Woolf, Virginia - Mrs. Clarissa Dalloway’s plot

Woolf, Virginia - Mrs. Clarissa Dalloway’s plot

The novel takes place in London (in her extracts, this city is very recognizable), it opens at 10 o'clock and finishes nearly at midnight. Mrs. Dalloway goes to buy some flowers but not at the corner shop, but at Bond Street (it's exactly a parallel of Oxford street, a chaotic street, full of shops). In Bond Street there are a lot of shops for rich people, where only few people can afford to buy there (for example the most important Italian brands are there). Mrs. Dalloway went to buy some flowers on Bond Street because she was having a party in the evening at her home and she decided to go herself to buy flowers. All the events happen during this banal story. While she was inside the shop a terrible noise attracted her attention but also the owner's attention. It was a car that drove noisily and people looked at the car with interest and curiosity, also Mrs. Dalloway tried to watch outside the

shop. It was just on that occasion, looking outside on the road, that she saw Mr. Warren Smith with his wife, an Italian girl who left Italy to marry this man, walking on the streets, going to a psychiatric hospital. Mrs. Dalloway is attracted to this man and she knew that was a shell shocked veteran. After this episode, Mrs. Dalloway goes home and there she has an unexpected visit from Peter Walsh, her previous lover.(Mrs. Dalloway refused him for the simple reason that she decided to marry Richard Dalloway because he was very prestigious, a man within the upper social class, who would give her a very comfortable type of life. Even Peter Walsh was very rich but he was very adventurous, so he would give her a more adventurous and interesting kind of life, but at that time Mrs. Dalloway refused that, to have a quiet, conformist and prestigious type of life.) Peter Walsh after a while left her home to go back to the hotel but on the way he went through Regent's Park where he saw Warren Smith with his wife going to visit another psychiatrist, William Bradshaw, for an interview. The interview with the doctor lasts three quarters of an hour, the psychiatrist decided to recover Warren Smith to the psychiatric hospital, to the clinic. Peter Walsh goes back to the hotel and on this occasion, in this lapse of time, he saw the ambulance that was
carrying Warren Smith to the hospital because he tried to kill himself, throwing down to the window of his house Warren Smith decided to put in end his life, to commit a suicide. Mrs. Dalloway learns of Warren Smith death because the doctor William Bradshaw, present at Clarissa's party, referred to the people at the party that Warren Smith committed a suicide. The learning of this event shocked Mrs. Dalloway, for a while because there was a very close link between Septimus
Warren Smith and Mrs. Dalloway. Mrs. Dalloway has been a woman who has accepted conformity, to live a peaceful, normal, quiet life, in which she imposes severe restrictions on her spontaneous feelings, differently from Septimus Warren Smith who had a very adventurous style of life and because of this, he can suddenly fall prey to panic, to feelings of guilt (The cause of these feelings lies is the death of his best friend, Evans, during the war. After the war, Septimus is haunted by the specter of Evans). Mrs. Dalloway admires Septimus when he decided to kill himself, she admired him for his dignity because he decided to put an end his suffering and his inner troubles. Mrs. Dalloway admires him a lot because of this decision. (This novel deals with a separate world that is the outside world, the London life but at the same time we can see the
life within the minds of these characters).