Chapter 1 Summary

Sally is busy cleaning the bathroom, and Clarissa Vaughan still needs flowers for tonight's party. She decides to get them herself and sets out into a gorgeous June morning to complete the errand. Pausing for a moment on the threshold, Clarissa likens walking out into the sunny day to plunging into a pool of cold water and experiencing the shock of submersion into another element. She enters late-twentieth-century New York City, thrilling to the sights and sounds around her. She is fifty-two, but stepping into this glorious morning, she feels as fine as she did at the age of eighteen; she recalls stepping out into another sunny June morning with Richard, in Wellfleet, when they were young lovers. It was Richard who had given her the nickname "Mrs. Dalloway."

She thinks of Richard's perverse luck - his sharply declining health coincides with his...