Mrs. Dalloway:

Historical Context

Main Characters

Points to Ponder

Did You Know

Plot Summary

Section 1

Section 2

Section 3

Section 4

Section 5

Section 6

Section 7

Section 8

Section 9

Section 10

Section 11

Historical Context

By 1923 (the year in which the novel is set), World War I had been over for five years. The

horror of the War still haunted the national psyche as an unresolved trauma, even as England

tried to bury its memory and move on, in order to catch up with the rest of the world, which was

speeding headlong into modernity. For some, it was an exciting, promising time. London buzzed

with airplanes, motorcars, commerce, and the barely-contained exuberance of young people

focused not on the past but on the present and future. A few industries were growing; the upper

classes were still rich, and some segments of the working class were enjoying higher wages and

better conditions than before the War. Women had more rights and freedoms; it was even

possible for a young woman (such as Elizabeth Dalloway) to imagine a career in government for

herself. There had been many exciting developments in art, music, and literature: Cubism, Jazz,

Modernism, and other movements had administered a series of shocks from which traditional

English culture was still reeling and recoiling, and new shocks were on the way (Woolf's novel

would be one). Developments in psychology, anthropology, physics, and other fields had

animated many artists, scientists, politicians, and social activists with a sense of urgency, with a

conviction that they were uniquely positioned to revitalize, transform, and revolutionize society

and the world.

At the same time, trouble lurked on the horizon. There had been full employment in England

during the War, but afterwards, as the war machine was dismantled, as immigration increased,

and as thousands of veterans returned from foreign parts broken in body and mind,

unemployment began to rise. Though few knew it, the country was heading toward the deep

depression, massive unemployment, food shortages, epidemics, and profound social unrest that

for the next 15 years would make life miserable for the lower classes and that would contribute,

eventually, to the causal chain that led England into World War II. Other troubles were on the

horizon as well. By the end of 1923, Mussolini had already turned Italy into a Fascist state, Hitler

had emerged on the political scene in Germany, and the British Empire was beginning to

disintegrate, as its various colonies intensified their struggles to throw off British rule. Civil War

in Ireland had already led to the establishment of the Irish Free State, for example, and Ghandi

had begun his campaign for independence in India. Woolf's novel makes few direct references to

these events, but signs of trouble occasionally�and pointedly�break through the bubble of

security surrounding Clarissa and her set: a group of young boys in uniform march lockstep

through the park; a vagrant woman's song stirs Peter to pity, another female vagrant discomfits

Richard, Doris Kilman's poverty rebukes Clarissa, a shell-shocked veteran (Septimus) haunts the

city, and his suicide interrupts Clarissa's party. We get intimations, too, that Peter, as a member

of the British ruling class in India, has played some role in his government's repression of the

independence movement there. In some ways, Woolf's novel is about, or at least recreates, the

unstable mixture of breathless optimism and paralytic fear that characterized her time.

Main Characters

Mrs. Clarissa Dalloway

Aged 52. Very thin, straight, neat, upright. Also, since her near-fatal illness, very white. Not

particularly beautiful or clever, but her vivacity makes her a "presence" nonetheless. In a

crowded room, she is the one whom people notice and remember. Upper-middle-class. Lives

well in Westminster with her husband (a conservative in the House of Commons) and their

teenage daughter Elizabeth. Has a wide circle of aristocratic friends. Enjoys her rank in English

society, its duties and pleasures. Has spent much of her married life doing "little kindnesses" for

others and arranging a comfortable domestic environment. Likes to give parties, is a perfect

hostess. Thinks of her parties as works of art, as her "offerings" at the altar of life. Is passionate

about life, friendship, beauty, but also has moments of deep depression, self-loathing, jealousy,

and rage. Is a cynic: believes that the gods, if they exist, take pleasure in tormenting humanity.

Knows her limitations, too: realizes that she is pampered and sheltered and contributes very little

to the world. Has trouble with love and sex. Loved Peter Walsh, but felt hampered and

smothered by his critical intelligence; loved Sally Seton, has felt attracted to other women too,

but has never acted on this; loves the easy companionship and civic virtues of her husband

Richard, but cannot make love to him.

Clarissa is the central character in the book. All of the other characters are connected to her in

some way (including Septimus, who never meets her: more on that later). Even when they are

away from her, they still feel connected to her, and she to them, by "invisible strings." They

often find themselves trying to explain her, or else trying to explain themselves by comparing

themselves to her. Not everyone likes her, but in one way or another, all must come to terms with

her. Though many criticize her for being frivolous, they nonetheless come to her party. And

because they come, because Clarissa causes all of the separate lives to gather in one place where

they can mix, bump, and recombine, "life" gets created anew. Clarissa is the creative energy that

makes things happen, the "life force" animating their small corner of the world. And she believes

that because she has made herself so much a part of other people, she will continue to live

through them after she dies.

Peter Walsh

Aged 53. Tall, intelligent-looking, charming. Refined enough to impress strangers as a well-bred

gentleman, but not over-refined, not affected, not a snob. Loves books and solitude, but loves

society equally well�loves people, gossip, politics, sports, cigars, and especially "the society

of women." Has both an analytical mind and a passionate heart. Clarissa was his first and only

true love; when she refused to marry him, he fled to India (then part of the British Empire),

married a woman on the boat, and started a new life. Living in India, he has done dangerous,

exciting work but has also gotten divorced, had many love-affairs, and failed at several jobs. He

blames his failures on two things: 1) what he calls his "susceptibility" to impressions and strong

feelings, which causes him never to quite fit into society and 2) his long-ago rejection by

Clarissa, which he calls the most important event of his life. He has returned to London on and

off since he fled; the last time he returned was five years ago. This time, when he meets Clarissa,

he notices that she and he have both aged and death-thoughts haunt his mind throughout the rest

of the day.

Peter has always admired, even been astonished by, Clarissa's vivacity and her social grace. He

has also always criticized her "frivolity," her worldliness, and her snobbery. He has always

detected, too, a cold streak in her, something hard and unyielding. He realizes that, had they

married, they probably would have destroyed each other. Even in this late stage of his life,

contact with her is excruciatingly painful for him, a mixture of frustration, terror, and ecstasy;

but he relishes their meetings after the fact, becomes absorbed in remembering and analyzing

what they said and felt and why, and is still surprised by the way revelations about her continue

to "unfold" and fill his inner life, long after they have met.

Septimus Smith

Age: mid-twenties. Tall, thin, big-nosed, bright-eyed, a bit hunched. Intense. Was an ambitious

but mediocre young poet before the War. Fought bravely during the War, but began to have

problems afterwards, when he discovered that he could not feel. He began having nightmares,

visions, out-of-body experiences. Two doctors examined him; the second, Sir William

Bradshaw, decided to institutionalize him. When Septimus's wife, Lucrezia, vowed to protect

him from the doctors, he finally began to heal. But when he realized that the doctors and "their

kind" could not be stopped, he committed suicide.

From a clinical perspective and that of ordinary people, Septimus is delusional, shell-shocked,

self-absorbed, utterly insane. He talks to dead people and trees. From another perspective, more

sympathetic but no less ordinary, he is one of the sad "casualties" of a necessary war, a once-

promising young man ruined by his unfortunate, prolonged contact with death and destruction.

From yet another perspective, however �that of many artists, thinkers, and veterans during the

1920s and 30s� Septimus is not insane in the least. He is, rather, the sanest person in England,

and his response to the War is entirely appropriate. As had many young men, Septimus had

fought from a poetic and patriotic sense of duty, but the England and cause for which he thought

he was fighting turned out not to exist. Instead, the War became an arbitrary and pointless death

machine, a pure expression of the evil in human nature. The slaughter and destruction, they

would say, were utterly futile and massive in scale; the political and economic motives for

fighting were specious, even criminal. The War was the remorseless cruelty and "rationality" of

Sir William writ large. Seen from this perspective, Septimus's condition is not "madness" but an

expression of the unspeakable terror and agony of these truths, which cannot be communicated

in ordinary language. Without knowing any of the details of his case, Clarissa takes,

instinctively, this latter perspective (at least in part), when she intuits that Septimus's suicide was

an attempt to protect his soul, to communicate something, and to defy men like Sir William, who

struck her, too, as "obscurely evil."

Points to Ponder

The form of Mrs. Dalloway is, of course, something to ponder. It was deemed "experimental" in

its day, and Woolf believed that with it she had made a major contribution to the modern

reinvention of the novel. Woolf wanted the novel's form to reflect and also recreate what she

considered to be a uniquely modern experience of the world. How does it do this, and what is

that experience like? (You might begin thinking along these lines: Though the "stream of

consciousness" passages and the lack of traditional chapter divisions can give the novel a

formless feel, it does have formal unity. For example, Woolf observes, to some extent, the

classical unities of time and place, and she establishes patterns of images, phrases, and events

that connect the different parts of the narrative to each other and also emphasize connections

among the characters.)

Think about how Woolf develops her characters in Mrs. Dalloway. Here is one place to start:

Woolf once described her technique as a "tunnelling process": "I dig out beautiful caves behind

my characters," she wrote. "[And] I tell the past in installments, as I have need of it." In other

words, Woolf's characters reveal their depths gradually and piecemeal; fragments of thought and

memory emerge as they respond to and interact with their surroundings and other characters, and

from these fragments we piece together each character's past and a tentative idea of his or her

"whole being."

Clarissa's insight that Septimus "was somehow like her" both is and is not startling. Though they

never meet, and though they move in entirely different social spheres and have had radically

different life experiences, Clarissa is the only person who "hears" the message Septimus sends

via his suicide. Why is this? How are the two characters related? Some readers find a spiritual

likeness between them. Some emphasize instead their functional roles in the novel, arguing, for

instance, that Septimus symbolizes and embodies England's war trauma while Clarissa represents

the very ideal of "Englishness" that the War put into question.

Did You Know

The Hogarth Press, a respected publisher that still operates today, was begun in 1917 by Virginia

and her husband Leonard Woolf after they bought a printing press and installed it in Hogarth

House, where they lived. The Woolfs published everything Virginia wrote after 1917, including

Mrs. Dalloway, as well as many important modern works by their contemporaries.

Though she was a leading literary modernist, Virginia Woolf hated James Joyce's Ulysses, which

many critics consider to be The Great Modernist Text. Woolf found Joyce's novel irritating and

crude.

By the age of 32, Virginia Woolf had suffered through and survived three mental breakdowns. In

March of 1941, at the age of 59, she felt a fourth breakdown coming on. She committed suicide

by drowning herself in the River Ouse.

Plot Summary

The events of this novel take place in the course of one day.

On a bright June morning in London, 1923, Mrs. Clarissa Dalloway, who was preparing to give a

party that evening, went to buy flowers. As she walked through the city, she felt, thought, and

remembered many things. She recalled a remarkable summer she had spent at her family's

country home in Bourton, when she was 18. She had almost married a young man named Peter

Walsh. She had loved him, but marrying him would have been a mistake. The trouble was

summed up in his attitude toward her parties. He had always criticized her for giving them, but

she took them seriously: They were her "offering" to life.

A limousine backfired and stopped across the street from the flower shop. Passersby briefly

glimpsed an important-looking face in the window. Everyone wondered who it was, if perhaps it

was the Queen. In the crowd was a War veteran named Septimus and his Italian wife, Lucrezia.

Septimus had been acting strange lately and had threatened suicide. The limousine approached

the gates of Buckingham Palace, where an anxious crowd had formed, but just as it arrived a

skywriting airplane buzzed overhead, and everyone looked up. They tried to read the writing, but

the wind kept breaking it up. In the park, Septimus also saw the skywriting, but he thought it was

a message to him from the dead.

When Clarissa returned home from the shop, she reflected on her marriage. She had always

failed Richard in bed. She seemed to lack passion. Yet, she had felt ardor, on occasion, for

women-had even been in love once, with her wild friend Sally Seton, who had stayed that

summer at Bourton.

Clarissa began mending a tear in her party dress. Suddenly, Peter Walsh burst in. He had been in

India; they had not seen each other for many years. Their reunion was bittersweet. Each felt

chaotic emotions; each grieved, privately, that Clarissa had rejected Peter thirty years before.

Then Peter announced that he was in love with a married woman in India (Daisy). When Peter

left, Clarissa called after him to remember her party.

Peter walked the streets, reflecting and reminiscing as Clarissa had done that morning. He felt

alternately empty (to be without Clarissa, forever) and free (to be, for the moment, alone and

unknown in London). He spied an attractive young woman and followed her until she

disappeared. He walked on, noticing how the War, though horrible, had modernized England. He

sat on a bench in a park, then drifted off to sleep.

An elderly nurse was also sitting on the bench, knitting. She seemed like some kind of guardian

spirit, whom a solitary traveler might see hovering in the sky.

Peter woke up confused and distraught. He had dreamed about an incident at Bourton when he

and Clarissa had fought. Afterwards, he had found Clarissa talking to Richard Dalloway.

Wracked with jealousy, Peter had hurt her by calling her "a perfect hostess." Later, he had tried

to win her back. When he finally proposed, Clarissa rejected him. He had fled to India; Clarissa

had married Richard.

Lucrezia and Septimus were also in the park. Septimus, having visions, talked to himself, to the

trees, and to his dead comrade Evans, who had been killed in battle. Septimus had fought bravely

and well in the War, but when peace came he discovered that "he could not feel." He had then

descended into what ordinary people would call madness. But to him it was enlightenment, a

state of heightened knowledge about the true meaning of the world, which he found at once

exquisitely beautiful and intolerably evil.

A physician named Dr. Holmes had examined Septimus and concluded that nothing was wrong

with him. Today, Lucrezia was taking Septimus to a new doctor, Sir William Bradshaw, who had

a fine reputation. Sir William diagnosed Septimus as shell-shocked and insane, and insisted he be

committed to an institution. Sir William seemed cruel to both Lucrezia and Septimus, and they

left hating and fearing him.

It was now 1:30. Richard Dalloway was lunching with Lady Bruton, who mentioned that Peter

Walsh was in town. Suddenly, Richard decided that he must tell Clarissa that he loved her. He

went to her, bringing flowers, but he could not say the words. She understood anyway. After he

left, Clarissa had an altercation with Miss Kilman, her daughter Elizabeth's history tutor. Clarissa

hated Miss Kilman, whom she thought cruel and conniving, and Miss Kilman hated Clarissa, for

being beautiful and rich. Miss Kilman and Elizabeth went out. Miss Kilman pitied herself for

being poor and ugly. Elizabeth appreciated her tutor's knowledge and religious devotion, but

disliked her habit of self-pity. After they parted, Elizabeth struck out alone to explore the city. As

she walked, she imagined different futures and careers for herself.

Meanwhile, Septimus was beginning to get better. Gradually, he began to recognize the ordinary

reality of objects in his home. He also felt awed by his wife's goodheartedness and her brave

renunciation of the doctors. Lucrezia rejoiced as Septimus slowly became himself again. Then

they heard Dr. Holmes coming. Lucrezia ran out to stop him, but he pushed her aside. Septimus

waited until the last moment, then hurled himself out of the window.

Clarissa's party was beginning. Important guests arrived in droves, but Clarissa felt the party was

failing. Sir William was there, and when Clarissa learned that one of his patients had committed

suicide, she felt depressed. Then she intuited 1)that the young man had killed himself to protect

his soul and to communicate something; 2)that Sir William, who seemed evil to her, must have

driven him to it; and 3)that the young man was somehow like her.

Meanwhile, Peter and Sally Seton (now Lady Rosseter) sat together, reminiscing and speaking

intimately about Clarissa and the past. Peter admitted that Clarissa had been his one true love.

When Clarissa reappeared, Peter looked up at her with a mixture of terror and ecstasy.

Section 1

Section 1: Clarissa's walk

It was a bright June morning in London, 1923. Mrs. Clarissa Dalloway was going to give a party

that evening, and she told her servant Lucy that she would buy the flowers herself. As Clarissa

walked to the flower shop, the sights and sounds of the bustling city answered her mood, which

was at once cheerful and anxious. She remembered feeling the same way on a similar morning

long ago, before the War, when she was a young girl summering at her family's country house in

Bourton. (It would have been in the 1890s.) Her friend Peter Walsh had been there. Peter was in

India now; Clarissa had not seen him for many years.

Clarissa felt, thought, and remembered many things in response to what she saw and heard as she

walked. When Big Ben struck the ten o'clock hour, she thought of life's inevitable march toward

death. Yet the thought of death did not make Clarissa unhappy; rather, it made her love life more.

She thrilled at the thought of how, despite everything, we still go on, "making it up" as we go.

An airplane buzzing overhead reminded her of the War, but the War was over now, the dead had

been buried, life was creating itself anew, and she loved it all "with an absurd and faithful

passion."

At the height of this reverie, Clarissa met, by chance, her old friend Hugh Whitbread, whom she

adored. Hugh was a court official and a well-bred English gentleman. Clarissa considered how

Peter Walsh and her husband Richard both detested Hugh because he was shallow and stupid.

But Clarissa enjoyed him for what he was; his manners made him pleasant to walk with; she did

not ask for anything more.

When she and Hugh parted, she reminded him to come to her party. Alone again, she thought

more about Peter and felt increasingly bitter. She had cared passionately for him. But he had

been incapable of enjoying life as she did: "It was the state of the world that interested him"

instead. He thought Clarissa was frivolous. He had hurt her deeply once when he had said that

"she had the makings of the perfect hostess." It hurt her again to remember it.

That painful memory triggered others, and Clarissa became more distraught as she walked. Peter

had proposed marriage to her that summer at Bourton, and she had refused him. He would have

smothered her, would not have allowed her to be herself, to enjoy life. She knew she had been

right to refuse him. Nevertheless, in her heart she had never stopped grieving over the decision.

After she had rejected him, Peter had run off to India�even married a woman on the boat. In

Clarissa's opinion, his life since then had been a failure. This made her terribly angry. Perhaps,

deep down, she blamed herself.

Clarissa stopped to compose herself. She became calm, which allowed her a moment of

philosophical clarity: "She would not say of anyone in the world now that they were this or were

that." She refused to destroy the wholeness and beauty of life by analytically carving it up, as

Peter did. Life had to be accepted as it was, and enjoyed from moment to moment. This

conviction gave her strength, but its implications also frightened her. Living so intensely was

dangerous. She continued walking, then stopped when she noticed a page of Shakespeare's

Cymbeline spread open in a bookshop window. She read: "Fear no more the heat o' the sun / Nor

the furious winter's rages." The lines seemed to be speaking to Clarissa in her fear and pain, and

also to her war-wounded country in its fear and pain. The lines seemed to be sending a message,

urging her and her country to be calm and stoical, to endure.

Clarissa resumed her walk, and her mind turned to a new theme: her teenage daughter, Elizabeth.

Elizabeth worried Clarissa. She was so serious, and seemed to dislike everything that Clarissa

found beautiful or fun. Clarissa partly blamed Elizabeth's friend Miss Kilman, a lower-class

woman who was a religious fanatic and a also socialist who resented and hated the rich. Miss

Kilman had a powerful effect on Clarissa. Clarissa hated her inordinately, and her hatred felt

monstrous to her, evil. It gave her nightmares and physical pain; it made her whole existence

seem a fraud.

Clarissa found that she had upset herself again. Having finally reached the flower shop, she

rushed in. The sight and smell of flowers and the smile of the florist, Miss Pym, calmed her at

once. Miss Pym was poor, but unlike Miss Kilman, she was kind; she seemed to admire Clarissa,

did not reproach her for being rich. Surrounded by what she thought were beauty and love,

Clarissa felt herself rising above the hatred Miss Kilman aroused in her. Then suddenly, she

heard a pistol shot. Miss Pym went to the window and found that it was not a gun, only a car, a

limousine actually, backfiring. Significantly, Miss Pym's reaction was to apologize to Clarissa

for the noise, as if it had been her own fault.

Section 2

Section 2: The limousine, the airplane, Septimus

The limousine that had made the loud noise stopped across the street from the flower shop.

Passersby glimpsed a face "of the very greatest importance" at the window; then a hand inside

the car closed the blind. Everything came to a standstill. People drew together, wondering who

was in the car: The Prince of Wales? the Queen? the Prime Minister?

Among those who looked and wondered were Septimus Smith, a World War I veteran who was

going mad, and his Italian wife, Lucrezia. Recently, Septimus had threatened suicide; now he

was talking to himself, and Lucrezia, worrying that people would notice, led him away from the

crowd, to a park. She thought about how happy they had been once, and how unhappy they were

now.

The limousine inched down the street. Thinking it was the Queen, Mrs. Dalloway suddenly

looked dignified. She imagined a glittering party at the palace, then her own party. She stiffened,

feeling how she, the hostess, would stand at the top of her stairs.

The limousine left a ripple of profound excitement and solemnity behind it as it passed.

Everywhere, strangers looked at each other and thought of the war dead, of the flag, and of the

British Empire. Everyone stood straighter, as if they were ready to die for their country. A crowd

gathered at the palace gates and waited anxiously for the car to pass through. Just as it

approached, however, an airplane buzzed overhead. It began writing smoke letters in the sky, but

each letter faded on the wind before anyone could read it. Big Ben struck the eleventh hour.

While everyone was looking up at the plane, the limousine passed through the gates unnoticed.

Lucrezia and Septimus also saw the plane, from their bench in the park. Septimus's physician,

Dr. Holmes, had said that there was nothing wrong with Septimus and that he should try to take

an interest in things outside himself. Lucrezia tried to get Septimus interested in the plane. He

looked, but he saw it differently. He thought, "They are signaling to me." Moved by the

"exquisite beauty" of this, he began to cry. A nursemaid sitting next to them said that the plane

was spelling "toffee," as an advertisement. The sound of her rough voice electrified Septimus's

body. He sensed the trees speaking messages to him; he felt that everything was alive and

connected to him by invisible fibers.

Sensing his dip into madness, Lucrezia leapt up and walked to the fountain. Her emotions were

chaotic. She loved Septimus. She thought of how brave he was, how he had fought in the War,

but then also of how selfish he was, to act so strangely, to talk of suicide. She missed her home

in Italy, where she and her sisters had made hats. In England she felt utterly alone. Then she

thought, "I am his wife," and the words made her feel momentarily secure. Then she turned and

saw Septimus talking to himself.

He was saying, "Men must not cut down trees. There is a God. Change the world." He heard a

sparrow calling his name, then other sparrows joining in and singing in Greek about how there is

no crime, no death. He saw ghostly shapes behind the park railings. One was Evans, his comrade

killed in the war. Lucrezia returned, led him under a tree, tried to get him to look at things.

Septimus heard her voice but did not connect it with her. He thought he had died and was

suffering eternally. A young woman stopped and asked them directions to the tube station.

Lucrezia panicked and waved her away.

The young woman, Maisie Johnson, had just arrived in London. The look on Septimus's face had

horrified her. Everything in London seemed queer. She wished she had stayed home. An old

woman, Mrs. Dempster, noticed Maisie and pitied her, thinking of all the trouble life brings.

Then the sight of the airplane kindled Mrs. Dempster's hopeless desire to travel. Everyone

continued to watch the airplane. Although each person perceived it differently, they were all

united in the common experience of watching it and trying to interpret its meaning. It climbed

higher, writing T, O, F.

Section 3

Section 3: Clarissa at home

Clarissa returned home from the flower shop. She felt relieved to be back inside her domestic

world, comforted by its familiar sights and sounds and by the ministrations of her busy servants.

Her sense of well-being was disrupted, however, when she read a phone message from Lady

Millicent Bruton, inviting her husband Richard to lunch. Clarissa was shocked that she had not

been invited. In a state of panic, she repeated the line "Fear no more the heat o' the sun." She felt

not jealousy but fear, seeing in this small incident an omen that, as she got older, her share of

life's pleasure would gradually diminish. She went upstairs slowly and undressed in her room.

She looked at her bed. Not long ago, she had been very ill, had almost died; afterwards, Richard

had insisted that she sleep alone, undisturbed. She still slept alone. Continuing her thought that

life was beginning to pass her by, she foresaw her bed getting "narrower and narrower," as if her

future promised only more celibacy, then death (a narrow grave). She thought of her sexual

relationship with Richard. Early in their marriage, she had "failed him" in bed again and again.

Now she slept alone. She lacked something, she told herself, some essential responsiveness that

made for warmth between two people. But this was only partially true: She had felt aroused, on

occasion, by women. The few times it had happened, she had felt it strongly and secretly, like "a

sudden revelation...a match burning in a crocus; an inner meaning almost expressed." But she

had never acted on it.

In this context, she remembered her friend Sally Seton, and wondered, "Had not that, after all,

been love?" Clarissa had met Sally at a party and had been attracted to her instantly. To the

sheltered and conventional Clarissa, Sally had seemed beautiful and exciting. Sally had stayed at

Bourton that summer long ago. She had been reckless, funny, unconventional, charming. In her

presence, Clarissa often had felt "what a man feels," what Shakespeare's Othello had felt: "if it

were now to die 'twere now to be most happy." One night, Sally and Clarissa went for walk, and

at the end of it had come "the most exquisite moment of her whole life": Sally had kissed her on

the lips. Clarissa had felt "that she had been given a present, wrapped up...something infinitely

precious." She was in love. But then Peter had intruded upon them. "It was like running one's

face against a granite wall in the darkness! It was shocking! It was horrible!" She believed that

Peter had sensed the girls' love and was determined to break them up.

Her thoughts turned to Peter again. She wished she could think of him without bitterness. "What

would he think, she wondered, when he came back?...That she had grown older? It was true.

Since her illness she had turned almost white." She felt a spasm, as if death were near. But she

was only 52, not old yet. She looked in the mirror and collected herself, focusing on an idea of

herself as "pointed ... definite," as someone who, in public, was always centered and composed,

providing a calm refuge for others. This self was different from her private self, which she never

showed to anyone.

She took out her party dress. The last time she had worn it, it had torn, and she planned to mend

it now. As she headed downstairs, she felt in control again, mistress of her house. In the drawing-

room downstairs, she talked with her maid Lucy in a manner that was both masterly and friendly,

and Lucy's responsiveness made Clarissa both proud of herself and grateful to her servants "for

helping her to be...what she wanted, gentle, generous-hearted." As she sat on the sofa and began

mending her dress, a great calm spread over her. Her body and mind succumbed to the needle's

rhythm, which was like the rhythm of ocean waves when they "collect, overbalance, and fall;

collect and fall; and the whole world seems to be saying 'that is all'." For a moment, she knew

that she was just a drop in the ocean: the rhythm of her small, individual life followed and was

part of the great rhythm of collective life. She became quiet and solemn, but not sad.

Her experience of transcendence ended abruptly when Peter Walsh entered the room. Clarissa

was momentarily paralyzed, "so surprised was she to see him, so glad, so shy, so utterly taken

aback." Peter trembled with excitement, kissed her hands, thought she looked old, but did not say

so. He felt nervous when she looked at him in return, but Clarissa, more generous than he,

thought he looked well, unchanged. They exchanged greetings, but within seconds both began to

feel agitated and defensive. Although they had not seen each other for years, they knew each

other so instinctively that they could guess each others' silent criticisms. Clarissa sensed Peter

reproaching her for being frivolous, and Peter sensed Clarissa looking upon him as a failure.

Somewhat comically, they channeled the energy of their unspoken duel into the sharp objects

they were holding: Peter fiddled with his pocket-knife, and Clarissa flashed her needle and

scissors as she sewed. Their conversation progressed haltingly, while beneath it each suffered a

whirlwind of chaotic emotions: love and anger, desire and resentment, gaiety and grief, nostalgia

and bitterness. At one point, Clarissa wept, under the pressure of these strong and varied

emotions. Then Peter made an announcement: He was in love with a woman in India (Daisy), the

wife of a Major in the Indian army, and he had come to London to see lawyers about her divorce.

Clarissa felt both jealous and glad for him: She thought, "He was in love! Not with her. With

some younger woman, of course. ... Still, he was in love; her old friend, her dear Peter, he was in

love." Then, rocked by conflicting emotions, Peter too burst into tears, as Clarissa had before,

and she comforted him compassionately. After that she felt at ease, light-hearted, and the thought

suddenly struck her: "If I had married him, this gaiety would have been mine all day!" Then her

heart sank again: She had not married him, and now "It was all over for her. The sheet was

stretched and the bed narrow." Peter moved to the window and Clarissa followed resignedly, as

if life were over. Peter asked her if she was happy, but before she could answer, her daughter

came in. Clarissa announced, a bit too dramatically, "Here's my Elizabeth!" Then Big Ben struck

11:30, and Peter left without looking back. Clarissa called after him, "Remember my party to-

night!" But her own voice sounded inconsequential to her, frail and thin.

Section 4

Section 4: Peter's walk

As he walked away from Clarissa's house, Peter repeated "Remember my party, remember my

party," in time to the chiming of Big Ben. He thought disparagingly of Clarissa's parties. Seeing

his reflection in a window, he stopped to assess himself. He was proud to be in love with Daisy,

and proud of his exciting life in India, which Clarissa knew nothing about. The affected way she

had said "Here's my Elizabeth!" had annoyed him; he had sensed Elizabeth's annoyance, too. He

felt there was something cold, and disappointingly conventional, about Clarissa now. He felt

ashamed at how he had wept and told her everything. Then, when a cloud turned London

momentarily gray and silent, Peter felt suddenly hollow, "utterly empty within," and thought,

"Clarissa refused me ... Clarissa refused me."

As the pain of that life-changing rejection returned, Big Ben finished booming and another

London clock, St. Margaret's, began to chime. (St. Margaret's is set to chime a few seconds late,

so as not to compete with Big Ben.) In this book, Big Ben's deep, solemn, punctual chime is

often associated with death. When its "leaden circles" dissolve in the air, the characters feel it

dissolving, forever, the hour they have just lived. St. Margaret's chime, on the other hand, is

associated with life. It sounds not leaden but musical�like (as Peter thinks here) the voice of a

perfect hostess saying "Ah," as she comes into a roomful of waiting guests. Whereas Big Ben

presides solemnly over the past and future, St. Margaret's revels in the living present. Still

looking at his reflection, Peter heard St. Margaret's chime and thought it sounded "like

something alive ... like Clarissa herself." He thought of her with "deep emotion," and almost

remembered, but not quite, something that happened long ago, a moment of "great intimacy"

between them. Then St. Margaret's last chime rang-and he suddenly imagined that Clarissa was

dying. Stricken with panic, he cried to himself that she was not dead, and that he was not old.

After he calmed down, he resumed his walk. He contemplated how the Dalloways and Hugh

Whitbred thought him a failure, and he defended himself, in his mind, against them. He had been

an idealistic young man, full of energy, and had gone off to India to do great things. "The future

of civilization lies, he thought, in the hands of young men like that." As if on cue, there appeared

a group of boys in uniform, carrying guns and marching in step. Peter began to keep step with

them, and he thought approvingly of the good training they were getting. (But training for what?

He did not finish his thought.) Then he noticed how young and "weedy" they looked.

Significantly, they were marching to place a wreath on a memorial tomb that honored the (once

young and weedy) dead soldiers of the War. Traffic had stopped for them. When they marched

away, Peter could not keep up. The uniformity of their movements also troubled him; it seemed

that discipline had drugged them into a kind of living death. Still, one had to respect it, he

thought. All the great soldiers had renounced life in favor of that "marble stare." But he did not

want that stare for himself.

Stopping in Trafalgar Square, he realized that only Clarissa knew he was in London, and he

suddenly felt strange, alien, alone. After some brief existential confusion ("What is it? Where am

I? And why, after all, does one do it?"), he experienced an epiphany: "Down his mind went flat

as a marsh, and three great emotions bowled over him: understanding; a vast philanthropy;

and...an irrepressible, exquisite delight. ... He had not felt so young for years." He felt exuberant,

as if he had "escaped"� had escaped, that is, the deadly discipline of war, as well as, he

realized just now, the deadening discipline of polite society. Being unknown here, at least for the

moment, he was free to be anyone he wanted to be. In this new frame of mind, he eyed a young

woman walking in his direction. He felt drawn to her and began to follow her. He watched her

move. He thought she was dignified, but not like Clarissa, not worldly or rich. Perhaps she was

witty. He wondered if she were respectable. He kept following her, feeling increasingly like "a

buccaneer." He watched her turn down a side-street; as if in a dream, he thought he saw her

laughing. But before he could reach her she had opened her door and disappeared, taking no

notice of him. "Well, I've had my fun," thought Peter. He knew he had invented much of it,

anyway. Echoing, unwittingly, what Clarissa had thought during her own walk that morning, he

thought about how people live each day anew, "making it up" as they go.

He walked on. He was killing time before meeting with the lawyers about Daisy's divorce.

Seeing a well-dressed woman getting into a cab, he began to contemplate the virtues of English

civilization. It was rare for him to feel sentimental about England; he more often criticized it. But

at this moment, the busy, robust men and women he saw "seemed to him wholly admirable, good

fellows, to whom one would entrust one's life, companions in the art of living, who would see

one through."

He stopped in Regent's Park. His thoughts continued to wander- from Clarissa, to his childhood,

to that long-ago summer at Bourton. Feeling drowsy, he sat on a bench to smoke a cigar.

Clarissa's daughter, Elizabeth, returned to his mind. He thought that she was queer-looking, and

that she and Clarissa probably did not get along. Again, he felt annoyed at Clarissa's "Here's my

Elizabeth." It seemed a sign of trouble. He suspected that Clarissa tried to make Elizabeth

something she was not. He planned to speak with Elizabeth alone at the party that night.

He smoked luxuriously, then slowly drifted off to sleep on the bench.

Section 5

Section 5: "The solitary traveller"

[Note: This strange interlude, in which a solitary traveller has an ecstatic vision and then returns

to ordinary life, occurs while Peter is asleep. It could be a dream that Peter is having. Or it could

be a composite dream, a dream that, in one way or another, all of the characters have. Or it could

be something else�an allegory perhaps, or an inspired description by a semi-omniscient

observer (the narrator) of the spiritual uncertainty shared by some or all of the characters, and by

their country during this period. There are many more possibilities.]

Sitting beside Peter on the bench was an elderly nurse with a baby asleep in its pram. As Peter

snored, the nurse knitted swiftly and quietly. She seemed like some kind of guardian angel, like

one of those "spectral presences" that "the solitary traveller," nearing the end of his journey

through the woods, might see hovering in the night sky.

The solitary traveller might be an atheist. But seeing the specter rise before him, he feels for a

moment exalted, thinking that, since he can conceive of her, she must in some way exist. As he

walks toward her, she grows larger and more majestic. The vision overpowers him. He feels a

sense of peace, as if she might "shower down from her magnificent hands compassion,

comprehension, absolution." Expectantly, the solitary traveller advances toward her, wishing to

"blow to nothingness" and never return to earthly life.

When he reaches the edge of the woods, he finds an elderly woman standing in a doorway. She is

searching, it seems, for a lost son. She is, perhaps, a mother "whose sons have been killed in the

battles of the world." The solitary traveller continues down the village street, where men and

women seem to be waiting, without fear, for something to sweep through and annihilate them.

Indoors, among ordinary things, the solitary traveller watches his landlady clear the table. In his

sight, she becomes "an adorable emblem which only the recollection of cold human contacts

forbids us to embrace." She asks him if he needs anything more tonight. He longs to reply, but he

does not know how, or to whom.

Section 6

Section 6: Peter's memory

The elderly nurse continued to knit. Peter Walsh snored. Suddenly, he woke up, saying out loud,

"The death of the soul." The phrase arose from something he had been dreaming about, a real

incident from his past, from that summer at Bourton, when he had been so in love with Clarissa.

What had happened at Bourton was this: A group of people were sitting around a table, gossiping

about an upper-class neighbor who had married his housemaid. The couple had visited Clarissa

earlier in the summer, and the housemaid, having just married into a higher class, had been over-

dressed and unsure of how to behave. Snobbishly, Clarissa was now imitating the housemaid for

the laughing guests. Then bold Sally Seton asked whether anyone cared that before the marriage,

the housemaid had had a baby. Clarissa, shocked and offended, turned pink and said, "Oh, I shall

never be able to speak to her again!" The party went uncomfortably silent. "Every one wobbled."

Clarissa rose to leave. But then her big, shaggy sheepdog ran in, and Clarissa pointedly,

dramatically hugged and kissed it, as if to show Peter that she was not as cold and unsympathetic

as her reaction had made her seem. But the damage was already done: In his mind, he had

marked the moment as "The death of her soul."

What had bothered him at the time was not her conventional morals (she had been sheltered,

after all) but rather her arrogance and hardness, her lack of imagination. It had depressed him. He

had been gloomy the rest of that day at Bourton, wanting to "have it out" with her but unable to

see her alone. Then, coming down late for dinner, he had found Clarissa sitting beside a young

man who had just arrived that afternoon. Noticing "something maternal; something gentle" in her

manner as she talked with the fair, slightly awkward newcomer, Peter had been struck by a

sudden, "blinding" revelation: "She will marry that man."

The man was Richard Dalloway.

Then, this had happened: After dinner, Clarissa tried to introduce Richard to him. Her manners,

her social instinct, were perfect. This enraged Peter. He called her "The perfect hostess." It hurt

her terribly, but he had meant to hurt her. She left him standing alone, while he suffered

miserably, thinking everyone was against him. Then the whole party left (Sally had suggested

they all go boating by moonlight), and he was alone. But Clarissa came back for him, which

made up for everything, and he was happy again. As he walked to the boathouse with her, "he

had twenty minutes of perfect happiness." But as the rest of the evening passed, Peter watched

Richard and Clarissa falling in love. When it was over, he said again, "She will marry that man."

The rest of the summer had been an endless string of "letters, scenes, telegrams." Sally Seton had

taken up his cause, but it was doomed. Then had come the "final scene, the terrible scene which

he believed had mattered more than anything in the whole of his life." He had asked Clarissa to

meet him in the garden. He felt desperate, terrified. "Tell me the truth, tell me the truth," he had

said, again and again. "She seemed contracted, petrified." She was unyielding, "like iron, like

flint, rigid up the backbone." He had wept; it seemed to go on for hours, until finally Clarissa had

said, "It's no use. It's no use." They had parted. That was the end. Until today, he had not seen

her again.

Section 7

Section 7: Peter and Septimus

"It was awful...awful, awful!" Peter cried to himself, still sitting on the bench. "Still, one got over

things." He began to come out of it. Then he saw a little girl accidentally run smack into a lady's

legs, and he laughed aloud.

The lady was Lucrezia. She had left Septimus alone on his bench, talking to his dead comrade

Evans. She had been walking and asking herself, "Why should I suffer?" when the little girl ran

into her.

Lucrezia contemplated how Septimus was getting worse, as she walked back toward him and

saw him muttering to himself. When she sat beside him, he picked up her hand and gaped at it, as

if terrified. She had removed her wedding ring, she told him, because her hands had grown so

thin. He dropped her hand.

Septimus thought that she had ended their marriage. He felt both agony and relief. He was now

free to go out alone and tell the truth to the world, which was "first that trees are alive; next there

is no crime; next love, universal love." He gasped and trembled. A dog sniffed his legs. He

panicked to see the dog turning into a man. He asked himself why he could see these things. He

decided it was the heat wave: It had melted off his flesh and left his nerves exposed. He closed

his eyes and rested. He became one with the earth, felt flowers growing through his body. The

sound of an old man's penny-whistle sounded like a shepherd boy's piping, and the exquisite

beauty of the sound carried him into ecstasy, as if to a high rock. He felt that something

tremendous was about to happen. When he opened his eyes, he saw the world pulsing with life,

saw beauty springing from it, saw leaves quivering, swallows swooping. He thought that "all of

this, calm and reasonable as it was ... was the truth now; beauty, that was the truth now. Beauty

was everywhere."

It was time for his appointment with the new doctor. Lucrezia said, "It is time." But Septimus

heard the word "time" differently. He heard Evans singing. He saw a man in grey walking

toward him, and thought it was Evans. This led to a new string of visions. He stood up. Lucrezia

tried to make him sit down; she asked him the time. "I will tell you the time..." said Septimus,

strangely. Just then, Big Ben struck: It was a quarter to twelve.

The man in grey was Peter Walsh. He had left his bench, and as he passed Lucrezia and

Septimus, he thought they were two young lovers who were having a quarrel. "But what was it

about?" he wondered. Why did they look so desperate? He found it amusing that after his long

absence from London, everything looked so strange, so new. He especially liked the women:

their freshness, the elegant new fashions, the newly-universal habit of using make-up. He

realized that a change had taken place since the War. "Those five years�1918 to 1923�had

been, he suspected, somehow very important." Everyone seemed more open now, less careful

about the old proprieties. He recalled Sally Seton. What had she�"the wild, the daring, the

romantic Sally"��done with her life? Ironically, she had married a rich man and settled

down in a big house near Manchester.

He had liked Sally the best of all of Clarissa's friends at Bourton. Sally had shown a knack for

seeing through everything. She had even hated Hugh Whitbread, as had Peter. She had said that

Hugh represented "all that was most detestable in British middle-class life." They had both

mocked his snobbery and his slavish respect for the British aristocracy. And now he had his little

job at Court. Peter almost pitied "the admirable Hugh" and his wife, "the Honorable Evelyn."

They were so clueless, so class-bound. Peter also resented the fact that, at 53, he was going to

ask Hugh's help finding a job. He needed a better salary to support Daisy, if he married her. He

would rather ask Richard Dalloway, he thought. He liked Richard: "He was a thorough good

sort; a bit limited; a bit thick in the head; yes; but a thorough good sort." He lacked brilliance and

imagination, and he was prudish, but he was also sensible and inexplicably nice. He was not a

great politician. He was better outdoors, with horses and dogs. He had even rescued Clarissa's

sheepdog from a trap once, and set its leg himself. Perhaps that's why Clarissa liked him. But

Sally and Peter had both found him ridiculous, that summer at Bourton. Sally had begged Peter

to elope with Clarissa and save her from the Hughs and Richards of this world. But Clarissa

knew what she wanted, thought Peter. She had a "feminine" gift of making a complete world

wherever she was. In a roomful of people, "it was Clarissa one remembered." Not that she was

particularly beautiful or clever; just that, when she appeared, "there she was."

Peter tried to convince himself that he was no longer in love with her. But she kept returning to

his thoughts, and he kept trying, as he always had, to "explain her." Was he still in love with her,

then? he asked. Why had he wept that morning? She must have thought him a fool. If only she

had married him, she could have saved him from becoming such a "a whimpering, snivelling old

ass."

A strange sound interrupted his thoughts. A vagrant woman, standing by the Tube station, was

singing an ancient song of love and sorrow. Peter imagined her still singing, in the same spot, ten

million years in the future. He gave her a coin as he stepped into a taxi.

Lucrezia, too, saw the old woman, and she pitied her. Lucrezia was walking with Septimus to the

office of a new doctor, and as they walked, she began to believe that everything would turn out

all right.

[At this point, the narrator flashes back to Septimus's youth and tells the story of his past.]

When Septimus was a small boy, he had run away to London, in hopes of becoming a poet. After

a few years, however, his experiences in the city had changed him; shabbiness and loneliness had

made him shy, ambitious, and hostile. Then he fell in love with a public lecturer on Shakespeare,

Miss Isabel Pole, who fueled his passion for books and ideas. He read and wrote furiously,

almost to the point of madness. Then the War started, and Septimus immediately volunteered.

"He went to France to save an England which consisted almost entirely of Shakespeare's plays

and Miss Isabel Pole." Oddly, Septimus proved brave and manly in the trenches. He drew the

attention and affection of Evans, his officer. When Evans was killed in Italy, just before the

Armistice, Septimus congratulated himself on his composure. The War had taught him to be

indifferent to death. He stayed on in Milan. Then one evening, he fell into a panic because "he

could not feel." In a state of numbness, he married Lucrezia, returned to England, and secured a

respectable job. Then he began reading Shakespeare again. The beauty he had found in it as a

youth had disappeared. Now he saw a hidden message in it, telling of "hatred, loathing, despair."

Lucrezia had been excited about the prospect of living in England; but soon she began to wilt. It

was dreary, and Septimus was growing strange. After five years, they still had no children. She

did not know that Septimus was thinking that copulation was abominable, and that no one should

bring children into this world of suffering. Gradually, the truth began revealing itself to him:

People are savages; brutality triumphs over charity; everyone is wicked and mad. One night,

Septimus heard Lucrezia weeping, but he felt nothing. Then he collapsed. Dr.

Holmes�characterized here as an arrogant, self-contented fool�examined Septimus and said

there was nothing the matter with him, that he should try taking up a hobby. He told Septimus to

buck up, stop this nonsense, and do his duty by his charming wife. Septimus recoiled: "Human

nature was on him�the repulsive brute, with the blood-red nostrils." He felt he had to escape

from Dr. Holmes. But Lucrezia, in her simple way, liked Dr. Holmes. Septimus saw this as a

betrayal, a desertion. Then, when Lucrezia went out shopping, Septimus had experienced the

first "great revelation": Evans had appeared in his room.

[The narrative now returns to the present.]

Big Ben struck the noon hour. Clarissa heard it as she lay her party dress on her bed; Lucrezia

and Septimus heard it as they walked to the office of the new doctor, Sir William Bradshaw.

Sir William had built his reputation and personal wealth by tending to the very rich. He took

cases such as Septimus's as a public service, however. After only two minutes of examining

Septimus, he concluded that it was "a case of complete physical and nervous breakdown, with

every symptom in an advanced stage." He said that Septimus must be committed to a mental

hospital. If he refused, he would be compelled, which was the law regarding suicidal cases. He

lied to Lucrezia that he would visit Septimus weekly while he was in the institution. Septimus

thought, "Once you fall, human nature is on you. Holmes and Bradshaw are on you. ... The rack

and thumbscrew are applied. Human nature is remorseless." Dr. Bradshaw grew impatient: He

had made his diagnosis, it was getting late, and these people were wasting his time. As he

dismissed them, he told Lucrezia to trust him. But Lucrezia was in agony. "She had asked for

help and been deserted! He had failed them! Sir William Bradshaw was not a nice man." She

clung to Septimus, feeling suddenly loyal and protective.

Meanwhile, back in his office, Dr. Bradshaw congratulated himself on his quick and exact

diagnosis. "Health we must have, and health is proportion," he thought. The doctor worshipped

proportion, and by doing so, he "not only prospered himself but made England prosper." He

"secluded her lunatics, forbade childbirth, penalised despair, made it impossible for the unfit to

propagate their views until they, too, shared his sense of proportion." In the name of Proportion,

he broke the will of opposers like Septimus, smashed their delusions, and locked them up. For

this he was greatly admired.

But Lucrezia cried, as she continued walking with Septimus, that she did not like that man.

Section 8

Section 8: Richard, Clarissa, Miss Kilman, Elizabeth

It was now 1:30. As Lucrezia and Septimus walked away from Sir William's office, they passed

Hugh Whitbread, who was on his way to lunch at Lady Bruton's, where Richard Dalloway was

also heading.

Lunching with the formidable Lady Bruton, Hugh reveled in the rich food and atmosphere.

Richard went somewhat deeper, meditating on the value to England of such "well-set-up old

women of pedigree" who knew how to do things right. Lady Bruton asked after Clarissa, and she

mentioned that Peter Walsh was in town. All three instantly remembered the story of Peter and

Clarissa. Then Richard suddenly told himself that he would go to Clarissa right after lunch and

"tell her, in so many words, that he loved her." All three reflected that it would be impossible to

find Peter a job because there was a flaw in his character, though Hugh said he would certainly

try.

Then Lady Bruton brushed aside such topics and turned the conversation to the cause that was

her current obsession: Emigration. She fervently believed that the solution for England's social

ills was to send promising young people of both sexes to Canada. Herein lay her reason for

inviting Hugh and Richard to lunch. She wanted to write a letter on Emigration to the Times, but

she was not a good writer. So she wanted Richard, who knew the political landscape, to advise

her, and Hugh, who "knew how to put things," to write for her. They did so, admirably, and left.

Richard decided to bring flowers to Clarissa. He hadn't said the words "I love you" in a very long

time. But today he was going to do it. He thought it was a miracle that he had married Clarissa

and had lived so well, when so many others had been killed in the War or had been born with no

hope of a good life. He resolved again and again that he would tell Clarissa he loved her, because

"it is a thousand pities never to say what one feels." He surveyed the people in the park as he

passed. He thought of various social problems and what could be done about them. He saw the

vagrant woman who had been singing earlier, and considered "the problem of the female

vagrant." He saw Buckingham Palace, and reflected that, although it was absurd, at least it gave

the country a sense of tradition. He felt very happy to be carrying flowers to Clarissa, to be on

his way to tell her he loved her. Big Ben struck the three-o'clock hour.

Meanwhile, Clarissa sat at her writing table, feeling annoyed because her friend Mrs. Marsham

wanted her to invite Clarissa's poor, dull cousin, Ellie Henderson, to her party. She was also

agitated because Elizabeth was locked in her room with Miss Kilman, probably praying. But then

Richard burst in upon Clarissa, holding out the flowers. "He could not bring himself to say he

loved her, not in so many words," but she understood anyway, without his speaking. They sat on

the couch, and each told the other, in rapid, confused snippets, what had happened during the

day. As they talked, Richard held Clarissa's hand and thought, "Happiness is this." But then, he

briefly wondered if she wished she had married Peter. He told Clarissa that he worried this party

would be too much for her. Before leaving to return to work (at the House of Commons), he ran

out and returned with a pillow and quilt, reminding her, as her doctor had prescribed, to have "an

hour's complete rest after luncheon."

Clarissa lay on the sofa. After the excitement wore off, she felt unhappy, because neither Peter

nor Richard understood why she liked to give parties. So she defended herself. She said her

parties were "an offering"�an offering to life, her gift to the world, the only thing she was

capable of giving. Then Elizabeth came in.

Miss Kilman waited outside the door. Miss Kilman hated the upper classes and especially

Clarissa. Miss Kilman pitied herself for being ugly, poor, and unlucky. She had had a promising

start at school, had even taken a degree in history, but when the War came she had been

dismissed because "she would not pretend that the Germans were all villains." Then Richard

Dalloway had generously hired her as Elizabeth's history tutor. Soon after, she had found God.

Now, whenever she felt class envy and hatred boiling in her, she tried to think of God and the

meaning of her suffering. Clarissa came out to see her and Elizabeth off. Miss Kilman wanted to

knock the rich woman down, to bend her to her own will. Clarissa sensed something monstrous

about Miss Kilman, then laughed it off. As they were leaving, Clarissa called out to Elizabeth,

"Remember our party to-night!"

After they left, Clarissa meditated on "love and religion," on "how detestable they are," how

cruel. Religion destroyed "the privacy of the soul," and love destroyed "everything that was fine,

everything that was true," making people vulgar. She believed that life's mystery does not lie in

Miss Kilman's bullying religion or in Peter's self-degrading love. Big Ben struck 3:30 solemnly,

then St. Margaret's followed, more lively, as if reminding Clarissa to tend to the preparations for

her party.

Meanwhile, as Elizabeth and Miss Kilman walked, the latter felt a storm of conflicting, painful

emotions. She had felt ugly, awkward, and humiliated in Clarissa's presence, but at the same time

she hated Clarissa and the money that made her beauty and elegance possible. Miss Kilman

suffered miserably, knowing she would never be loved. Lately, the only thing that gave her

pleasure, besides Elizabeth, was food. Elizabeth helped Miss Kilman buy a petticoat at the Army

and Navy Store, then they had tea. Miss Kilman ate with intensity, while Elizabeth watched

uncomfortably and pondered her character. Miss Kilman had taught her much�she had never

thought about the poor before, or that there were people who disputed England's actions in the

War. With her poverty, knowledge, and seriousness, "Miss Kilman made one feel so small."

Still, Miss Kilman was a little repulsive and tiresome. Elizabeth tried to leave, but Miss Kilman,

in secret agony, acted pathetic and made her stay. When Elizabeth finally left, Miss Kilman was

"stricken once, twice, three times by shocks of suffering." Because Elizabeth had gone, "Mrs.

Dalloway had triumphed." She lurched across the street to Westminster Cathedral, and sat in

great disorder in a pew, trying to pray.

Elizabeth passed the next half-hour or so alone, riding a bus to the Strand and then walking,

exploring. She was interested in things, but it bothered her to feel people watching her, as they

had begun to do lately. People had begun to admire her strange, stately beauty, comparing her to

"poplar trees, early dawn, hyacinths, fawns, running water, and garden lilies." Their admiration

"made her life a burden to her, for she so much preferred being left alone to do what she liked in

the country ... with her father and the dogs." At least now she was in the open air and free of

Miss Kilman. She was not sure what to think of Miss Kilman anymore. Miss Kilman played a

part in the world, but that part seemed less important the more Elizabeth explored the bustling,

active world. Miss Kilman had given Elizabeth the idea of having a career, however. Elizabeth

thought she might like to be something�a doctor, a farmer, a member of Parliament. She

wanted to do things, be things. She absorbed the sights and sounds of the city, felt the shifting

winds and noticed the play of light and shadow on the buildings. Then, "calmly and

competently," she boarded the return bus and headed home.

Section 9

Section 9: The end of Septimus

Lying on his sofa, Septimus also watched the play of light and shadow as it came through his

window. He was listening intently, completely attuned to every sound on earth. He was sure that,

once again, Nature was signaling her meaning to him. Lucrezia sat nearby, making a hat. She

was reliving in her mind some horrible incidents of Septimus having visions and terrors and she

being utterly helpless, except for writing down his "truths" on bits of paper, when he asked her

to. She sighed. Septimus heard the sigh as an enchanting evening wind.

Then, very slowly, he began to feel himself getting well. He began, little by little, to have an

ordinary conversation with Lucrezia, about the hat she was making. He began to focus his eyes

on one thing at a time, "gathering courage" as he went, so that piece by piece he began to see the

objects in the room as real, ordinary things. The process was very slow, very piecemeal. But

Lucrezia noticed that they were talking like ordinary married people, and when they began to

make fun of Mrs. Filmer, whose daughter was to have the hat, she rejoiced: They were

communicating just like they used to do, before Septimus had gotten ill. Laughing, they re-

trimmed the hat and joked intimately together. Lucrezia remembered how and why she had

fallen in love with him, and all her love returned. She was very happy to have the old Septimus

back.

Then suddenly, Septimus remembered that Sir William Bradshaw and Dr. Holmes were after

him. He told Lucrezia to burn all of his writings. But she refused to burn them. Some were very

beautiful, she thought. She told him that even if the doctors took him, she would go with him;

she would not let them separate him from her. She tied up his scraps of writing in a neat parcel,

and as she did so Septimus was overcome with gratitude and love. She seemed fearless to him,

invincible; she had triumphed over Bradshaw, Holmes, and all their kind. Then they heard Dr.

Holmes coming up the stairs, and Lucrezia ran down to send him away. Septimus heard her

bravely say, "No. I will not allow you to see my husband." But Holmes forcibly put her aside and

headed toward the door. Septimus rose. He resolved instantly that the doctors would not get him.

He looked about for some means of suicide, and finding only a window, he waited on the ledge

for the last moment. "He did not want to die. Life was good. The sun was hot. Only human

beings�what did they want?" When Holmes reached the door, Septimus cried, "I'll give it

you!" and flung himself out of the window.

Dr. Holmes burst in, crying "The coward!" Lucrezia ran to the window and saw Septimus dead.

Dr. Holmes gave her a sleeping drug, and she began to drift off, not toward sleep at first, but

toward somewhere quiet in her own mind. She heard nature's whisperings, felt Septimus near,

had flashes of childhood memories. Falling asleep, she saw the dark outline of Dr. Holmes at the

window and thought, "So that was Dr. Holmes."

Section 10

Section 10: Peter alone

Peter Walsh was walking toward his hotel when an ambulance (carrying Septimus's corpse) sped

by. Peter thought it a "triumph of civilization" that ambulances speed sick people to hospitals and

that traffic parts so as to let them through. He thought of sickness and death, then of loneliness,

and was overcome once again with an urge to weep. He blamed this on his "susceptibility" to

impressions, a susceptibility that "had been his undoing in Anglo-Indian society." He considered

how he felt too intensely, thought too much, was too easily moved, and so he had never quite fit

in anywhere. His thoughts naturally turned to Clarissa, to their painful encounter that morning.

He had a theory about their friendship: Their actual meetings were brief, broken, and painful, but

they were always meaningful, and the meanings always "flowered out" later, enriching his life.

Deep in reverie about the way Clarissa had enchanted him long ago at Bourton, he arrived at his

hotel. There was a note from her. It said, "How heavenly it was to see you. I must tell you that."

This upset and annoyed him. He believed she had written it out of pity for him, for having ruined

his life. But he also admired her "indomitable vitality," the toughness of her will. His thoughts

turned to himself, to the oddities of his character, and to the way his oddities attracted women.

He realized that he was not entirely in love with Daisy. He would grow tired of her. He liked

solitude, yet at the same time, he needed people. He liked bustle and activity, liked smoking-

rooms, colonels, golf, women�in short, everything. He liked being in the thick of things. He

went down to dinner and met a middle-class family who, though dull in every way, fascinated

him nonetheless, just by the fact of their being alive, going about their business, "liking what

they like," and "not caring a hang for the upper classes." "It is superb, absolutely superb," he

thought.

He decided to go to Clarissa's party. He needed contact, gossip, talk. He wanted to ask Richard,

who was in the House of Commons, what the government meant to do about India. He left the

hotel and walked toward Clarissa's house, observing how, despite the heat wave, all of London

was out. Rich people got into and out of taxis, on their way to restaurants, theaters, parties; poor

people thronged the streets, sat on stoops, laughed and talked. Breasting the stream of

impressions, Peter grew excited, felt the richness and beauty of life. But at Clarissa's door, he

began fiddling with his pocket-knife.

Section 11

Section 11: The party

Clarissa's household staff worked in high gear, bustling, arranging, cooking, serving. A maid told

Mrs. Walker, the cook, that she'd heard the Prime Minister was coming, but "one Prime Minister

more or less made not a scrap of difference to Mrs. Walker," who was running herself ragged,

sweating and shouting, trying to get the huge, complicated meal ready on time. The doorbell rang

constantly; motor cars came and went; orders poured into the kitchen; the servants, running

hither and thither, gossiped about the guests, and about how lovely Elizabeth looked. Clarissa, at

the top of her stairs, greeted her guests after each was announced. She greeted Peter no

differently from the rest, saying, "How delightful to see you!" Peter thought she was "at her

worst�effusive, insincere." He wished he hadn't come.

Clarissa felt strongly, as she greeted her guests, that the party would be a failure. People were

standing around aimlessly, and there was Peter, silently criticizing her. She wondered, "Why,

after all, did she do these things?" She blamed Peter for her mood, because his presence made

her see herself differently. Then she got angry and thought, "But why did he come...merely to

criticize? Why always take, never give?" She tried to brighten, but she felt sick knowing "that it

was all going wrong, all falling flat."

Poor, dull Ellie Henderson stood in a corner, watching the party but not taking part. Though

Clarissa had not wanted to invite her, she had come anyway; it was a break from her dreary, dull

life. She knew was entirely out of her league, here, but she did like to watch. Richard, ever kind,

was the only person who spoke to her. They exchanged a few pleasantries, until Peter Walsh

approached dragged Richard away. They seemed delighted to see each other again, after so many

years.

A window was open, and when the curtain blew into the room, a guest absent-mindedly beat it

back, then resumed talking. From this tiny event, Clarissa suddenly knew that the party would be

a success after all. (Perhaps because it was a sign of disorder, of unpredictability, of "life"

elbowing in.) The party was "something now, not nothing."

And yet, Clarissa still was not quite enjoying it. The guests arrived in droves, and she continued

to greet them, but she felt old. Then, to her surprise, Sally Seton (now Lady Rosseter) arrived

(uninvited). Clarissa felt a shock: Sally had grown old, had lost her luster. They talked excitedly

together, then Sally announced, "I have five enormous boys!" The "simple egotism" of this made

Clarissa love Sally again immediately, because it meant she was still herself, after so many years.

The Prime Minister was announced, and Clarissa went to him. Peter watched the Prime Minister

making his rounds, and was amused by how ordinary, even small, he looked, like a shopkeeper

done up in gold lace. Peter sensed a change in the room as the Prime Minister passed through it,

as the guests felt "to the marrow of their bones...this majesty passing; this symbol of what they

all stood for, English society." "Lord, lord, the snobbery of the English!" he thought. Then Peter

noticed Hugh Whitbread and savaged him mercilessly. Hugh was unchanged, he thought, still a

prancing fool, a small-minded, self-important toady. Then Peter noticed Clarissa gliding through

the room in "her silver-green mermaid's dress," and realized, happily, that she still had her gift,

which was "to be; to exist; to sum it all up in the moment as it passed." But he was not in love

with her, he thought.

Finally, Clarissa was enjoying her party. She flitted about, dipping into conversations, bringing

people together, arranging things, making it work. She thrilled at having brought all the disparate

threads together: Richard, Peter, Lady Bruton, Hugh, Elizabeth, the Prime Minister, Sally

(though accidentally), and all the other people who, separately, were one thing, but here, all

together, became something else. They were meeting and talking, bumping and laughing, making

new combinations and thus creating life. She felt it was a composition, a work of art that she

herself had made happen.

Sir William and Lady Bradshaw arrived. Richard had invited them, for political reasons. But

Clarissa instantly disliked him. He had a strong reputation (she had even consulted him once),

but something about him made her uneasy. She heard Sir William speaking in undertones to

Richard, telling him about something that had happened to a patient which confirmed a theory he

had about "the deferred effects of shell-shock." Lady Bradshaw drew Clarissa aside and said that

one of Sir Williams's patients had committed suicide. (She was referring to Septimus, of course.)

"Oh!" thought Clarissa, "in the middle of my party, here's death." She hid away in an empty

room, reflecting on the young man's suicide. She wondered why he had flung his life away. She

intuited that he had been trying to "preserve something" from corruption. "Death was defiance,"

she thought. "Death was an attempt to communicate." She also intuited that Sir William was

partly to blame. To her he seemed "obscurely evil ... capable of some indescribable

outrage�forcing your soul, that was it." She imagined the young man going to Sir William for

help, and Sir William making him feel, instead, that life was intolerable. Clarissa's thoughts

spiraled down, in despair. But then, gradually, she began to feel well again, thinking, piecemeal,

of life's details, of the things that made it surprising, made it worth living, such as the way the

sky looked at that moment, through the window. She repeated, "Fear no more the heat o' the

sun." She felt "somehow very like" Septimus. "She felt glad that he had done it; thrown it away."

Sally and Peter wanted to talk to Clarissa, but Clarissa wanted to save them for last, to relish

them after everyone had gone. So Sally and Peter passed the time together by observing,

critiquing, reminiscing, feeling conspiratorial again, as they had all that summer at Bourton.

They talked everything over, summed it all up. Peter spoke intimately of his feelings for

Clarissa; he said that a person could only be in love like that once (after so many years apart,

Sally was still the only person he could talk to about Clarissa). Though Peter and Sally had aged,

their characters had not really changed.

They watched Elizabeth walk across the room to her father, and each silently compared her to

hyacinths, lilies, the dawn. They could tell that she and her father were devoted to each other.

Richard had been talking to the Bradshaws, and when he saw Elizabeth coming toward him, he

asked himself, "Who is that lovely girl?" Then he realized it was his daughter. He told her this,

and she felt very glad.

Sally rose to go, saying, "What does the brain matter, compared with the heart?"

Peter sat for a moment, alone. He looked up. He felt suddenly gripped by terror, ecstasy, and

excitement. What was it?

"It is Clarissa, he said. For there she was."