Mrs. Dalloway is not a novel that chronicles the years of the life of Clarissa Dalloway. In fact, Mrs. Dalloway is not a conventionally narrated novel at all. It is a collage, a mosaic portrait; it pieces together bits of Mrs. Dalloway's past and bits of Mrs. Dalloway's present on a single day — a Wednesday in mid-June, 1923. As far as plot is concerned, Mrs. Dalloway on this particular day in June prepares for and gives a party. That is all that happens. Our job is to look beyond the plot and realize who Mrs. Dalloway has been and what she has become. We must try to see the diversity beneath the surface of this English lady and try to get a sense of her personality. This is not an easy task because appearances deceive.
When Mrs. Dalloway was a young girl, her beau, Peter Walsh, prophesied that someday Clarissa would be The Perfect Hostess. Peter said this impulsively, out of jealous anger, yet when we finish Mrs. Dalloway we are left with a literal image of Clarissa Dalloway as The Perfect Hostess. Peter Walsh's chance and angry remark seems to have been most accurate. Clarissa's destiny does indeed seem to have been that of a well-bred wife who would give successful parties for her husband. This would seem to be the only value of her life.
In a sense, Clarissa Dalloway does develop into a perfect hostess; and, in a sense, Mrs. Dalloway is about a party Clarissa gives. But these ideas are only on the surface. A woman is never just a wife, or a mother, or a hostess; human beings cannot be defined in one word. It is only when we are ignorant, or lazy, or angry (as Peter Walsh was) that we label one another. But we make these generalized, easy assessments of people every day while knowing that we — individually — are certainly too complex to be summed up so easily. We would never dream of simplifying ourselves so narrowly because we know how very little of our "real selves" is displayed to the world. There are depths of feeling — hatred, despair, joy, sensitivity — which are rarely revealed. And, in the same way that much of our emotions remain submerged, our minds also pile up ideas, dreams, conversations, and multitudes of words and thoughts that are never uttered. The acts we actually perform are only pale outlines of another multithought and — feeling individual. It is this individual which is Virginia Woolf's concern in Mrs. Dalloway.
