Objective Information - Mrs. Dalloway X

"A charming woman, Scrope Purvis thought her (knowing her as one does know people who live next door to one in Westminster); a touch of the bird about her, of the jay, blue-green, light, vivacious, though she was over fifty, and grown very white since her illness" (Woolf 4).

In this quote, Virginia Woolf jumps from the thoughts of Clarissa Dalloway, and into the mind of one of her neighbors; Woolf does this in order to give the readers some information about Clarissa: she is thought well of by those who know of her; she is rather wealthy, as she lives in Westminster; she is a bit bird-like, which Clarissa comments about herself later on in her narrative; and Clarissa is over fifty, and has dealt with some sort of illness. Although Woolf could have let the readers know all this information through Clarissa's thoughts, by using a bystander the information becomes more objective.

Woolf, Virginia, and Francine Prose. Mrs. Dalloway. Orlando: Harcourt, 2003. Print.