Mrs Dalloway (published on 14 May 1925) is a novel by Virginia Woolf that details a

day in the life of Clarissa Dalloway in post-World War I England. Mrs Dalloway
continues to be one of Woolf's best-known novels.

Created from two short stories, "Mrs Dalloway in Bond Street" and the unfinished "The
Prime Minister", the novel's story is of Clarissa's preparations for a party of which she is
to be hostess. With the interior perspective of the novel, the story travels forwards and
back in time, and in and out of the characters' minds, to construct a complete image of
Clarissa's life and of the inter-war social structure.

Clarissa Dalloway goes around London in the morning, getting ready to host a party that
evening. The nice day reminds her of her youth at Bourton and makes her wonder about
her choice of husband -- she married the reliable Richard Dalloway instead of the
enigmatic Peter Walsh. Peter himself complicates her thoughts by paying a visit, having
returned from India that day.

Septimus Smith, a veteran of World War I, spends his day in the park with his wife
Lucrezia. He suffers from constant and indecipherable hallucinations. He commits
suicide by jumping out a window.

Clarissa's party in the evening is a slow success. It is attended by most of the characters
she has met in the book, including people from her past. She hears about Septimus'
suicide at the party, and gradually comes to admire the act -- which she considers an
effort to preserve the purity of his own happiness.

Style
In Mrs Dalloway all of the action, excepting flashbacks, takes place on a single day in
June. It is an example of stream of consciousness storytelling (romances de fluxo de
consciência); every scene closely tracks the momentary thoughts of a particular
character. Woolf blurs the distinction between direct and indirect speech throughout the
novel, alternating her narration with omniscient description, indirect interior
monologue, direct interior monologue, and soliloquy.[2] The narration follows at least
twenty characters in this way, but the bulk of the novel is spent with Clarissa Dalloway
and Septimus Smith.

Themes
Feminism

As a commentary on inter-war society, Clarissa's character highlights the role of women

as the proverbial "Angel in the House" and embodies both sexual and economic
repression. She keeps up with and even embraces the social expectations of the wife of
a politician, but she is still able to express herself in the parties she throws.

Sally Seton, who Clarissa admires dearly, is remembered as a great independent

woman: she smoked cigars, once ran down a corridor naked to fetch her sponge-bag,
and made bold, unladylike statements to get a reaction from people. When Clarissa
meets her in the present day, she turns out to be a perfect housewife, having married a
rich man and had five sons.

Homosexuality

Clarissa Dalloway is strongly attracted to Sally at Bourton -- 20 years later, she still
considers the kiss they shared to be the happiest moment of her life. She feels about
women "as men feel" (from "Mrs Dalloway", Penguin Popular Classics 1996, page 36
OR Harcourt, Inc. (2005), Page 35), but she does not recognize these feelings as signs
of homosexuality.

She and Sally fell a little behind. Then came the most exquisite moment of her whole
life passing a stone urn with flowers in it Sally stopped; picked a flower; kiss her on the
lips. The whole world might have turned upside down! The others disappeared; there
she was alone with Sally. And she felt that she had been given a present, wrapped up,
and told just to keep it, not to look at it - a diamond, something infinitely precious,
wrapped up, which, as they walked (up and down, up and down), she uncovered, or the
radiance burnt through, the revelation, the religious feeling! (Woolf, 36)

Septimus Smith might also be gay. He obsesses over the fallen Evans, he feels no real
love for his wife, and his sense of guilt has elements in common with homosexual
panic.

Mental illness

Septimus, as the shell-shocked war hero, operates as a pointed criticism of the treatment
of mental illness and depression. Woolf lashes out at the medical discourse through
Septimus' decline and ultimate suicide: his doctors make snap judgments about his
condition, talk to him mainly through his wife, and dismiss his urgent confessions
before he can make them.

There are similarities in Septimus' condition to Woolf's own struggles with bipolar
disorder (they both hallucinate that birds sing in Greek, and Woolf once attempted to
throw herself out of a window as Septimus finally does). Woolf eventually committed
suicide by drowning.

Existential issues

When Peter Walsh sees a girl in the street and stalks her for half an hour, he notes that
his relationship to the girl was "made up, as one makes up the better part of life." By
focusing on character's thoughts and perceptions, Woolf emphasizes the significance of
private thoughts, rather than concrete events, in a person's life. Most of the plot points in
Mrs. Dalloway are realizations that the characters make in their own heads.

Fueled by her bout of ill health, Clarissa Dalloway is emphasized as a woman who
appreciates life. Her love of party-throwing comes from a desire to bring people
together and create happy moments. Her charm, according to Peter Walsh who loves
her, is a sense of joie de vivre, always summarized by the sentence, "There she was."
She interprets Septimus Smith's death as an act of embracing life, and her mood remains
light even when she figures out her marriage is a lie.
O projeto ficcional de "Mrs. Dalloway", inicialmente intitulado "The Hours" (As
horas),conforme anotações de Virginia Woolf, levou dois anos e foi bastante
complexo e, segundo a crítica literária,é uma das mais importantes obras do
modernismo e,provavelmente, a mais tipicamente inglesa de todas. Durante os dois
anos de preparação, o projeto original do enredo foi se modificando; entretanto,
dois temas importantes se mantiveram: vida & morte. Apondo elementos
autobiográficos em sua criação, Virginia Woolf parece ter, ao escrever, tentado
substituir ou justificar a vida pela obra e a criação como vida. Além da reflexão
prévia sobre os processos de composição e de criação, as anotações de Woolf
também apontam para o fato de que a autora, sob a provável influência de Joyce
em "Ulysses", tinha intenções de tratar nessa obra o fluxo da consciência e de
resolver o problema da estrutura da obra restringindo o espaço a um só lugar,
Londres, e o tempo cronológico aos acontecimentos ocorridos em um único dia - o
dia da festa de Clarissa Dalloway, em que o badalar do Big Ben, soando as horas,
marca o passar das horas. A preocupação com os aspectos do tempo interior da
personagem feminina e da ordem temporal exterior parecem ter sido importantes
desde o início do planejamento da obra, como atesta a primeira escolha do seu
título - "As horas".

Virginia Woolf vê o homem e a sua natureza em conjunto, esses elementos são apenas
separados pela tragédia. Em seus escritos, os acontecimentos tristes advindos dos anos 19-
20, podem ser observados e completamente sentidos.
A autora está preocupada em mostrar a vida como um aspecto e função da mente,
considerando o emocional e o espiritual, o irracional, mas também os elementos racionais
na personalidade humana. Woolf procura também, quebrar a linha que separa experiência
de conhecimento humano e diferencia a personalidade humana dos indivíduos. Para atingir
esse propósito, ela utiliza a técnica denominada de “fluxo de consciência”, essa foi
introduzida na literatura por James Joyce que a utilizou em sua obra Ulysses, grande
romance do período entre guerras.
O fluxo de consciência é um método utilizado em que os pensamentos e sentimentos dos
personagens importam mais que a ação ou o diálogo. Nos romances de Woolf, conteúdo da
consciência das pessoas é fundamental e também explicitado. Woolf tenta aproximar a
realidade autêntica e objetiva mediante muitas impressões subjetivas, obtidas por diferentes
pessoas, em diferentes instantes.
Os ensaios e romances da autora proporcionam grandes compreensões não somente de sua
própria experiência de vida, como também da situação das mulheres do começo do século
XX.
O romance “Mrs. Dalloway” gira em torno da figura delicada de Clarrissa Dalloway.
Londres é refletida como um conjunto de sons, cheiros, cores e formas. A narração
transcorre em doze horas. Neste lugar e neste período de tempo, o pensamento dos
personagens flui livremente, ainda que de forma objetiva, parece que fazem e percebem
coisas parecidas. A obra procura mostrar constantemente esse mundo interior que há em
nós, que, na maioria das vezes, permanece oculto. Todos os detalhes da vida são
significativos. Os detalhes da vida real se apresentam como um caos informe.
Neste romance, há a temática centrada na condição feminina, entre a qual se destacam a
opressão sexual, a construção social da identidade feminina e a característica da mulher
escritora.