Publisher's Synopsis
When it came out in 1925, Mrs Dalloway, was a new and different kind of novel. It does not have a traditional fixed plot or story line. Instead, it is a stream of consciousness novel, touching on thoughts of suicide, lesbianism and other forbidden subjects that pass through the person's mind. It has been made into a movie starring Vanessa Redgrave and into TV shows.
In Mrs Dalloway, all of the action, aside from flashbacks, takes place on a day in June 1923. It is an example of the stream of consciousness method that attempts to depict the thoughts and feelings which pass through the mind. Every scene closely tracks the momentary thoughts of a particular character.
It has no chapters. The work just goes through from beginning to end.
Virginia Woolf blurs the distinction between direct and indirect speech throughout the novel, freely alternating her mode of narration between omniscient description, indirect interior monologue and soliloquy. The narration follows at least twenty characters in this way, but the bulk of the novel is spent with Clarissa Dalloway and Septimus Smith.
The novel has two main narrative lines involving two separate characters (Clarissa Dalloway and Septimus Smith). Within each narrative there is a particular time and place in the past that the main characters keep returning to in their minds. For Clarissa, the "continuous present" of her charmed youth at Bourton keeps intruding into her thoughts on this day in London. For Septimus, the "continuous present" of his time as a soldier during the "Great War" keeps intruding, especially in the form of Evans, his fallen comrade.
There are constant thoughts of the impending deaths of each of the main characters including their suicide or possible suicide.
Mrs Dalloway was included on Time's list of the 100 best English-language novels written since 1923.
