OPEN A BOOK,OPEN THE WORLD
《達洛威夫人》是典型的意識流小說，所有的思緒，回顧以及現實都發生在一天內；所有的場景都緊密圍繞人物的思緒展開。作者吳爾芙淡化了直接對話與間接對話的差異性，反之以直敘和『全知性』口吻描述故事的進展。小說記錄了20多個角色的自語和心緒，但著重描述達洛威夫人和史密斯的經歷。
“Mrs. Dalloway is a novel that thinks with extraordinary precision and virtuosity about what modern novelists mean when they talk about character: how characters are born; how they age and grow; . . . how they reach for one another in moments of terror and joy, and, finding nothing solid to hold onto, shrink back, unfurling the dazzling intricacies of their thoughts like the petals of the flowers Clarissa Dalloway sees at the florist’s shop, each burning in solitude, ‘softly, purely in the misty beds.’ The intimacy we are offered with her characters comes at the expense of the intimacy they cannot offer each other.”
—MERVE EMRE, from the Introduction
