Comprehension

-What is the passage about? Put the following into the right order

Clarissa is told of Septimus’s death and imagines him throwing himself from a window;

She reflects on life and death.

She thinks of her happiness at Bourton and of pleasure one derives from the activities of day-to-day life.

She imagines the meeting between Septimus and Sir William Bradshaw.

She contrasts her easy and successful life with the death and suffering of other people.

She thinks life can be difficult, but she has the support of her husband.

She thinks of Septimus again but does not pity him.

She decides to go back to her party.

She walks to the window

The sky is not as Clarissa had imagined it.

She parts the curtains and sees an old lady looking at her.

She watches the old lady going to bed.

Interpretation:

-What is Clarissa’s first reaction to Septimus’s death?

Clarissa talked with a man about Septimus’s death.

-What is her view on death?

She considered death as an open resistance, an attempt to communicate and people felt the impossibility to reach a centre to evade.

-What is Clarissa’s view of Sir Bradshaw?

Sir Bradshaw is a great doctor, he worked in a particular way, but he failed to cure Septimus’s outrage.

-What struggle characterizes Clarissa’s life?

The struggle that characterized Clarissa’s life was the incapacity to realize her real desires

-In the last paragraph Clarissa is at the centre of the contrast between her social life and the world outside. Then suddenly a new thought comes to her and she experiences a “moment of being”. What does she suddenly realize?

She realized in the life there were difficulties to solve, it didn’t go in the way people wanted and the death had the control of our end.

-Can you link the two quotations from Shakespeare to Clarissa’s moods?

First quotation linked to Clarissa’s mood because Clarissa thought if when people died they are happier after Septimus’s death. In Othello Shakespeare analised the theme of death.

Second quotation linked to Clarissa’s moods because people suffered before died and death was a relief.

-Focus on the language. Can you explain why many sentences are “loosely constructed”, with lots of repetitions and conjunctions?

Many sentences were “loosely constructed” to render real the way to describe the thought and emotions of Clarissa.

-Go back to the extract from the essay “Modern Fiction”. Do you feel Virginia Woolf’s style manages to convey “life” in a way traditional novels do not?

Virginia Woolf used a style that involved the readers and it was particular in comparison with other novels.

-Choose from both T6 and T7 a line or two you found the most significative and write them in your Quotation Sheet.

T6: The leaden circles dissolved in the air.

     They love life

T7: The leaden circles dissolved in the air.

      If it were now to die, to be most happy

Analysis:

What an Extraordinary Night! is an extract of Mrs Dalloway, written by Virginia Woolf.

It  illustrates the themes of death, the values of life and difference between real life and wanted life.

In this essay the difficulties of life and the reaction of people are expressed. It presented the suicide of a young man shell-shocked. Clarissa, the protagonist makes some considerations about life, death and the emotions that death creates in people, the reactions of relative about death.

This essay is composed of 8 paragraphs. First paragraph introduces the death of Septimus and the reaction of this fact in Clarissa.

In second paragraph there are memories of Clarissa’s past and the thoughts of death.

Third paragraph has a quotation of Shakespeare about death, that explains the emotion can be create in people.

Fourth paragraph analyses the way of work of Sir William Bradshaw, the doctor of Septimus.

Fifth paragraph is about the difficulties of Clarissa’s life and her thought about life.

Next paragraphs underline the difference between life and death, in fact there are the image of an old woman and references to Clarissa’s life and what happens around the world.

At the end of the essay the novelist expresses the difference between Clarissa and Septimus, indeed  the woman accepts her life but it isn’t her real life.