Woolf the Painter

The characters explored in Mrs. Dalloway are some of the most fleshed-out and intriguing I've personally encountered in literature. Woolf's uses her powertool, free-indirect discourse, and her apt writing prowess to make beautiful character portraits, whose ambiguities let the reader create their own opinions on the pieces. From this, Woolf has made for us a gallery of excellent character paintings, derived from her clues in the novel and the interpretations by the viewers.
Richard Dalloway is one character that may seem one-dimensional at first, but is saved by Woolf's prose to become multifaceted. His central conflict, his ability to tell his wife that he loves her, can be interpreted in multiple ways. Is he an amiable guy whose busy life has simply disconnected him from his love? Or is he so selfishly preoccupied with work that he under-appreciates his own spouse? Woolf's free indirect discourse tunes into the mental frequencies of the character to give a fascinating depiction of Richard, without answering our biggest questions up front.
Septimus is another whose detailed dualities leave the reader with plenty to think about. The noble poet and his story of going off to war leaves an unusual taste; was his quest being mocked by Woolf or simply playing a part in her overall critique of war? The passage where she accounts his motives and wartime activities assaults the reader with bitter visions of war along with strange activities by Septimus at the same time. One example would be when Evans dies and Septimus feels nothing, and even congratulates himself for it. Woolf manages to show the awful consequences of war while displaying an ambiguous picture of her character, blurring the lines of Septimus's disturbing lack of feeling with the overarching villainy of war. Septimus's death also treads a middle path between tragedy and his own expression. The setup prior to his suicide does remind one of a tragic storyline, with his tender interactions with Lucrezia and such, but the actual death and his activities elsewhere in the novel express many feelings different feelings on life. His observations flip between beautiful and utterly confusing, and for every optimistic tinge in his thoughts there is a comment on the inevitablity of his death. Woolf never makes it seem as though suicide can be the only way out, as her writing for Septimus's mind seems to change his course of fate every few sentences. Her writing skill fills out the colors each of the characters dilemmas, so that none of them feel unexplored, but none are set in stone either.