Mrs. Dalloway

Clarissa’s old suitor, Peter Walsh has been living abroad in India since the end of World War I. He writes to Clarissa regularly, which suggests that his attachment to Clarissa has persisted since her rejection of his marriage proposal back when they were young friends enjoying leisure time at her family’s country home Bourton. He has a young fiancée named Daisy waiting for him back in India, but he is emotionally ambivalent about her and their future together, and this ambivalence intensifies when he actually interacts with Clarissa. Sections of the novel that probe Peter’s mental workings reveal a self-centeredness and insecurity that make Peter a less reliable husband-figure than Clarissa’s actual husband, Richard Dalloway.

Sally is a figment of Clarissa’s memory for most of the novel, but she appears unexpectedly at Clarissa’s party. Clarissa’s most cherished memory is that of Sally kissing her spontaneously and covertly on the lips while they were young and spending time with Peter Walsh and other friends at Bourton, Clarissa’s family’s country home. This memory of Sally encapsulates her daring and vivacious personality, and Clarissa admits to feeling a longing for Sally that she images men must feel for women they find sexually attractive. When Clarissa sees Sally at her party, they meet again as married women, stable in their positions and trapped by the patriarchal societies in which they live. Sally’s talk of her preference for her garden over the company of people reveals her counter-culture nature. 

Richard, Clarissa’s steady and repressed husband, is a perfect foil, or opposite, to the emotional Peter Walsh. His inner life is full of possible expressions of his feelings, but Richard is not always capable of speaking his strong feelings out loud. For example, the novel reveals the strength of his love for Clarissa, but he cannot follow through with his plan to tell her how he feels. Richard is also opposite to Peter in his treatment of English tradition; while Peter fled the country to make a life for himself in India, Richard lives in the heart of London, working for the government and championing old traditional lifestyles without criticism. In this way, Richard is also a contrasting character to Septimus Warren Smith, a shell-shocked working-class war veteran of World War I who returned from the front damaged and lost.

The daughter of Clarissa and Richard, Elizabeth Dalloway enjoys the devotion of her governess, Miss Kilman, of whom her mother is suspicious. Elizabeth represents the youth of this time who do not aspire to the traditional lifestyles of their parents, but are unable to break free from the constraints of society; for example, Elizabeth considers a variety of jobs that will bring her freedom and financial security of her own making, but her father’s inability to encourage her independence means she will likely end up married well and a little bit bored, just like her mother. Elizabeth rebels in a rather safe and innocuous way by taking a bus through a part of London her mother would rather she not see, so she does try to test limits. Elizabeth is beautiful, so she attracts male and female attention, but what or whom she herself finds attractive is less clear. 

A young working-class veteran of World War I, Septimus was once seduced by the old ways of England that he and other young soldiers sought to protect by going to war. Upon his return home, he suffers from stress and trauma-induced mental health crises that lead him to look for help from doctors like Holmes and Bradshaw. Neither doctor is able to help him, and he abruptly commits suicide the day of Clarissa’s party. While still alive, Septimus reflects on the world around him with suspicion and fear, and he ponders his own death frequently. His suffering and his working-class life experiences before the war contrast with the fancy lives of the Dalloways, who enjoy all the finery upper-class London has to offer the members of their privileged set.