Perhaps Woolf's greatest achievement in Mrs Dalloway is the extraordinary sense of time in the novel. Chiming clocks mark the passing of the actual day while the past impinges constantly on the thoughts of the protagonists so that in a very few pages an entire lifetime is spanned. Skilfully constructed patterns of imagery consistently connect different moments in the novel. Knife imagery whichfeatures in Mrs Dalloway in connection with Peter Walsh and with Clarissa herself, who was aware that she "sliced like a knife through everything", is also used in different contexts in Jacob"s Room, The Voyage Out and To the Lighthouse. In almost all Woolf"s novels, isolated moments of significant experience such as James Joyce would have termed "epiphanies", and with which Woolf was supremely concerned,are marked by poetic use of a background rhythm of waves. ...

Virginia Woolf's singular technique in Mrs Dalloway heralds a break with the traditional novel form and reflects a genuine humanity and a concern with the experiences that both enrich and stultify existence.Society hostess, Clarissa Dalloway is giving a party.

Her thoughts and sensations on that one day, and the interior monologues of others whose lives are interwoven with hers gradually reveal the characters of the central protagonists. Clarissa's life is touched by tragedy as the events in her day run parallel to those in the day of Septimus Warren Smith.

The delicate artistry and lyrical prose of Woolf's fourth novel establish her as a writer of profound talent.