Characters

🧕 Clarissa Dalloway

• The novel’s protagonist.
• A wealthy, upper-class woman living in post-WWI London.
• Prepares to host a high-society party, reflecting on her youth, marriage, and missed opportunities.
• Feels both connected and alienated from the world around her.

🧔 Peter Walsh

• Clarissa’s former lover.
• Recently returned from India, where he had a failed romantic life.
• Still in love with Clarissa and judgmental of her choices.
• Embodies restlessness and a longing for emotional intensity.

👩 Sally Seton

• Clarissa’s close friend from youth.
• Represents freedom and rebellion in Clarissa’s memory.
• Once kissed Clarissa, sparking complex feelings.
• Now married and a conventional figure.

👨 Richard Dalloway

• Clarissa’s husband.
• Conservative and emotionally reserved.
• Devoted to Clarissa, though distant.
• Represents stability and tradition.

🧠 Septimus Warren Smith

• A traumatized WWI veteran.
• Suffers from shell shock (PTSD), plagued by hallucinations and despair.
• Sees through the facade of society and feels isolated.
• His narrative parallels and contrasts with Clarissa's.

Plot Summary

🌅 Part One: Morning – Clarissa’s World Awakens

• Clarissa Dalloway steps out to buy flowers for her party that evening.
• As she walks through London, memories of her youth resurface, especially her time at Bourton.
• She reflects on her decision to marry Richard instead of her passionate but unstable friend Peter Walsh.
• Meanwhile, Septimus Warren Smith, a WWI veteran suffering from trauma, walks the same streets with his wife Rezia.
• Their paths nearly cross, setting up the novel’s dual narrative.
• Peter Walsh pays Clarissa an unexpected visit, triggering further reflection on her past choices.

☀️ Part Two: Afternoon – Intersecting Lives and Social Layers

• The city bustles with life: cars, crowds, airplanes – all signs of modernity and imperial power.
• Septimus continues to spiral into despair, haunted by hallucinations of his dead friend Evans.
• His doctors, Holmes and Sir William Bradshaw, dismiss his suffering, symbolizing society’s failure to understand trauma.
• Clarissa hosts lunch and tea, thinking of her role as a wife and mother, and feeling alienated despite her privilege.
• Characters' inner monologues reveal dissatisfaction, repression, and longing across social classes and genders.

🌙 Part Three: Evening – The Party and the Climax

• Clarissa’s party brings together many characters: Peter, Sally Seton, Lady Bruton, Elizabeth, and even Sir William Bradshaw.
• The news of Septimus’s suicide reaches the party through Bradshaw.
• Clarissa retreats alone, shocked and contemplative.
• She sees Septimus’s death as an act of resistance—something she herself might never do.
• The novel ends with Peter watching Clarissa re-enter the party, moved by her presence and the mystery of her inner life.

Style

Stream-of-Consciousness Prose Style

• This style reaches unique levels of human experience
• Example: "Leve-me com você, pensou Clarissa num impulso, como se ele estivesse saindo imediatamente para uma longa viagem; e então, no instante seguinte, foi como se agora uma peça em cinco atos muito envolvente e empolgante tivesse se acabado e ela tivesse vivido ali uma existência inteira, tivesse fugido, tivesse vivido com Peter, e agora tivesse se acabado."
• [MYTAKE] I hate the fact that this book has no chapters, it's so annoying to read
• [MYTAKE] Focusing on conciousness is a post Kant consequence, after all we moved on from noumena, all we have left is phenomena

Considering All Lives as Important

• Virginia Woolf highlights the importance of lives often overlooked, such as housemaids. For instance, Mrs. Walker's perspective: "um primeiro ministro a mais ou menos nao importava, o que importava era o salmao." This reflects Woolf's feminist lens, giving value to what society might dismiss.

Intimacy

• Woolf masterfully portrays the intimate thoughts of her characters.
• She emphasizes that each person is a world of their own, with concerns that seem crucial to them but may appear trivial from a distance.
• Woolf humorously contrasts the significance of events to different characters, such as Clarissa and Peter's affair, which means everything to Peter but little to Clarissa and nothing to Richard.
• [MYTAKE] Her ability to delve into internal thoughts feels almost supernatural.
• [MYTAKE] since her writing has so much intimacy, one can notice what is really happening underneath the hood, and it is able to tell how far people can be even when they physically close
• • ""The English are so silent," Rezia said. She liked it, she said. She respected these Englishmen, and wanted to see London, and the English horses, and the tailor-made suits, and could remember hearing how wonderful the shops were, from an Aunt who had married and lived in Soho. It might be possible, Septimus thought, looking at England from the train window, as they left Newhaven; it might be possible that the world itself is without meaning."

Ending

• "She felt somehow very like him—the young man who had killed himself. She felt glad that he had done it; thrown it away. The clock was striking. The leaden circles dissolved in the air. He made her feel the beauty; made her feel the fun. But she must go back. She must assemble."
• [MYTAKE] The ending of the book is strong, because she can relate to Septimus regarding societal expectations, and the fact that he was able to be set free from them
• [MYTAKE] One of the reasons why this ending is so great, is that even though we are so separate from each other, in our own little worlds, Septimus and Clarissa were able to create a deep connection, because she understood his pain, and the only reason why she was able to connect with him was that she has great senstivity. It's ironic and interesting, that he had to die and the information of his death to spread so many for his mind to be understood, to be heartfelt
• Septimus’s death makes Clarissa’s party seem even more indulgent than it is. Elizabeth’s obsession with her dog, the men’s enjoyment of their wine, and Clarissa’s gushing welcomes to guests all seem trivial in light of Septimus’s suicide. More troubling is the fact that Clarissa’s party entertains Septimus’s oppressors, the upholders of stifling British society, including Sir William. Most of the guests seem to have failed in some way, and nearly all live in the bubble world of upper-class England. Clarissa’s stuffy Aunt Helena, the botanist who believes in suppressing emotion and any interesting topic of conversation, spent a lifetime weighing flowers down with books to make them flat. This hobby suggests her wish to squash the human soul in order to preserve the social mores of English society; it also demonstrates the danger of applying analytic, scientific study to aesthetic values. The prime minister himself is present, a comical, slightly pathetic figure who struggles to be a figurehead to a public desperate for symbols. The social system is empty and even ridiculous, but Clarissa and her guests uphold it nonetheless.
• [MYTAKE] One of the reasons why this ending is so strong, is that even though she was able to "escape" from those societal expectations, Septimus wasn't, in fact he killed himself. Because, in the end, she didn't live the life she wanted to, in fact she chose to live according to make alliances to the "system", but in the end was it worth it? After all, even if she was able to save her self, others werent', and those others killed themselves, so the root cause of the problem wasn't removed she just let the bom drop in someoneo else
• "“Richard has improved. You are right,” said Sally. “I shall go and talk to him. I shall say goodnight. What does the brain matter,” said

Lady Rosseter, getting up, “compared with the heart?” “I will come,” said Peter, but he sat on for a moment. What is this terror? what is this ecstasy? he thought to himself. What is it that fills me with extraordinary excitement? It is Clarissa, he said. For there she was."

• [MYTAKE] The book ends with us realizing that somethings never change, Richard is still not worthy of love, and Peter still loves Clarissa

Clarissa

• Clarissa reflects on her life decisions, as her character's journey feels settled, leaving her to dwell on the past.
• She shares a deep, unspoken connection with Peter, who always sees through her defenses.
• Despite not being portrayed as highly intellectual, Clarissa demonstrates emotional intelligence: "Em todo caso nao havia amargura nela; nada daquele snenso de dirtude moral qu eeh tao desgadravel nas mulheres bondosas."
• • [MYTAKE] I find this very impressive, her ability to be happy is very impressive given the constraints of her life, after all she is married to someone that she doesn't love at all, and barely sees her children
• Her marriage seems more about societal and economic status than affection, as she rarely thinks about her husband. On the other hand, due to patriarchy, the name of the book is mrs dalloway, which is crazy, like we don't even care about richard, but her title, her role in society is mrs dalloway
• Youthful experiences, like her relationships with Peter and Sally, leave lasting marks on her.
• [MYTAKE] I think we can see our lives in two aspects the professional life, and the personal life, men when get old they have no personal life anymore, but they do have professional life, whereas woman never had a professional life, and when they old they have no personal life either, therefore they only thing old women are left with is their memories of their old personal life, this thought is very glooomy and sad
• [MYTAKE] One thing that really striked me in this book is the fact that she never mentions her husband. Which shows that a huge part of her life, her marriage and her family was only to meet societal expectations,
• “Mrs Dalloway is always giving parties to cover the silence”
• • [MYTAKE] this part is really sad
• [MYTAKE] the story is literally in the eyes of the most vulnerable and unwanted being in a pathriarchal society, old women
• • "[F]eeling herself suddenly shriveled, aged, breastless, the grinding, blowing, flowering of the day, out of doors, out of the window, out of her body and brain which now failed...”
• The most exquisite moment of Clarissa’s life occurred on the terrace at Bourton when, one evening, Sally picked a flower and kissed her on the lips. For Clarissa, the kiss was a religious experience. Peter Walsh interrupted the young women on the terrace, as thoughts of him now interrupt Clarissa’s recollection of Sally.
• • [MYTAKE] Once again societal expectations
• [MYTAKE] I really relate a lot to Clarissa in this book, because like me she the beauty of the world, but she was also forced to not pursue that beauty for reality constraints
• “Clarissa had a theory in those days ... that since our apparitions, the part of us which appears, are so momentary compared with the other, the unseen part of us, which spreads wide, the unseen might survive, be recovered somehow attached to this person or that, or even haunting certain places after death ... perhaps—perhaps.”
• [MYTAKE] I love the fact that she had 3 "romantic" options: Sally, Peter and Richard. She chose the least romantic option, and most boring one, and she got exactly what she was loooking for, that is safety, but was it worth it?

Miss Kilman

• "It was the flesh that she must control. Clarissa Dalloway had

insulted her. That she expected. But she had not triumphed; she had Mrs. Dalloway | 119 not mastered the flesh. Ugly, clumsy, Clarissa Dalloway had laughed at her for being that; and had revived the fleshly desires, for she minded looking as she did beside Clarissa. Nor could she talk as she did. But why wish to resemble her? Why? She despised Mrs. Dalloway from the bottom of her heart. She was not serious. She was not good. Her life was a tissue of vanity and deceit. Yet Doris Kilman had been overcome. She had, as a matter of fact, very nearly burst into tears when Clarissa Dalloway laughed at her. “It is the flesh, it is the flesh,” she muttered (it being her habit to talk aloud) trying to subdue this turbulent and painful feeling as she walked down Victoria Street. She prayed to God. She could not help being ugly; she could not afford to buy pretty clothes. Clarissa Dalloway had laughed—but she would concentrate her mind upon something else until she had reached the pillar-box. At any rate she had got Elizabeth. But she would think of something else; she would think of Russia; until she reached the pillar-box"

• "gooseberry-coloured eyes upon Clarissa, observing her small pink

face, her delicate body, her air of freshness and fashion, Miss Kilman felt, Fool! Simpleton! You who have known neither sorrow nor pleasure; who have trifled your life away! And there rose in her an overmastering desire to overcome her; to unmask her. If she could have felled her it would have eased her. But it was not the body; it was the soul and its mockery that she wished to subdue; make feel her mastery. If only she could make her weep; could ruin her; humiliate her; bring her to her knees crying, You are right! But this was God’s will, not Miss Kilman’s. It was to be a religious victory. So she glared; so she glowered. Clarissa was really shocked. This a Christian—this woman! This woman had taken her daughter from her! She in touch with invisible presences! Heavy, ugly, commonplace, without kindness or grace, she know the meaning of life! "

• • [MYTAKE] I feel very sorry through out this book for Miss Kilman, specially because it remembers me of Doi, if patriarchy is bad for women with children, then it's much worse for women without children

Sally

• Sally is talented and creative but constrained by sexism and capitalism, living in Ealing, a poorer part of London.
• She is the only character who recognizes Hugh Whitbread's mediocrity: "um tratador de estabulos tinha mais vida em si do que Hugh, dizia Sally. Era um exemplar perfeito do aluno de internato dizia ela. Nenhum país poderia tê-lo produzido a não ser a Inglaterra."
• Her marriage to a bald cotton factory owner in London reflects the fate of romantics: "all romantics face the same fate some day cynical and drunk wondering in some dark cafe."

Peter Walsh

• Peter is haunted by the past and his failures: "Oh sim, não tinha nenhuma dúvida a respeito; era um fracasso, comparado a tudo isso."
• His sensitivity and introspection make him a compelling character. For example, his metaphorical switchblade represents his struggles.
• Peter appreciates London, unlike Rezia, showing his deep connection to British culture.
• He critiques English society's formality and hypocrisy, especially figures like Hugh Whitbread: "Peter WALSH NAO TINHA MISERICORDIA. o SVIOLES PRECISAM EXISTIR, E dEUS SABE OS CAFAJESTES QUE SAO ENFORACOS POR ESMIGALHAR OS MIOLOS DE UMA MOCA NUM TREM CAUSAM MENOS MAL ALO TODO QUE HUGH WHITBREAD E SUAS GENTILEZAS!"