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Style

In Mrs Dalloway all of the action, excepting flashbacks, takes place on a single day in June. It is an example of stream of consciousness storytelling; every scene closely tracks the momentary thoughts of a particular character. Woolf blurs the distinction between direct and indirect speech throughout the novel, alternating her narration with omniscient description, indirect interior monologue, direct interior narration follows at least twenty characters in this way, but the bulk of the novel is spent with Clarissa Dalloway and Septimus Smith.

Because of structural and stylistic similarities, Mrs Dalloway is commonly thought to be a response to James Joyce's Ulysses, a text that is often hailed as one of the greatest novels of the twentieth century. Woolf herself derided Joyce's novel. The Hogarth Press, run by her and her husband Leonard, had to turn down the chance to publish the novel because of the obscenity law in England.