WHAT AN EXTRAORDINARY
NIGHT!

Page 538

Comprehension

1.   
Clarissa is told of Septimus's death and imagines him
throwing himself from a window;

2.   
She reflects on life and death;

3.   
She imagines the meeting between Septimus and Sir
William Bradshaw;

4.   
She thinks life can be difficult, but she has the
support of her husband;

5.   
She thinks of her happiness at Bourton and of the
pleasure one derives from the activities of day-to-day life;

6.   
She contrasts her easy and successful life with the
death and suffering of other people;

7.   
She walks to the window;

8.   
She parts the curtains and sees an old lady looking at
her;

9.   
She watches the old lady going to bed;

10.
The sky is not as Clarissa had imagined it;

11.
She thinks of Septimus again but does not pity him;

12.
She decides to go back to her party.

Interpretation

Ø  What is Clarissa's first reaction to Septimus's death? Clarissa's body went through it first, as always, when she was told of
an accident. She imaged Septimus's throwing himself from a window.

Ø  What is her view on death? In order to Clarissa
death was defiance. It was an attempt to communicate; people feeling the
impossibility of reaching the center which evaded them; closeness drew apart;
rapture faded; one was alone.

Ø  What is Clarissa's view of Sir Bradshaw? Sir
Bradshaw is yet to her obscurely evil, he is capable of some indescribable
outrage.

Ø  What struggle characterises Clarissa's life? The
overwhelming incapacity, one's parents giving it into one's hands, this life,
to be lived to the end, to be walked with serenely; there was in the depths of
her heart an awful fear.

Ø  In the last paragraph Clarissa is at the centre of the contrast between
her social life and the word outside. Then suddenly a new thought comes to her
and she experiences a "moment of being". What does she suddenly realize? She felt suddenly revived. She felt somehow like the young man who had
killed himself, she felt glad that he had done it; thrown it away while they
went on living.

Ø  Can you link the two quotations from Shakespeare to Clarissa's mood? She remembered the line from Shakespeare's Othello, "If it were
now to die, 'twere now to be most happy", because she has lived to regret her
decisions, just as Othello did. At the end of the extract, when Clarissa
identified strongly with him and his dramatic action. Clarissa realizes how
much she has in common with this working-class young man, who on the surface
seems so unlike her. Clarissa repeats the line from Cymbeline, "Fear no
more that heat of the sun", and she continues to endure. She will go back to
her party and "assemble." In the postwar world, life is fragmented and does not
contain easy routes to follow, but Clarissa will take the fragmented pieces and
go on trying to make life up as best she can.

Ø  Focus on the language. Can you explain why many sentences are "loosely
constructed", with lots of repetitions and conjunctions? Maybe the novelist wanted to underline some essential points of the
plot, she wanted to focus the reader's attention on particular sentences, in
which she expresses her feelings and emotions.

Analysis

The extract is taken from the end of the novel Mrs Dalloway written by Virginia Woolf
in 1925. The Bradshaw arrived at the party and explained the reason why they
were late: Septimus Warren Smith, Mr Bradshaw's patient, had killed himself.
Clarissa's body burnt, as always when she was told about an accident.
Distraught, Clarissa wandered into a little room, she was alone. She was still
thinking about the suicide of the man and the thought of death overwhelmed her.
She imaged the meeting between Septimus and Sir William Bradshaw. She saw the
doctor like a person capable of indescribable outrage. She thought about her
life and the support of her husband, he made her life happy. She also appealed
to her feelings in Bourton, she had never been so happy. As a consequence in
order to Clarissa happiness and pleasure derive from the activities of
day-to-day life. While she was contrasting her easy and successful life with
the death and suffering people, she walked to the window and parted the
curtains: an old woman was looking at her. She thought it bizarre to watch the
old woman prepare for bed while her party roared in the next room. Clarissa
experienced a "moment of being" and she realized how much she has in common
with this working-class young man, who on the surface seems so unlike her. She
decided to return to the party. She felt better and stronger.

The last paragraph of the extract contains the climax,
the most intense and important point of the novel, in which Clarissa
indentifies with Septimus and she is glad he killed himself, believing that he
preserved his soul.

The novel Mrs Dalloway is reach of symbols. In the
extract I'm analysing the old woman in the window represents the privacy of the
soul, Clarissa sees the future in the old woman: she herself will grow old and
become more and more alone, since that is the nature of life.

Reading the extract the intelligent reader can notice
two quotations from Shakespeare that are closely connected to Clarissa's moods.
She remembers the line from Shakespeare's Othello, "If it were now to
die, 'twere now to be most happy", because she has lived to regret her
decisions, just as Othello did. Clarissa indentifies with the character of
Othello, who loves his wife but kills her out of jealousy, then kills himself
when he learns his jealousy was unwarranted. She shares with Othello the sense of having lost a love,
especially when she thinks about Sally Seton.

At the end of the extract Clarissa repeats the line
from Cymbeline, "Fear no more that heat of the sun", from a funeral song
that celebrates death as a relief and stresses death's inevitability.