Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway considers the meaninglessness of gossip and high society gatherings in comparison with all the wars, conquest and politics happening in the world.

Clarissa Dalloway is fluttering about all day worried about the party she is throwing that night, while her former suitor, Peter Walsh, walks around town thinking about how shallow and pretentious she’s become since he first fell in love with her. He’s gone off to India, become a world traveler, and here she sits with her cushy, sheltered life worried about her guest list. And that guy she married, what a simpleton he is.

Really, Peter’s just bitter that she didn’t pick him. And he’s a hypocrite, too. She may be consumed with her place in society, but he’s really no better. He reads the news and thinks about the importance of his own frivolous interests…

“But cricket was no mere game. Cricket was important. He could never help reading about cricket. He read the scores in the stop press first, then how it was a hot day; then about a murder case.”

A man has to have priorities.

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