Comprehension

1- Mrs Dalloway is going to buy the flowers for the party she is going to host that evening.
2- She feels like when she was young. Moreover she is happy when she is walking in the street, and she thinks life is wonderful.
3- In the extract there are two time dimensions: the present and the past. The past emerges in Mrs Dalloway's mind in form of memory and it is evoked by a sense experience: the squeak of the hinges of the door.
4- Peter Walsh is Mrs Dalloway's youth love and also and old friend of her. She reminds his comic vein, his smile and his eyes, his bad temper and his pocket-knife.
5- Scrope Purvis thinks Mrs Dalloway is a charming woman, who loves life and who reacted to her ill in a positive way.
6- While she is walking in through the streets, Mrs Dalloway reflects about life. She considers it wonderful and she thinks also all the other people, even the poorest and saddest, love it.

Interpretation

1- The narrator is a third person narrator, omniscient and reliable, who does not coincides with the main character and he is not intrusive.
2- The language and style used by Virginia Woolf in her literary production is defined "poetic prose". This language uses repetitions, similes, imagery, lists and alliterations. An example of repetition in the extract is the term "plunge": it is used to give the idea of the sensation fresh air causes on Mrs Dalloway's skin (line 7, line 9).
An example of simile is the comparation Mr Purvis makes thinking of her: she is compared to a bird, a jay, because of her vivacious moods, her grace and charm (line 28).
Two examples of list are the description of some features of Peter Walsh (line 21-22) and the list of the vehicles of London which passes near Mrs Dalloway (line 46-47).
An example of alliteration is in line 15 "... rooks, rising" and in line 35 "...before Big Ben...".
3- The characterization of Clarissa Dalloway is made through her feelings and thoughts, he behaviour, her physical description (made by another character stream of consciosness) and a past dialogue with Peter Walsh she reminds, which makes the reader understand she is ironi and intelligent.
4- Mrs Dalloway's stream of thought starts in the second paragraph of the extract, where she thinks how wonderful is that morning.
5- Vanessa Bell portrays her sister while she is stitching: this underlines what a woman was used to do in that period.
Moreover painting techinique does not allows the observer to see the details of Mrs Woolf's face or room: I think this is another common element with her sister's writing because also Mrs Woolf makes the reader discover the character point to point through its thoughts, and not all immediately.