The novel follows Clarissa Dalloway through a single day in England after the Great War in a narrative-style flow of consciousness. Constructed through two small stories that Woolf had previously written ("Mrs. Dalloway on Bond Street" and her unfinished "Prime Minister") the story of the novel are Clarissa's preparations for a party she will offer that night. Using the inside perspective of the novel, Woolf moves back and forth in time, and in and out of the minds of several characters to build a complete picture, not only of Clarissa's life, but of the interwar social structure. .