The extract is taken from the second chapter of Virginia Woolf's novel.
Right from the first two words "Mrs Dalloway", which are also the title, the reader expects she's a married woman.
The scene is set in a particular morning of June, in London, when Mrs. Dalloway decides to buy the flowers herself because her servant, Lucy, has too work to do. The narrator talks about Rumpelmayer's men too, who are coming to take the doors off their hinges. The reader can understand that they are organizing a party or an event.
Then the narrator calls Mrs. Dalloway with her real name: Clarissa. When she goes out, the narrator enters in her mind and begins to explore and to report her stream of consciousness, in order to involve the reader in the story.
First of all Clarissa thinks it's a beautiful morning. This thought makes Clarissa goes back in the past and remember when she was eighteen and lived in Bourton: it was a morning like this and, standing on the terrace, she feels the fresh and calm air, like the flap of a wave. She was looking at the flowers and at the trees until Peter Walsh said her if she was thinking to vegetables. She answered that she preferred men to cauliflowers. In this way, the narrator introduces another character, Peter Walsh: the intelligent reader can understand they were probably lovers when they were young and that they are ironic and have a strong personality.
After the revocation of this memory, Clarissa comes back to the present and thinks that Peter is now in India, that he would be back in these days and that his letters are very boring. It can be comprehended that they are still in contact probably as friends and that Clarissa is very interested on him because she remembers everything about him: his smile, his eyes, his behavior, his actions.
Then the narrator introduces another character, Scrope Purvis, her neighbor, and describes Clarissa from from Scrope's point of view: he thinks she's a charming woman, looks like a bird, a jay, has got something of blue-green, light, vivacious but she has white hair because of her illness. He is walking on the street but Clarissa doesn't see him because she is lost in her thoughts: London always creates a feeling of serenity, positivity, relax.
Clarissa's reflections are interrupted by the Big Ben sound, which is marking the passing hours and gives the story a sense of slowness and melancholy: it reminds people the life is short. The concept of time, or better, of hours is a central theme in Virginia Woolf's works.
Then, Clarissa's thoughts change; she looks and listens around her : there are people, tramp, movement, carriages, omnibuses, motorcars, the sound of a plane... She thinks she loves all this, because it is London.