Virginia Woolf's stream-of-consciousness masterpiece follows Clarissa Dalloway through the course of a day as she prepares to host a party in the evening. The beautiful June day brings back memories from her happy schoolgirl years. She wonders about her choice of husband--was she wrong to have married reliable Richard Dalloway, refusing the exciting Peter Walsh, and what was the place of her schoolgirl love? The story travels back and forth in time, densely weaving the texture of an intelligent, upper class woman's life lived within the strictures of post-WW I England.