Plot and narrative design
Mrs Dalloway follows Clarissa Dalloway and Septimus Smith through a single day in London. Clarissa buys flowers and prepares to host a party; Septimus, a World War I veteran, wanders the city with his wife, Rezia, while suffering severe psychological distress. Their stories run in parallel, but they never meet. At her party, Clarissa hears that Septimus has died by suicide and feels a powerful connection to him.
Clarissa and Septimus
The characters offer contrasting responses to modern life, trauma, and mortality. Clarissa enjoys social life but fears ageing and death, and her public role can conceal her private feelings. Septimus struggles with the effects of war and with doctors who seek to control his treatment. His fate prompts Clarissa to reflect on life, death, and the self.
Time and moments of being
Big Ben represents measurable, public time, while characters’ memories create subjective time: a present sound or sight can lead the mind into the past. Woolf’s exploration of inner experience is associated with stream of consciousness. A Moment of Being is a rare flash of heightened awareness in which an ordinary experience can reveal reality or the self. In contrast, routine daily activity is described as a state of “non-being.”
- Consider how the public clock and private memory shape the novel’s experience of time.