"What an extraordinary night" is an extract from Virginia Woolf's Mrs Dalloway.

The title makes me expect that it will be about a night and "extraordinary" means that something strange and positive is going to happen.

The text is organized into seven paragraphs . It is about what happens in Clarissa's party and it is also an inner monologue of Clarissa thinking about why Septimus had killed himself.

The start of the extract coincides with the one of Clarissa's monologue and she is asking herself why the Bradshaws speak about the Septimus' suicide at her party. She is wondering why they speak about death while all the others are enjoying themselves. This is a very important paragraph because it sums up what the all text will be about: death.

Clarissa is so surprised that she goes in a side room and starts thinking about Septimus' death and consequences in others' life. She sees that people are going on without thinking about it even if a man had flung his life away. Clarissa thinks also about why he did that. She thinks that it could have been an attempt to reach the unreachable centre which people evaded and thinks also that there is an embrace in death. This paragraph tells to the reader the corruption of the world and the impossibility to reach a supernatural centre.

In the next paragraph Clarissa supposes that Septimus had had a passion in literature and he had gone to William Bradshaw to speak about this passion. Maybe he had been so impressed that he came to the conclusion that "Life is made intolerable" and if life is like that he is sure death will be better. This paragraph is an attach to the corruption of society because mankind make life intolerable. 

Then Clarissa feel the terror and the awful fear she felt in the morning. She crouch herself only with Richard because she feels like a bird gradually reviving. She has Richard to feel better but Septimus had no one to feel better with and it could be one of the reasons why he killed herself.

In the 5^th paragraph she tells about why she feels so feared. She thinks about that every day a man or a woman die and only their relatives know that he/she is death. She thinks also about what she had done to reach her position and she doesn't feel good because she hadn't done so admirable things. This paragraph is about the loneliness of death because no one thinks no longer about you and you are forgotten in a couple of days.

Even if she is deeply thinking about death she feels incredibly happy. Nothing equal the simple action of everyday life like straightening the chairs or pushing in one book in the shelf. This means that happiness is not in the complicated or heroic deeds but in the simple actions of everyday life.

The apex of the all extract is the sky. Clarissa looks out at the sky and she thinks that it represents a little part of her and then she looks at the opposite side and she sees an old woman living her life. Clarissa comes to the conclusion that she mustn't pity Septimus, because life goes on even if one dies. But she feels also very like him because she feels glad she had thrown away his life, but she knows that even if people die, the others had to go on.