Mrs Dalloway

Virginia Woolf · 1925 · Novel

Explore this on the mapTrace its ancestors and descendants live in the tree.

Focus on inner life and stream of consciousness Stream of consciousness narrative Interiority and urban setting Stream of consciousness

It is a seminal work of modernist literature, pioneering the stream-of-consciousness technique to explore characters' inner lives and perceptions of time.

What it is

The novel details a single day in the life of Clarissa Dalloway, a high-society woman in post-World War I London, as she prepares for a party.

↑Inherited from(3)

Anna Karenina· 1877↑ open

Tolstoy's deep dive into Anna's psyche foreshadows Woolf's more experimental stream of consciousness to portray inner experience.

Dubliners· 1914↑ open

Both works explore the inner lives of characters within a single day in an urban environment, using modernist techniques to capture subjective experience.

Ulysses· 1922↑ open

Woolf openly acknowledged Joyce's influence on her use of stream of consciousness to depict a character's inner world over a single day.

↓Passed on to(1)

The Sound and the Fury· 1929↓ open

Woolf's pioneering use of stream of consciousness in 'Mrs Dalloway' directly influenced Faulkner's more fragmented and complex application of the technique.