In its satirization of 1920s upper-class British society, Mrs Dalloway frequently focuses on Lady Bruton and highlights her sense of self-importance. Lady Bruton has invited Richard Dalloway and Hugh Whitbread for lunch, but she gets impatient because she wants to stop talking about what she sees as "trifling" matters so that she can get to what she really wants, which is for Hugh to write a letter about emigration to the London Times on her behalf. The narrative uses a metaphor to both show how important the issue of emigration is to Lady Bruton and to poke fun at her obsession with a topic that isn't all that pressing:
She was getting impatient; the whole of her being was setting positively, undeniably [...] upon that subject which engaged her attention, and not merely her attention, but that fibre which was the ramrod of her soul, that essential part of her without which Millicent Bruton would not have been Millicent Bruton; [...]
Referring to emigration as the "ramrod of [Lady Bruton's] soul" metaphorically presents her commitment to the cause as a stiff rod that is usually shoved down the barrel of a gun to tamp down the charge. The intensity of such a comparison draws attention to the absurdity of just how much she cares about a relatively unimportant—or at least not pressing—matter. To that end, the narrative satirizes her self-importance when it finally specifies what, exactly, she wants to do: help "young people of both sexes born of respectable parents" move to Canada so that they can have "a fair prospect of doing well." What's absurd about this is that Lady Bruton apparently cares so much about helping "respectable" people move to Canada—after all, the fact that she's only interested in aiding "respectable" people suggests that she exclusively wants to help people who are already fortunate and well-off. The cause that is the very "ramrod of her soul," then, isn't even all that altruistic, since it mainly focuses on people who probably don't need much help in the first place.
Mrs Dalloway satirizes the polite, well-mannered ways that upper-class Britons present themselves, poking fun at just how vapid even the most highly respected people can be. For example, when the charming but shallow Hugh Whitbread helps Lady Bruton write a letter about emigration, Richard Dalloway thinks the end result is practically nonsensical, even if it sounds good. But Lady Bruton, who’s supposedly so devoted to the issue, loves the letter, and this suggests that she cares more about the idea of having a cause than actually advancing that cause in an effective way:
[…Hugh] read out ‘how, therefore, we are of opinion that the times are ripe…the superfluous youth of our ever-increasing population…what we owe to the dead…’ which Richard thought all stuffing and bunkum, but no harm in it, of course, and Hugh went on drafting sentiments in alphabetical order of the highest nobility, […] until, finally, he read out the draft of a letter which Lady Bruton felt certain was a masterpiece. Could her own meaning sound like that?
The snippets of the letter are comically stilted and unnecessarily ornate. For instance, the phrase "superfluous youth of our ever-increasing population" is a needlessly obtuse way of referencing the high unemployment rate in England at the time. And yet, Lady Bruton loves this letter. What she cares about is her appearance, so the actual contents of the letter don’t matter, as long as the language sounds impressive. This becomes clear when she wonders how her "own meaning"—that is, her own ideas—could possibly sound so good, confirming that she mainly cares about how she comes off, not necessarily whether or not her ideas are good or helpful (and it's not even clear whether or not the letter Hugh writes genuinely expresses any of Lady Bruton's original thoughts in the first place, though this obviously doesn't matter to her).
Mrs Dalloway satirizes the superficial nature of the British upper class in the 1920s. The novel particularly focuses on privileged and rather vapid characters like Lady Bruton, who is extremely self-important and cares about the way she's perceived more than anything else. Because she wants to be seen as an influential wealthy woman who contributes to society, she has devoted herself to a cause, which is why she invites Hugh Whitbread and Richard Dalloway over to lunch, hoping they'll help her draft a letter to the London Times outlining the importance of her work. But the cause itself isn't, in reality, all that important or noble—Lady Bruton has devoted herself to helping young Britons emigrate to Canada.
The ostensible aim of this cause is to set young Britons up for success while also helping with England's unemployment problems in the early 1920s. But the narrative acknowledges that very few people see this as important. In fact, even Lady Bruton seems to recognize that her cause is somewhat arbitrary, and—strangely enough—she doesn't hesitate to acknowledge her own superficiality:
[Emigration] was not to them (not to Hugh, or Richard, or even to devoted Miss Brush) the liberator of the pent egotism, which a strong martial woman, well nourished, well descended, of direct impulses, downright feelings, and little introspective power (broad and simple — why could not every one be broad and simple, she asked) feels rise within her, once youth is past, and must eject upon some object — it may be Emigration, it may be Emancipation; but whatever it be, this object round which the essence of her soul is daily secreted becomes inevitably prismatic, lustrous, half looking-glass, half precious stone; […].
What's interesting is that Lady Bruton sees herself as "broad and simple" but doesn't seem to think of this as a bad thing. It's clear, however, that readers probably won't feel the same way, instead recognizing how absurd it is for Lady Bruton to think that social causes like emigration or emancipation—which are so drastically different—are interchangeable, since this just shows how little she actually cares about doing good and how much she cares about making herself look good. By spotlighting how shallow Lady Bruton is when it comes to her conception of doing good in the world, then, the novel satirizes the extent to which members of British upper-class society romanticize the mere idea of behaving honorably without actually caring about whether or not their actions are truly honorable.
After the psychiatrist Sir William Bradshaw insists that Septimus should go by himself to convalesce in the countryside, Lucrezia privately promises her husband that, regardless of what Bradshaw has said, she will come with him. She also refuses, when Septimus asks, to burn the papers containing many of his wild, hallucinatory writings, saying that some of them are actually quite beautiful. Filled, it seems, with appreciation, Septimus then sees her as a beautiful tree:
She was a flowering tree; and through her branches looked out the face of a lawgiver, who had reached a sanctuary where she feared no one; not Holmes; not Bradshaw; a miracle, a triumph, the last and greatest. Staggering he saw her mount the appalling staircase, laden with Holmes and Bradshaw, men who never weighed less than eleven stone six, who sent their wives to Court, men who made ten thousand a year and talked of proportion; [...]
This is a dense, rather confusing metaphor, but it makes sense given Septimus's troubled and often hallucinatory state of mind. Lucrezia is metaphorically portrayed as a "flowering tree," perhaps suggesting that Septimus takes great comfort in his wife's beauty and, in turn, appreciates her ability to shield him from men like Dr. Holmes and Bradshaw. He is, in other words, in a certain "sanctuary" because of her protection, as if branches are hanging down and separating him from these experts who don't seem to actually have his best interest in mind. Indeed, Septimus sees Lucrezia as an element of nature "triumph[ing]" over petty men like Holmes and Bradshaw, doctors who lead lavish lives but hypocritically tell people like Septimus to scale back and approach life with "proportion."
This strange metaphor therefore helps convey the novel's satire of the supposedly sophisticated circles of British society in the 1920s. It also underhandedly suggests that people like Septimus are, despite their mental health struggles, perhaps capable of recognizing beauty in life more than the supposedly learned doctors who treat them.
When the Prime Minister arrives at Clarissa Dalloway's party, he's not nearly as impressive as one might expect him to be. Given how much importance everyone seems to imbue him with, it's ironic that he himself doesn't seem very important at all:
One couldn't laugh at him. He looked so ordinary. You might have stood him behind a counter and bought biscuits — poor chap, all rigged up in gold lace.
This description of the Prime Minister is mockingly disdainful, as the narrator suggests that he looks like he belongs "behind a counter" selling people biscuits. And yet, he's also decked out in "gold lace," which further emphasizes the irony at play: he's technically important and is even dressed in fancy clothes, but he still seems quite drab and ordinary.
And yet, the novel uses this moment to satirize the superficial nature of British high society. When the Prime Minister arrives, nobody makes much of a fuss. "Nobody looked at him," the narrator notes, adding that everyone simply goes on with their conversations. But it's also the case that everyone at the party does register the Prime Minister's presence:
They just went on talking, yet it was perfectly plain that they all knew, felt to the marrow of their bones, this majesty passing; this symbol of what they all stood for, English society.
Even though the Prime Minister is, in reality, an extremely underwhelming figure, everyone at Clarissa's party is in awe of him. In this way, the novel satirizes the ridiculous, elitist obsession that so many of the characters have with "English society" and the respect it supposedly commands. The Prime Minister himself ironically falls short of their expectations, but this doesn't stop them from getting excited about the mere idea of being in proximity to the kind of patriotic power he represents.
