Who is Mrs. Dalloway?
Right from the first few pages, we can tell what kind of character Virginia Woolf is setting up Mrs. Dalloway to be. Mrs. Dalloway can be immediately understood as lonely, a bit confused about what her role in life is, and if she has chosen the right path of life. Woolf plays with the idea of age and stage in life right within the first part of the novel Mrs. Dalloway , and so we have to pay close attention to figure out if Clarissa Dalloway is really in her 50s or if she is a couple of decades younger and in her 20s. We quickly learn more about Clarissa's sense of loneliness. She describes herself as unseen in the busy street in London and shows her dissatisfaction with her role as a public figure. The constraints that shape her life as a "perfect hostess", as her ex Peter once called her, make her unsure of who she really is (Woolf, 7). Even though she chose the "safe" life -- with a high-profile husband in a very affluent neighborhood of London -- she still...