Mrs. Dalloway

This is the story of a day in the life of Clarissa Dalloway, an upper-class housewife who lives in London. In the morning she walks to her neighborhood flower shop to get items ready for a party she will host that evening. After she returns from her errands she is visited unexpectedly by Peter Walsh, an old friend who shares a long and complicated history with Clarissa. Years before she had refused his marriage proposal, something that continued to plague Peter. He asks her if she is happy with her husband, Richard, but before she is able to answer they are interrupted by her daughter, Elizabeth. Peter leaves Clarissa's and goes to Regent's Park.

The next part of the book switches viewpoints to Septimus, an injured World War I veteran who now suffers from shell shock. Before the war Septimus was an intellectual, poet, and lover of Shakespeare, but his life changed when he enlisted for patriotic reasons. Now he had lost all of his desires for himself and for the country he fought for. On this day he and his wife, Lucrezia, are also in the park, although they are waiting for his appointment with Sir William Bradshaw, a highly revered psychiatrist. When they finally have their meeting Sir William does not listen to anything he has to say, instead falsely diagnosing him. He plans to send Septimus to a mental institution in the country, away from Lucrezia. The story continues chronicling this extraordinarily significant day in the lives of Clarissa, Richard, Peter and Septimus.

Mrs. Dalloway is one of the best known novels by Virginia Woolf, originally created from two short stories that were put together in book form and published in 1952. It is also the story that inspired the Pulitzer prize winning 1998 novel The Hours, which was later adapted into the 2002 Oscar winning movie of the same title. Clearly, Mrs. Dalloway has affected generations of women and artists, and will absolutely continue to do so.