The narrative tone in Mrs Dalloway is insightful, ruminative, and sprawling. The narration often strikes a delicate balance between perceptively exploring its characters' deepest thoughts and lightly satirizing some of their more ridiculous or self-aggrandizing beliefs. This is especially the case when Richard Dalloway goes to lunch at Lady Bruton's with Hugh Whitbread, since both Lady Whitbread and Hugh Whitbread are rather superficial and self-important. The tone in this scene, therefore, is mocking and humorous, as the novel subtly pokes fun at how self-serious certain people in the upper echelons of British society in the 1920s can be.
And yet, the tone never becomes overtly hostile, as Woolf refrains from flat-out mocking her characters. To that end, even the most ridiculous and shallow figures are given a sense of interiority. For instance, although Lady Bruton's obsession with the cause of emigration is rather superficial and ridiculous, the novel still dives deep into her thoughts, making it hard to immediately dismiss her as a character. Of course, the novel does use her to satirize the superficiality of upper-class British society, but it unveils this intention slowly and with great care while also allowing Lady Bruton to be a full, three-dimensional character with her own unique psychological traits. As a result, the overall tone of the novel is satirical and slyly humorous while remaining observant and curious about its characters.
