What is Mrs Dalloway about?

Virginia Woolf published Mrs Dalloway on 14 May 1925. According to Wikipedia's article on the novel, its working title was The Hours, and it grew out of a short story about Clarissa walking to Bond Street. Today it is one of the best-known modernist novels in English, and in 2005 Time magazine included it in its list of the hundred best English-language novels published since 1923.

What it's about

The novel opens with Clarissa going out into London on a fine morning to buy flowers for her party. As she walks, the city triggers memories: her youth at Bourton in the countryside, her choice to marry the steady Richard Dalloway rather than the passionate, difficult Peter Walsh, her intense friendship with Sally Seton. Peter, newly back from India, turns up unexpectedly that morning, stirring all of it up again.

Running alongside is the day of Septimus Warren Smith, a veteran of the First World War deeply affected by what he lived through, and his Italian wife Lucrezia, homesick and lonely in London. Septimus and Clarissa never meet, but their days cross the same streets and parks, and the book sets them side by side. By evening the party gathers people from Clarissa's past and present, and the two stories touch in an unexpected way.

The walking

Much of the book is people moving through London: along streets, across parks, past shop windows. Characters pass each other without knowing it, glance at the same sights, hear the same sounds. Woolf uses these shared moments to hand the story from one mind to another, like a baton. If you know central London, it is a pleasure to follow the routes; if you don't, it is a city portrait in itself, and a good companion to any book about walking.

The structure

The novel flows as one day, from morning to night, rather than in neat episodes. The great organiser is time: Big Ben rings the hours and half-hours across the city, and the characters, wherever they are, pause and hear it. Each chime is a reminder that the day is passing, and so is life. Woolf moves backwards in memory and forwards through the day at the same time, building up a whole life story out of a single June day.

How to read it

Woolf writes largely in what is often called stream of consciousness: the narration closely follows each character's passing thoughts, and she slides between narrator and character, and from one character to another, without warning. Our page on stream of consciousness explains the technique more broadly. For this book specifically:

• Read the first few pages twice. Once you are tuned to the voice, the rest flows.
• Notice the handovers. A shared sound or sight usually marks the move from one person's head to another's.
• Keep a short list of names: Clarissa, Richard, their daughter Elizabeth, Peter, Sally, Septimus, Lucrezia. That is most of what you need.
• Don't wait for plot. The drama is inside people: regrets, attractions, fears and small joys.
• Read it in a day if you can. It's short, and reading it over one day mirrors its shape.

A note on the darker side

Septimus's story deals with war trauma and its consequences, and his part of the book is painful. Woolf treats it with seriousness and compassion. It is part of what makes the novel more than a society comedy, and readers who prefer to know in advance may want to be aware of it.