[1][2] It details a day in the life of Clarissa Dalloway, a fictional upper-class woman in post-First World War England.

With an interior perspective, the story travels forwards and backwards in time to construct an image of Clarissa's life and the inter-war social structure.

The nice day reminds her of her youth spent in the countryside in Bourton and makes her wonder about her choice of husband; she had married the reliable, successful, Richard Dalloway instead of the enigmatic and demanding Peter Walsh, and she "had not the option" to be with a female romantic interest, Sally Seton.

Septimus Warren Smith, a First World War veteran suffering from deferred traumatic stress, spends his day in the park with his Italian-born wife Lucrezia, who experiences major loneliness as a result of her husband's isolating illness.

The novel ends with Clarissa hearing about Septimus's suicide at the party and gradually coming to admire this stranger's act, which she considers an effort to preserve the purity of his happiness.

[9] The narration follows at least twenty characters in this way, but the bulk of the novel is spent with Clarissa Dalloway, Peter Walsh, and Septimus Smith.

Both novels use the stream of consciousness technique to follow the thoughts of two characters, one older and one younger, during one day in a bustling city.

[12] In her essay "Modern Fiction", Woolf praised Ulysses, writing of the chapter set at the cemetery ("Hades") that, "on a first reading at any rate, it is difficult not to acclaim a masterpiece".

[13] However, Woolf's private writings throughout her first reading of Ulysses abound in hostile criticisms, as in this passage: "I... have been amused, stimulated, charmed interested by the first 2 or 3 chapters—to the end of the Cemetery scene; & then puzzled, bored, irritated, & disillusioned as by a queasy undergraduate scratching his pimples.

I'm reminded all the time of some callow board schoolboy, say like Henry Lamb, full of wits & powers, but so self-conscious and egotistical that he loses his head, becomes extravagant, mannered, uproarious, ill at ease, makes kindly people feel sorry for him, & stern ones merely annoyed; & one hopes he'll grow out of it; but as Joyce is 40 this scarcely seems likely.

As Big Ben towers over the city of London and rings for each half-hour, characters cannot help but stop and notice the loss of life to time in regular intervals throughout the story.

For Septimus, who has experienced the vicious war, the notion of death constantly floats in his mind as he continues to see his friend Evans talking of such things.

Woolf's writing style crosses the boundaries of the past, present and future, emphasizing her idea of time as a constant flow, connected only by some force (or divinity) within each person.

An evident contrast can be found between the constant passing of time—symbolized by Big Ben—and the seemingly random crossings of time-lines in Woolf's writing.

Shell shock, or post traumatic stress disorder, is an important addition to the early 20th century canon of post-war British literature.

She interprets Septimus Smith's death as an act of embracing life and her mood remains light, even though she hears about it in the midst of the party.

[15] Her old friend Sally Seton, whom Clarissa admires dearly, is remembered as a great independent woman – she smoked cigars, once ran down a corridor naked to fetch her sponge-bag, and made bold, unladylike statements to get a reaction from people.

[15] When Clarissa meets her in the present day, Sally turns out to be a perfect housewife, having accepted her lot as a rich woman ("Yes, I have ten thousand a year"-whether before the tax was paid, or after, she couldn't remember...), married, and given birth to five sons.

[24] Nevertheless, scholar Kate Haffey observes that some critics have attempted to gloss over the narrative's erotic qualities and reframe Clarissa and Sally's early relationship as a fanciful yet ultimately platonic phase of heterosexual female development: "Despite the quite sexual nature of Clarissa's descriptions of her affections for women, her feelings for Sally are most often constructed as representing a period of girlhood innocence that is sharply contrasted with the adult self […] When this love is not described in terms of its 'innocence,' it is positioned as part of that 'unruly' phase of adolescence, a period incompatible with female maturity.

[26] Similarly, Septimus is haunted by the image of his dear friend and commanding officer, Evans, who is described as being "undemonstrative in the company of women.

"[27] The narrator describes Septimus and Evans behaving together like "two dogs playing on a hearth-rug" who, inseparable, "had to be together, share with each other, fight with each other, quarrel with each other...."[27] Jean E. Kennard notes that the word "share" could easily be read in a Forsteran manner, perhaps as in Forster's Maurice; "The word 'share' […] was often used in this period to describe sexual relations between men.

[30] It was adapted from Woolf's novel by British actress Eileen Atkins and starred Vanessa Redgrave and Natascha McElhone in the title role.

The cast included Lena Headey, Rupert Graves, Michael Kitchen, Alan Cox, Sarah Badel, and Katie Carr.

Adapted from the 1998 novel by Michael Cunningham, the cast features Nicole Kidman as Woolf, Julianne Moore as housewife Laura, and Meryl Streep as editor Clarissa.