The extract is taken from the Modernist novel Mrs Dalloway, written by Virginia Woolf. It is set at the end of the novel, when Clarissa's party is in full swing and Sir William Bradshaw , who is a psychiatrist arrives with his wife and tells the guests that one of his patients, Septimus Warren, committed suicide.

The extract is made up by 7 sequences.

The first sequence is about Clarissa's reaction when she went to know about Septimus's suicide. First she is annoyed because the news spoiled the party, then the narrator tells the reader how she imagines he suicide. Because of the use of the interior monologue , the reader imagines, sees and experiences the scene of Septimus's suicide in the same way Clarissa does.

In the second sequence the reader can found two different realities coexisting : the inner one, which coincides to Clarissa's thoughts and the external one , which coincides  to the party going on. The topic of this sequence is Clarissa's reaction in front of the idea of death.

In the third sequence the narrator speaks about Clarissa's view of psychiatry, which is not a good one; she thinks that psychiatrists are evils because they want their patients to talk about them, their problems , their inner part, their suffers. This is a really hard and suffering work which could bring people to see life as something terrible and difficult.

In the fourth sequence the main character expresses her attitude to life , her fear. Going on living is an effort for her. In her opinion, a human being has to go on living even the life is difficult and she managed going on living because she has had her husband's support. Septimus has not got a strong relationship as Clarissa has, so he has nobody to whom he can refer to; that's why he commits suicide, the last communicative sign.

In the fifth sequence life I presented as something difficult. Clarissa is thinking about the real sense of her inner reality, which contrasts with the external one. Clarissa is the centre of the contrast between her own life, her inner life and the outside.

In the sixth sequence Clarissa experiences a MOMENT OF BEING and she suddenly realize that she has never been so happy; she can find a sense to her life, she can look at it as a pleasure.

In the last sequence she is at the centre of the contrast between her social life and the world outside. The first one is represented by the party she is giving, made up by chats, talks, people telling news, so characterized by noise and crowd, while the second one is represented by an old woman, who is alone and who is going to bed, so characterized by silence and loneliness.

With the two main characters, Virginia Woolf allegorically represents two different ways to cope with a difficult life: you can go on living if you find a sense to your life, as Clarissa does, or you can decide to end it, as Septimus does.

In the extract the reader can find two quotations: the first one is taken by Shakespeare's  Othello and it is used when the idea of death comes to Clarissa's mind in a moment of intense happiness, in a moment of being. The second quotation is taken by Shakespeare's Cymbeline and it is used to express Clarissa's decision to go on living, differently from Septimus.

As it had been said before this is an extract taken from a Modernist novel. Modernist features are :

•-          the plot is reduced at minimum

•-          the attention is focused on character's thoughts, thanking particular narrative techniques such as the interior monologue and the stream of consciousness

•-          the search of something giving sense to life remind the Modernist " quest "

•-          the novel shows the reader facts which happen in the same time but in different places

•-          the reader can perceive the presence of two dimensions : the inner one and the external one