What an Extraordinary Night!

Analysis of the extract from Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf

The extract is set at the end of the novel Mrs Dalloway when Sir Bradshaw and his wife arrive to Clarissa’s party and mention to the suicide of Septimus Smith, a patient of Sir Bradshaw. Clarissa can’t cope the news of Septimus’ suicide and decides to walk away from her guests into a side room where she lets go of her thoughts and thinks over death and suicide.

The narrator wants the reader to be involved in the text and to this purpose he used a free indirect style, reporting Clarissa’s thoughts just as she thinks them; throughout the inner monologue technique the reader seems to be directly in the character’s mind.

In the first paragraph the inner monologue is particularly evident; Clarissa appears irritated from the topic faced up by Sir Bradshaw because talking of death has ruin her party. She also images Septimus’ suicide and sees the ground rising to the falling body of the man and the sound of the crash.

In the second paragraph the narrator shows how Clarissa’s inner and external perception come together;  the feelings about death across her mind are mixed to the view of the people at the party and the mixture of perception makes Clarissa realize the difference between Septimus and herself: he decided to committed suicide because he couldn’t stand a life covered by chatter and unimportant things any longer and because he felt alone and unable to reach a sense for life while Clarissa chose to live and to face life even if it is difficult.

The following three lines report a quotation from Othello by William Shakespeare; Clarissa is thinking about happiness in life. Being happy gives a sense to life but before being happy you have to be. The reader is here facing a central point of modernist movement: the research of a centre in view to give sense to life and the feeling of lack of certainties.

In the fourth part of the text Clarissa considers what kind of relationship that there had been between Septimus and his psychiatrist, Mr Bradshaw; she has no good opinion of psychoanalysis because it forces the patient to dig into his own consciousness and to face his deepest fears. Via Clarissa’s character is Virginia Woolf talking and expressing her opinion in the paragraph.

The fifth part is e key moment of the extract: life is here compared to terror, men are afraid of it and sometimes committing suicide seems to be the only one solution to escape from the close of life. So people lives in community because they are scared by life and loneliness. On this view Clarissa compares herself to a bird crouched next to another person (Richard) whose presence gradually makes her revive. It comes again the difference between Septimus and Clarissa: she has managed to go on living because she has someone next to her while he is alone and he couldn’t cope with life.

The sixth and the seventh paragraphs deals with the contrast between Clarissa’s past and her present life; she has changed from the materialist and social climber woman she was to become a satisfied and happy woman who takes pleasure from the quotidian actions of life.