Do we really know the people around us, at least the closest ones? Of course we think that we know the people we have spent most of our time with and gone through a lot with, however, we can never know somebody completely. As cognitive science stipulates, human beings form their own subjective version of the personality of people based on observable evidence or intuition in order to understand them. Though, it cannot be verified if this, in the own mind, formed up conception of man complies with the reality. Even if this concept of mind is confirmed as accurate by the one of who we are making up the concept, we can never be sure if that it is true, given the possibility that this person might be lying. However, human beings have no other alternative besides of relying on their ability to judge character or on accounts from other persons. Human beings form up persistently such concepts mostly without being aware of it, because it is necessary in order to establish psychological relationships with their fellow men, and to develop sympathy. Virginia Woolf attaches great importance to this phenomenon in her novel Mrs. Dalloway, and throws the reader into a storyline consisting of accounts and thoughts of characters. Out of these, the reader needs to build up the psychological and emotional disposition of the characters, especially of the main character, by himself.
Being published in 1925, Virginia Woolf´s novel Mrs. Dalloway is an exemplar of "Modernist Literature" of which the literature is famous for turning the conventional novel format upside down, and experimenting with time and order, perspective, and point of view. For instance, Virginia Woolf did so with the narrative style in order to achieve the earlier mentioned phenomenon, namely to put the reader in a situation related to real life. In a situation where the reader does not have "direct access to a character´s [inner] thoughts and feelings (Edmondson 20), other than in traditional novels where the literary minds are transparent and the reader knows everything about them.
