The extract is taken from Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf. It is the last part of the novel written from 1922 to 1924. This part comprehends the party which Clarissa has been organized long the day. People at the party go to Mr. Bradshaws who is a psychiatric to know about Septimus's suicide. Clarissa and Septimus run parallel, but Clarissa accept to go on living even if it is hard and Septimus commits suicide because cannot tolerate to go on living. This is a modernist text because characters believe on truth and reach a sense in life. The narrator is a third person narrator who adopted Clarissa's opinion.
The extract is organized in eight sequences:
The first sequence is focused on Clarissa's monologue. The reader knows the reaction of Clarissa when comes to know about Septimus's suicide. The narrator makes the reader fell and see what Clarissa feels and sees, infact the dress flamed and her body burnt. The idea of physical reaction is reinforced by aliteracy sound body burnt.
The intelligent reader understands that Clarissa's reaction is a very strong one. It implies that Clarissa was affected on him. She imagine the scene: Septimus threw the window, the bdy on the ground, the ground flashed.
The writer used repetition and onomatopoeic sounds.
The narrator recreates noise and the feelings of Clarissa.
Appealing to visual elements Clarissa interior monologue connects death with blackness. Blackness underlines abstract quality and Clarissa is also annoyed by having come to know about the news during her party. These piece of knew might spoil the party. The exclamation mark at line 10 emphasises the annoyance.
The first sequence convey to the reader Clarissa reaction. The interior monologue underlines the use of poetic language.
The second sequence speaks about life and death in human beings characters. The reader understands what Clarissa's feelings about that are.
The intelligent reader understands the inner feelings and what is happening in external world around her.
She was back in her memory when she was adolescent.
The concept of death coexist with people coming along during the party.
Death is also defined as an act of communication, an attempt (quest).
This sequence is the most modernist one because of the trying to find a centre.
Death becomes the sign, more than the signify and signifier.
Septimus suicide is a sign, a search of communication.
The problem is how to live life. No longer to be able to be close (be intimate).
The rapture is a moment of being: a moment of full perception (rare in life).
The meaning of this sequence is reflection of life and death.
The third sequence contains a quotation from Shakespeare: convey the idea of death. Death has been coming during a moment of happiness.
Clarissa tells herself that Sir Bradshaw is like a evil and she asks herself if Septimus's suicide is his (of the doctor) fault.
The fourth sequence is focused on Clarissa's monologue. Clarissa thinks about her life. She feels fear instead of calm. The language used is poetic one, infact there are some metaphors and some specific terms like crouch and perch.
In the fifth sequence Clarissa feels that Septimus's death is her own disgrace, and she is ashamed that she is an upper-class society wife who has schemed and desired social success. His death is also her disgrace because she compromised her passion and her soul when she married Richard, while Septimus preserved his soul by choosing death.
The sixth sequence underlines the happiness of Clarissa. The narrator makes the reader see and feel it. Clarissa goes back with her memory at many years before at Bourton. This sequence shows the modernism of the text infact she lost herself in the process of living to find it.
The seventh sequence underlines Clarissa's thoughts. She is a-part, not among people during the party. She is watching the sky, a dark sky, solemn sky in her opinion. She is also watching from the window an old lady in the opposite room. The woman is alone, and Carissa asks herself if the lady could see her. Even if there is the party that she has organized, Clarissa prefers stay alone watching a lonely old woman that goes to bed.
The eighth sequence presents another quotation by Shakespeare: this quotation express Clarissa's decision not to be afraid of life but to accept the inevitability of life.
The clocks that have been relentlessly structuring the passing day continue to chime. Despite the sounding clocks and the pressures of the party outside, however, Clarissa manages to appreciate that Septimus has preserved his soul through death. Clarissa began her day by plunging metaphorically into the beautiful June morning, and Septimus has now literally plunged from his window. An effort and commitment to the soul is necessary to plunge into life or death, and Clarissa, who has reached middle age and is keenly aware of the compromises she has made in her own life, respects Septimus's unwillingness to be crushed by an oppressive power like the psychiatrist Sir William. 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.