London, summer 1923. Clarissa (Vanessa Redgrave), Member of Parliament Richard Dalloway's (Sir John Standing's) wife, sets out on a beautiful morning; she's shopping for flowers for her party that evening. At the same time Septimus Warren Smith (Rupert Graves), a young man who survived the battlefields of Europe, is suffering from a nightmarish delayed on-set form of shell shock. Clarissa's nearly-grown daughter is distant, and preoccupied. In the course of one day, Peter (Michael Kitchen), Clarissa's passionate old suitor, returns from India and is invited to her party, Septimus commits suicide, Clarissa relives a day in her youth (and her reasons for her choice of a life with the reliable Richard Dalloway).