Mrs Dalloway Mrs Dalloway (Clarissa) Quotes

[…] she, too, loving it as she did with an absurd and faithful passion, being part of it, since her people were courtiers once in the time of the Georges, she, too, was going that very night to kindle and illuminate; to give her party. (1.6)

Clarissa identifies very closely with all of the material objects – the "stuff" of British society. The fact that her family has been important for generations is something she thinks reflects well upon her.

She had the oddest sense of being herself invisible; unseen; unknown; there being no more marrying, no more having of children now, but only this astonishing and rather solemn progress with the rest of them, up Bond Street, this being Mrs Dalloway; not even Clarissa any more; this being Mrs Richard Dalloway. (1.18)

Clarissa feels that as she’s aged, that she has become invisible. Youth is behind her and now she’s known as the wife of Richard Dalloway and not as Clarissa.

[…] Hugh, intimating by a kind of pout or swell of his very well-covered, manly, extremely handsome, perfectly upholstered body (he was almost too well dressed always, but presumably had to be, with his little job at Court) […]. (1.9)

Hugh takes Britishness to the extreme. He embodies the absurdities of making his identity all about the customs. Basically, he tries too hard. We all know the type.