Learning Paths » 5C Interacting
The text is en extract from the last part of Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dolloway. Indeed, Clarissa’s party had begun and was proceeding well. But Bradshow’s arrival changes the good atmosphere of the party: Mr.Bradshow announces Septimus’s suicide. The news shocks Clarissa and she starts to imagine the scene of the man’s fall from the window.
All that makes Clarissa reflects on death: in the second paragraph, she reflects on the relationship between life and death, and interprets suicide as an attempt to communicate: it is a moment of defiance.
The third paragraph starts with a quotation from Shakespeare’s Othello : it shows death as a moment of happiness differently unlike Clarissa’s thought.
Besides, in this paragraph, Clarrissa thinks about Mr.Bradshow's possible role in Septimus’s death.
Bradshow was his psychoanalyst: Clarissa thinks he is able to take out men’s inner fears and problems, so, probably Bradshow made Septimus’s life unbearable.
Afterwards, Clarissa reflects on her life: she has escaped suicide; Septimus’s suicide shows her the beauty of life, and brings her to a rebirth.
In the end there’s another quotation from Shakespeare's Cymbelin: “Fear no more the heat of the sun”. Clarissa has found the strenth and courage to continue her life and, to return to the party in order to meet Peter and Sally.
The narrator is a third person omniscient narrator, that coincides with Clarissa’s point of view: the large use of interior monologue, indeed, lets the writer express Clarissa’s feeling and thoughts.
The language used is full of poetical images: onomatopoeias in the first paragraph, for example, conveys the redundancy of Clarissa’s thought. Besides there are alliterations, exaggerations(hyperboles) and a large use of punctuation: question and esclamation marksin particular, They are used to stress peculiar aspects of Mrs.Dolloway’s reflections.
Lust but not least, there are two Shakespeare’s quotation used to show different points of view on death. Virginia Woolf anticipates post-modernism using intertextuality.
Going on with the analysis of character, we can find two main characters: Clarissa and Septimus. Both come into contact with the idea of how hard life is and with the idea of suicide but they have two different reactions : Septimus commits suicide, on the other hand, Clarissa is able to continue her life.