“A whole lifetime was too short to bring out, now that one had acquired the power, the full flavor; to extract every ounce of pleasure, every shade of pleasure.” - Peter Walsh

So Virginia Woolf has a principle character in Mrs. Dalloway remark midway through this novel. Mrs. Dalloway is considered the crowning achievement of Virginia Woolf’s fictional oeuvre. Written in the stream-of-consciousness style, Woolf tries to help us focus in on the self-absorption of Mrs. Dalloway and other characters. Throughout the novel there are abrupt transitions between past, present, and future as Woolf gracefully switches between the introspective musings of her characters and the omniscience of the narrator.

Mrs. Dalloway’s constant reflections about her past and the unknowns of her future are representative of how we, as ordinary people, go about our days using much of our mental bandwidth to reflect on the contingencies of the past or our hopes for what the future will look like. If the present seems blurry in this novel, it is because sometimes we are all somnambulant in our day-to-day lives.

Much of the novel hinges on a choice Clarissa (Mrs. Dalloway) made as a young woman. She was in love with Peter Walsh, but for practical purposes married Mr. Richard Dalloway. The latter came of more noble stock and had political prospects. The former of a more humble birth and whose fortunes lay in the broader British empire (namely India). Clarissa’s decision to end her engagement with Peter in favor of a marriage to Richard comes into the foreground as she plans for an evening social party at her luxurious home near Westminster; Peter, it so happens, just returned from a five-year sojourn in India and rumor has preceded his appearance about his sordid romance with a young woman in India.

Woolf’s entire narrative takes place during a single day. Big Ben, or other clocks, chime out the hours as they pass gradually from morning to evening. Woolf introduces a number of other minor characters during this intervening period of time. One character whom readers will find an interesting contrast to Clarissa’s general optimism is Mr. Septimus Warren Smith. Smith is far younger than Clarissa (approximately twenty years), a veteran of the First World War, and a true nihilist. Whereas Clarissa finds meaning in the trappings of British high society what with its various symbols, traditions, social rules, and crass materialism, Septimus finds that “it might be possible that the world itself is without meaning” (88). Where Clarissa found continuity and structure in the traditions handed down from one generation to the next, Septimus observes that “the secret signal which one generation passes, under disguise, tot he next is loathing, hatred, despair” (88).

There is a growing tension in the book between an older generation of 50-somethings (Clarissa & Richard) who still believe in the fundamental structure of the British Empire, God, and tradition, and a younger, more radical generation represented by Septimus (war veteran), Ms. Kilman (feminist), Elizabeth (Clarissa’s impressionable daughter who represents new directions), and Sally (part of the nouveau riche class of industrialists). Clarissa benefits from the pomp and circumstance of British high society and yet contributes nothing meaningful; Ms. Kilman, on the other hand, has neither time nor patience for these frivolities and instead contributes meaning and value to British society through her work and labor. The future, Peter acknowledges, will depend on the work and ideas of this young, dynamic generation:

“Still the future of civilization lies, he thought, in the hands of young men like that; of young men such as he was, thirty years ago; with their love of abstract principles; getting books sent out to them all the way from London to a peak in the Himalayas; reading science; reading philosophy. The future lies in the hands of young men like that he thought.”

This is a great work that explores human consciousness, the irrevocable nature of past decisions, the illusion of free will, and how people come to terms with the inevitability of death and the legacies they will leave behind.