
The book has no chapters. It moves from mind to mind as the hours pass, and the bells of Big Ben mark each one. Alongside Clarissa we meet Peter Walsh, the man she refused to marry thirty years before, who comes back from India. We also meet Septimus Warren Smith, a young veteran who cannot escape what he saw in the trenches. Their paths cross only lightly, but their days are bound together by the same streets, the same sounds and the same questions about love, power and time.
What do you get from it? You get a close look at how a mind really works, jumping between a flower stall, a memory of a summer thirty years gone and a sudden fear. You also get a quiet portrait of a society that prefers not to look at its wounded. Let us begin with Clarissa, stepping out into the morning to buy the flowers herself.
In questo riassunto
- 1Clarissa steps out into a June morningFree
- 2One city, one hour, many minds
- 3Septimus and Rezia sit in the park
- 4Peter Walsh comes home from India
- 5Bourton, Sally Seton and a choice
- 6Doctors who prescribe order and rest
- 7Lunch, Miss Kilman and Elizabeth
- 8Time, death and the shape of a self
- 9How the novel is told
Punto chiave 1 di 9
Clarissa steps out into a June morning
The novel opens with Clarissa Dalloway deciding to buy the flowers for her party herself, because her servant Lucy has plenty of other work. She walks through Westminster toward the florist. The morning feels fresh to her, and it throws her back at once to her girlhood at a country house called Bourton, where she once flung open the French windows and felt that something awful was about to happen.
This is how Woolf works from the first page. A simple errand opens into memory, and memory opens into feeling, and the reader moves with Clarissa without any warning of the change. She loves London, its traffic, its noise and its crowds. She says she loves life, and the book shows this is no small claim for a woman who has been seriously ill and who now sleeps alone in a narrow bed in an attic room.
She is not a grand figure. Her husband, Richard, is a dependable politician. Her daughter, Elizabeth, is seventeen and more attached to her tutor than to her mother. Clarissa knows that some people find her cold or shallow, and that she has built her life around giving parties. She also knows she once made a choice she is not sure was right.
As she walks, she meets Hugh Whitbread, an old acquaintance with polished manners and little depth. She thinks about how he and others like him keep the world turning smoothly. She feels a small pride at belonging and a small shame at what that belonging costs.
By the time she reaches the florist she has shown us her chief traits. She notices everything, she is generous in her way, and she is haunted by the sense that her real self is hidden behind the hostess everyone sees. The day has barely begun, and already it holds the whole of her life.
That’s 1 of 9 key points.
The rest of the summary, written and spoken, and the whole book: free to start.
- Nothing to pay today · Renews every year
- We email you before you pay
- Cancel online in two clicks
Who’s who
- Clarissa Dalloway
- Clarissa is a London hostess and politician's wife, preparing a party while remembering her youth.
- Richard Dalloway
- Richard is Clarissa's steady husband, a member of Parliament who struggles to express his love.
- Peter Walsh
- Peter is Clarissa's former suitor, returning from India with restless feelings about their shared past.
- Septimus Warren Smith
- Septimus is a troubled war veteran, married to Rezia and haunted by memories of his friend Evans.
- Lucrezia Warren Smith
- Lucrezia, called Rezia, is Septimus's Italian wife, lonely in London and anxious about his health.
- Sally Seton
- Sally is Clarissa's daring friend from their youth at Bourton, remembered with intense affection.
- Elizabeth Dalloway
- Elizabeth is Clarissa and Richard's seventeen-year-old daughter, close to her tutor and drawn to outdoor life.
- Miss Kilman
- Miss Kilman is Elizabeth's devout history tutor, whose attachment to her pupil sharpens her resentment of Clarissa.
About this edition
Every format is free to start, and print and large print are at cost.
- LengthAbout 66,000 words
- Reading timeAbout 4 h 20 min
- Listening time7 h 15 min
- FormatseBook, large-print eBook, audiobook, 15-minute summary; paperback, hardcover and large print at cost
- LanguagesEnglish and 11 other languages
Questions about Mrs. Dalloway
What is Mrs. Dalloway about?
It follows one day in June 1923 in London. Clarissa Dalloway prepares a party while old memories return, and a shell-shocked veteran named Septimus Smith struggles with his own torment. The two stories run in parallel across the city.
Who is Septimus Warren Smith in Mrs. Dalloway?
He is a young war veteran who has returned from France disturbed by the death of his friend Evans. He sees visions and fears doctors. He acts as a shadow figure to Clarissa, though they never meet.
Is Mrs. Dalloway hard to read?
No. The story is simple: one June day, one woman, and a party that evening. Clarissa begins with an errand to buy flowers, and the narrator moves with her gently from person to person, while the bells of Big Ben mark each hour.
When was Mrs. Dalloway written and is it a true story?
Virginia Woolf published it in 1925. It is fiction, set in June 1923. Clarissa also appears in Woolf's first novel, The Voyage Out. The book reflects real postwar London and Woolf's own experience with mental illness.
What is the main message of Mrs. Dalloway?
The book shows how inner life differs from outer appearance, and how time, memory and death shape each person. It also criticises a society that ignores the wounded and values order over feeling.