Mrs. Dalloway

Clarissa Dalloway is the main character of the novel. Richard's wife and mother Elizabeth. Throughout the story, he organizes an evening reception.

Richard Dalloway is Clarissa's husband, passionate about his work in government.

Elizabeth Dalloway is the seventeen-year-old daughter of Clarissa and Richard. She looks a little oriental, restrained, religious, fond of politics and history.

Septimus Warren Smith , a thirty-year veteran of World War I, suffers from hallucinations associated with his dead friend and commander Evans, and suffers from severe nervous breakdown. Married to Lucretia.

Lucretia (Retsia) Smith is the wife of Septimus. Born in Italy, after marriage she moved to England, where she suffers from her husband’s illness and misses her abandoned home and family.

Sally Seton is the girl Clarissa was in love with. She spent a lot of time with the Clarissa family in her youth, but then she got married and gave birth to five children and rarely began to see them.

Hugh Whitbird is Clarissa's pompous friend. Concerned about his social position. He has an indefinite position at court, although he considers himself a valuable member of the aristocracy.

Peter Walsh is an old friend of Clarissa, who once offered her his hand and heart, but was refused. Spent a long time in India. One of the guests at the party.

Sir William Bradshaw is a well-known and respected psychiatrist contacted by Septimus.

Miss Kilman is a history teacher in Elizabeth. She got a good education, but with the start of the war she lost her job, as she has German roots. She has a mutual dislike with Clarissa, but she loves spending time with Elizabeth.

The novel talks about the wounds inflicted by the First World War on several characters from the middle class of British society. The plot focuses on Clariss, whom Peter Walsh was in love with before the war, but she married the more calm and reliable Mr. Richard Dalloway, who became a prominent politician. After the war, Clarissa is preparing a reception where she hopes to see elegant, very nice and gracefully spending time elegant and very well-mannered people. On the eve of the reception from India, Peter Walsh arrives, who has fallen in love in India with a married lady and is now seeking a divorce. There is a tragic line of a confused soldier who commits suicide due to the fact that psychiatrists wanted to put him in a hospital. He considered his participation in the war a crime and a sin after he was torn apart by the sight of his fighting comrade Evans. The action is constantly transferred from the pre-war era, when everyone was so happy, young and innocent, in 1923, and you can see the abyss between those who were on the deadly fields of that terrible war and those who read safely about it in the newspapers. Life goes on, a few more years will pass, and the wounds will be licked. People will be ready for a new slaughter. In the center, after all, is a love story for which there is no war or peace.

In Mrs. Dalloway’s novel, all but retrospective action takes place on a June 1923 afternoon in London. The novel is an example of a “stream of consciousness” as a way of narration: each scene is described, refracted and blurred in the stream of consciousness of its participants. Wolfe deliberately blurs the line between direct and indirect speech, freely changing the type of narration, including descriptions and internal monologues. Thanks to the chosen style, the author focuses on “not the person himself in his inextricable unity of internal and external, personal and social, but only the texture of human consciousness, psychological reality as such: associations and memories that overlap each other, volatile thoughts and elusive shades of feelings, unsteady moods and outbursts of emotions ” ^[1] . Thus, the narrative links more than twenty characters, but most of the novel is dedicated to Clarissa Dalloway and Septimus Smith.

In 1997, the novel was filmed ^[2] directed by Marlene Gorris ^[3] . The main roles were played by: Clarissa: Vanessa Redgrave , Clarissa in her youth: Natasha McElhone .

The novel of the same name by Michael Cunningham and the drama Watch, based on it , tells of three interconnected women, one of which is Virginia Woolf (played by Nicole Kidman ). In the film, she writes the book "Mrs. Dalloway", the character of which is indirectly another heroine of the picture - Clarissa.