Jessica Bais 5B
The text is an extract taken from Mrs Dalloway, a modernist novel written by Virginia Woolf in 1923. It is set at the end of the novel: Clarissa's party is going on when Mr. Bradshaws arrives with his wife and gives Clarissa the news of Septimus's suicide, his patient. The whole extract is focused on Clarissa's reaction and thoughts about the Septimus's tragic decision.
The text develops in seven sequences. The first one deals with Clarissa's first reaction to Septimus's suicide: she seems angry with the Bradwhaws to have given her a terrible news in a moment so intense and wonderful as her party. In this part, the writer uses lots of answers and exclamations to underline the confusion, the doubts and the curiosity of Clarissa about the tragedy. The narrator explores her mind deeper and talks through her thoughts and sensations: she's visualizing the moment of suicide and she's trying to imagine the terror of the death. The narrator explains that when somebody talks her about a tragedy she always feels the same sorrow in her mind and so the intelligent reader can understand Clarissa is a very sensitive person.
The second sequence deals with Clarissa's thoughts about life and death: this is the inner temporal dimension, the dimension of her consciousness. There is a strong opposition between Septimus and Clarissa (and other people): Septimus has choice the death, Clarissa and other people have choice the life and they're still living even if Septimus exists no longer. Clarissa considered the death a signal, a way to communicate something which probably Septimus was unable to convey in life, because the life is only corruption, chatter and lies.
But in the same time, there is also a external temporal dimensions: while Clarissa is reflecting she also perceived the noisy of the party and the chatter of the guests.
In the third sequence, the narrator still explores Clarissa's mind and explains her conceptions about psychiatry (to say the truth, Virginia Woolf expresses her own thoughts trough the character of Clarissa): she talks about Mr. Bradshaws in a negative way and she considers him evil. The reader can understand she hates the psychiatry.
The fourth sequence has the function to express Clarissa's terror of life and of death at the same time. She often feels the constant presence of death behind her and the fragility of her life. There is again the opposition between Septimus and Clarissa: even if they're both afraid of living she is still alive thanks to the support of her husband Richard; instead, he has killed himself.
In the fifth sequence, she still reflects about death and life. The aim of the sequence is to remark the absurdity of life: while she's standing in her little room, wearing her evening dress, other people in the world are dying.
In the sixth sequence Clarissa expresses her happiness to be still alive. She's happy to live intensively the simple things and every single moment of live, like straightening the chairs, pushing in one book on the shelf or contemplating the sky, the night.
In the last sequence, Clarissa goes to the window and looks out: she loses herself observing simple things as the sky, the movement of clouds and an old woman in the house in front of her. Now there is another opposition of two different situations: the old woman, in the other house, is alone, in her world, in her isolate life; Clarissa, who is looking her, is immersed in the noisy and chatter of a party, even if her mind is isolated and alone as the old woman. Then, the strike of the hours (the central theme in Virginia Woolf's novel) stops Clarissa's reflections and makes her come back in the real dimension of time: she finally decides to go back to her guests and to her party.