Chapter 3 Summary

In Los Angeles in 1949, Laura Brown reads Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway. She reads to avoid getting out of bed, to avoid having to live her life and behave like the wife and mother she's supposed to be. It is her husband Dan's birthday, and Laura cannot face the idea of going downstairs and making breakfast for him and her son, Richie. She promises herself a few more pages of reading in exchange for making Dan a birthday cake later. Laura knows Dan won't mind if she sleeps in, especially since she's pregnant, but she's overcome by a disproportionate sense of guilt when she hears him making the breakfast.

Laura is a post-World War II bride, having married - to his mother's horror - the conquering local hero, returned from war. She was a loner, a bookworm, and one would think that she is...