Mrs Dalloway - Overview

Overview of the characters, vocabulary, context, themes, and key terminology in the novel Mrs Dalloway

Clarissa Dalloway

The novel’s eponymous protagonist, a middle-aged, upper-class lady throwing a party, she’s married to a conservative politician Richard Dalloway 

Richard Dalloway

Clarissa’s husband, a conservative politician in Parliament

Septimus Warren Smith

A WW1 veteran in his 30s, he suffers from shell shock/PTSD. Married to Lucrezia while he was stationed in Milan

Lucrezia Smith (Rezia)

Septimus’s 24 year old wife, an Italian woman who left her home in Milan to marry Septimus

Peter Walsh

Clarissa’s closest friend who was once passionately in love with her. She rejected his marriage proposal, which has haunted him all his life. He lived in India for years and has often romantic problems with women

Sally Seton

A women whom Clarissa loved passionately as a teen at Bourton

Elizabeth Dalloway

Clarissa’s 17 year old daughter, a quiet girl who prefers the countryside and dogs to London and it’s parties

Socialite

A person, typically a woman from a wealthy or aristocratic background who is prominent in high society and attends gatherings

Introspection

The examination or observation of one’s own mental and emotional processes

Conventional

In accordance with what is generally done as the norm or believed

Bourgeois

Belonging to or characteristic of the middle class and it’s perceived materialistic values or conventional attitudes

Conservatism

A cultural, social and political ideology which seeks to promote and preserve traditional institutions, values and customs

Eponymous

Novel named after a protagonist

Stream of consciousness

Aims to capture the flow of a characters thought process

Symbolism

Objects or colours representing ideas

Allusion

Reference to someone or something outside of the text

Motif

An object, image, sound or phrase that is repeated throughout a story

Privacy, loneliness and communication

How characters deal with privacy, loneliness and communication of outward relationships and inner thoughts

Social Criticism

Criticism of English society and post war conservatism

Time

Mrs Dalloway takes place over the course of one day, and in it’s framework Woolf emphasises the passage of time. Such as Big Ben chiming as the day progresses

Psychology and Perception

Inner workings or characters’’’ minds and doctors’ approaches to psychology.

Keeping things hidden/duplicity

Death

Death is a constant undercurrent to the characters’ thoughts and actions

World War One

Mrs Dalloway takes place in June of 1923, 4 years after WW1 ended in 1918 and thought the UK was technically victorious in the war, hundreds and thousands of solders died and the country suffered huge financial losses

Colonialism

In 1922 much of Ireland seceded from the United Kingdom, and many of Britain’s colonies across the world would reach independence in the following decades, including India, where Peter Walsh returns from

Class Divide

Mrs Dalloway critiques the conservatism and traditionalism of the upper-classes at the time

Lost Generation

Portrays the tragedy of the “lost generation” following WW1, like Septimus as a victim of war PTSD

Modernism

An early 20th century movement in literature, visual arts and music that emphasized experimentation, abstraction and subjective experience

Biographical

Her mother and half-sister died in her youth, leading to Woolf’s first nervous breakdown which was later contributed by her fathers death and subsequent sexual abuse by her half-brothers. Woolf married Leonard Woolf in 1912 but she also had an affair with Vita Sackville-West