VIRGINIA WOOLF

WHAT AN EXTRAORDINARY NIGHT!

ANALYSIS

The text is an extract from “Mrs Dalloway” which is a novel; it was written by Virgina Woolf.

This part of the text takes place in Clarissa’s house; Clarissa gives a party and it is in full swing. When Sir Bradshaw arrives mentioning to guests Septimus’s suicide Clarissas’s mood changes. She doesn’t know who Septimus was but nevertheless she is upset. This announcement leads Clarissa to reflect on life and death.

The extract is composed by 8 sequences which follow Clarissa’s “steam of consciousness”; so there isn’t a linear development of the plot.

In the first sequence is described the scene of the party and the coming of Sir Bradshaw who mentions Septimus’s suicide. Clarissa begins her interior monologue and she imagines the young man throwing himself from a window. The scene is described by the third person narrator highlighting the most important moments of the event. To do this the novelist uses very short phrases and repetitions which suggest the slow flow of thoughts in Clarissa's mind. Besides Clarissa expresses her feelings throwing her body reacts to the shock. The suicide leads Clarissa reflect on life and death because she is curious about reasons that led Septimus to commit suicide and, in her opinion, her and her guests’s conversations and occupation hide something that cannot be avoided: death. Death is an “attempt to communicate” because people are alone and without a center.

In the third sequence there is a recapitulation of the first part of monologue using a quotation from Shakespeare.

Later Clarissa asks herself what would have happened if Septimus had met Sir Bradshaw. She doesn’t know that Septimus was a patient of Sir Bradshaw. He is a great doctor, extremely polite to women but capable of indescribable outrage. Clarissa doesn’t believe in the effect of psychoanalysis.

In the next paragraph Clarissa shifts from death to difficulties of life. She knows that she can’t be lived serenely until the end; but she has the support of her husband Richard. We can notice a relationship between Clarissa and Septimus:

both characters have understood that life is difficult, but while Clarissa keeps on living, Septimus decided to commit suicide. Clarissa perceives life as a "profound darkness" where each person has a role.

In the sixth paragraph conveys the idea of pleasure that comes from the activities of day-to-day life.

In the last sequence Clarissa walks to the window and she looks out: she sees a old woman in the opposite window who is looking to her. Clarissa has a silent dialogue with the old woman, who is going to bed, and Clarissa is fascinated by the silence and the calm conveyed the old woman. In addition Clarissa looks at the sky: it isn’t as she imagined it because of the wind and the clouds, but it is “solemn”. The most important element, which closes the scene, is the clock that begins to strike.