I. Mrs. Dalloway, by Virginia Woolf, was published on May 14, 1925 in London, England. The novel follows Clarissa Dalloway and a variety of other characters throughout a day in their lives in London in 1923. Woolf uses a narrative method of writing. Through the structure of the novel, the narrator possesses the ability to move into a character's mind and compose their thoughts and emotions immediately as events occur throughout the day. The main character of the novel, Clarissa, is a middle-aged woman who belongs to the upper middle class of society and is married to an MP, Richard Dalloway. Clarissa's day is full of arrangements for a dinner party she plans to host that evening. During the course of the novel, many other characters such as Peter Walsh, Septimus Smith, Miss Kilman, Sally Seton, and Hugh Whitbread are introduced and characterized through their inner thoughts and dialogues. Not all characters maintain a social bond, but all remain attached through time and the events each has uniquely witnessed. Woolf included her purpose in writing the novel in her diary, stating that she wanted to "show the despicable character of people like Ott (Wilson 10)." (Lady Ottoline Morrell, an English aristocrat and hostess, was a rival of Woolf's in the Bloomsbury group.) Many critics often compare Mrs. Dalloway to Joyce's Ulysses. The novel was read by Woolf in 1922, before she began her own novel, at the request of TS Eliot. The similarity lies in Clarissa Dalloway's walk through London with Leopold Bloom's walk through Dublin. However, the commonalities remain due to parallel characteristics rather than direct influence (10). The character of Septimus Smith allowed Woolf to include stories about her own mind...... middle of paper ...... natural metaphors to symbolize a social hierarchy, Woolf challenges the accepted fact that a woman's place in society is her. destiny, predetermined before his birth by the stipulations of previous generations. Even in the span of a day, Clarissa Dalloway reflects on the choices of her past and their effects on her current situation. She is forced to determine whether insignificant events and decisions can significantly affect a person's life. Through her inner conflict, she realizes that the appearances of herself and society do not always reveal the reality of the current situation. Despite the fact that time only moves forward, we must all recognize that time is unlimited in the expanse of our minds and is never limited to just the present. It is what we decide to build with our present time that defines who we are in the past and who we will become in the future...