Superficiality in Mrs. Dalloway

'Clarissa could not be wider of the mark when she "thank(s) heaven" that "the war was over". Virtually every character we encounter is to some degree a living casualty of the class-based superficiality that led to the conflict and continues to dominate society.' Explore and discuss. The war and its effects were far from over by June 1923; they were simply put out of mind by the upper classes in order to return to …

…to see the shallowness of her life in London. Most significantly, this last phrase invites the reader to question if the other characters are "there". The significance of the stream of consciousness style then becomes important. Through a continually changing narrator we can examine the attitudes of other characters and finally understand that each character is experiencing the effects of the superficiality in London society to different extents and are therefore "there" to different extents.