There are different levels of connections depicted in Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway. While some characters are interconnected through explicit relationships such as friends or spouses, others are just mere strangers who still share in the novel’s important moments. According to Woolf, the world is a work of art and we are all pieces of the tapestry. The shifting point of view in Mrs. Dalloway shows how all these different pieces work. Clarissa Dalloway is the center of the novel and from her the web extends to characters such as Peter Walsh, an old friend whose proposal she had rejected, Sally Setton, a girl she had known in her youth, and Elizabeth and Richard, her daughter and husband. With people close to her, Woolf relies on memory and introspection to tether them to Clarissa’s story. She recalls Peter’s proposal and, following her rejections, his subsequent remarks about how she would become a rich man’s wife. This affects her present day outlook on herself and how others see her as just an extension of Richard Dalloway. In this way, Woolf utilizes people from the past to inform Clarissa’s present and show their part in her weaving together a larger story.

The next level involves minor characters who have brief appearances in Clarissa’s story but make an powerful impact. Lady Bexborough brings up feelings of inadequacy for Clarissa, who is hidden in her husband’s shadow and envies the other woman’s autonomy. Hugh Whitbread also evokes this feeling in Clarissa when she becomes self conscious of her appearance beside him. These characters act as people who revolve in close circles to Clarissa and influence her narrative indirectly by acting as mirrors. On another level are strangers Clarissa meets on her day out. Septimus Smith is introduced when a car backfires on a street both he and Clarissa are on. This shared moment cements Woolf’s idea that everyone plays intertwining roles in the world: the narrative shifts among several people’s perspectives in this scene, showing their inner thoughts and how this event links them together. Septimus’ story then becomes another focus of the novel, even though he is not directly connected to Clarissa.

Woolf does not highlight the degrees of separation between the characters, but instead chooses to focus on how these characters are brought together by circumstance and chance. The connections become more intertwined as Woolf moves into the point of view of different characters. One section focuses on Peter Walsh after he leaves Clarissa’s house. He heads to the park she was in earlier and sees Septimus and his wife Lucrezia, and comments on how Clarissa would most likely start a conversation with the couple. This moment ties these characters to both each other and back to Clarissa through memory and present day action, this melding Woolf’s literary techniques together. In the next part, scenes of Clarissa preparing for her party are interspersed with Septimus visiting a doctor, showing how their lives may not be tangential but that there still exists juxtaposition between them. Scenes such as this one help form a more intricate chain of connection between the characters as well as helps the draw the reader deeper into the artistry of the novel.