Comprehension:

>>Where is Mrs. Dalloway going?
Mrs. Dalloway is going to buy some flowers.

>>What is her mood?
She is calm and happy.

>>The passage mixes two different time dimensions. Which are they? What sound evokes the past in Clarissa's mind?
Virginia Woolf mixes two different days: the one she is living and another of her youth. They are linked by the same sensation: What a lark! What a plunge! The sound that evokes the past in Clarissa's mind is the squeak of the hinges.

>>Who do you think is Peter Walsh? What does Clarissa say of him?
I think that Peter Walsh was a man that Clarissa loved. In the first part the reader does not know very much about him. Clarissa only says he would come back from India in few days and that she remembers his eyes, his smile, his grumpiness and a few sayings like this about cabbages, but his boring letters no more.

>>What does Scrope Purvis think of Clarissa?
Scrope Purvis thinks that Clarissa is like a bird a jay, blue-green, light and vivacious, though she was over fifty and grown very white since her illness.

>>What are Clarissas' thoughts while walking through the streets in Westminster?
While walking through the streets of Westminster Clarissa thought such fools are people: they love life even if they are poor and unhappy.

Interpretation:

>>What kind of narrator is used?
• 3rd person
• Omniscient
• Reliable
• Coinciding with the main character
• Not intrusive

>>Focus on style. Critics have often used the term "poetic prose" with reference to Woolf's style which features an abundance of repetitions, similes, imagery, lists and alliterations. Find at least one or two examples of each.
REPETITIONS: lines 5-6: What a morning, What a lark! What a plunge!
line 10: How fresh, how calm
lines 17: was that it, -"I prefer men to cauliflowers"- was that it?

SIMILES: line 5: fresh as if issued to children on a beach
line 11: like the flap of a wave, the kiss of a wave

IMAGERY: line 27: a touch of the bird about her, of the jay, blue-green.light, vivacious

LISTS: line 21: his eyes, his pocket-knife, his smile, his grumpiness
line 44-51: In people's eyes, in the swing, tramp, and trudge; in the bellow and the uproar; the carriages, motor cars, omnibuses, vans, sandwich men shuffling and swinging; brass bands; barrel organs; in the triumph and the jingle and the strange high singing of some aeroplane overhead

ALLITERATION:
>>Focus on character. How is Clarissa's character created? Through
Clarissa's thoughts and feelings, dialogue and the writer's use of imagery and symbols.

>> Where does Clarissa's stream of thoughts start? How different is Virginia Woolf's technique, also called "interior monologue" from Joyce's "stream of consciousness"?
It starts at line 30. It is different from Joyce's "stream of consciousness" because it reports only Ulysses' thoughts, without any logical link.

>>The painting below is by Virginia Woolf's sister, Vanessa Bell, an artist who was at the centre of the avant-garde Bloomsbury Group. Can you see any similarities in the way the two sisters portray characters?
Yes, they both do not produce a detailed description of the characters. But they only give an impression, that has to be cleared and defined by the reader/observer himself.