- The novel's second chapter whisks us back to the life of Virginia Woolf, but this time we find ourselves in Richmond, England, in 1923. (For those of you without your calculators handy, that's eighteen years before the death by suicide that we witness in the novel's Prologue.)
- Inside her bedroom in a suburban home, Virginia wakes up after dreaming the first line of the new novel she's writing.
- As she lies in bed, Virginia dozes off again and dreams of walking through a park.
- When she wakes for the second time, Virginia feels good and ready to get up and write.
- After washing up, Virginia goes downstairs, gets a cup of coffee, and visits her husband, Leonard, in their printing room.
- The Woolfs exchange pleasantries—"Good morning," "How was your sleep," etc. (2.9-10)—and Virginia announces that she's going to spend the morning writing. Leonard agrees not to bug her while she's at it, and soon she heads back upstairs.
- Upstairs in her study, Virginia sits down to face her paper and pen. When she picks up her pen and begins to write, the tentative line from her dream flows fully-formed onto the page: "Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself" (2.30).