Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf is an incisive portrayal of a single day
in the life of 51-year-old Clarissa Dalloway, the perfect high-society
hostess, in post-World War I, England. As she prepares to host a party
in the evening, she is flooded with memories of her youth in the
countryside in Bourton, her choice of Richard Dalloway as husband over
the intriguing and demanding Peter Walsh, amidst myriads of other
things. A visit from Peter that morning reinforces Mrs Dalloway's
pressing need to re-examine the trajectory that her internal and
external lives have taken between the pull and push of the past and
present, within a certain social structure.