Clarissa and Septimus by Virginia Woolf

The extract is taken from Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway (1925). Considering the structure, it can be organized into 5 different sections: the first, from line 1 to line 20, is set at the florist, the second from line 21 to line 34, is marked by a sudden event, the bursting of a tire of a car. It follows the third sequence: the disapproval of people’s curiosity and prejudices. The fourth sequence has the aim of presenting Septimus, Mrs. Dalloway’s alter ego. Indeed, the two characters never meet but Woolf weaves their stories. Finally, the last sequence regards the Septimus’ pathological disease and the relationship with his wife Lucrezia.
The first part of the text shows Virginia Woolf’s skill in writing, because she involves all the reader’s senses. The aim is to make he/she feel as if he was there, in a sort of crescendo and climax of beauty. In order to better understand the relationship between the flowers and their colors:

Every human being tries to find a balance between external and internal reality. Mrs. Dalloway is looking for a balance for herself. External reality is made up of once relationship, once interaction and everyday reality. Inner reality is internal reality, made up of psychological and emotional feelings, words and believes, and it is the aim of modern fiction. Mrs. Dalloway wants to find a symbiosis between the two realities. The lady has to recompose the struggle between the two. The celebration and the crescendo are synthetize in “beauty and scent and color”. Virginia Woolf is highly synesthetic because modern fictions aims the reader see, hears, touches, smells. She also works on the syntax in a sort of chiasmus: external reality changes inner reality. She hears a roar and this changes the flow of their thoughts.

With the sentence: “passing invisibly, inaudibly, like a cloud shift, veil-like upon hills, falling indeed with something of a cloud’s sudden sobriety and stillness upon faces with a second before had been utterly disorderly”, Virginia Woolf make the reader visualize rumors from one person to the other. The car does not contain anyone important, but everyone has deep veneration for it. From far above the story itself, the reader hear Virginia Woolf meditating, reflecting on the crowd's need to be associated with Greatness. The car is just a car and even the Queen, if she were inside, is only a woman.

A new character now is introduce. Septimus Warren Smith. The name made the reader be alert. He is never connected with Mrs. Dalloway, but the element that ties the two characters is external reality: the car. Strangers saw there was something unusual in the face of the man. Right from the start there is something that displaces the reader in order to create curiosity. The cinematic camera previously focuses on Mrs. Dalloway, is now concentrates on Septimus. The sentence are short in respect of the previous. Music is a leitmotiv that create the unit of the passages and set the atmosphere. The parallelism is never sad openly. The two people, distance in space are very near because both have horror inside.

Details concerning the description of Septimus Warren Smith and his wife:

Septimus’ reaction in front of the roar is hyperbolic. He suffers of pathology. He cannot distinguish from outside and inner reality. There is a need to find a balance-self. He feels people was pointed him. He is unbalance even on his feet, he is instable. All his reaction are “too much”. Septimus wife is embarrassed.

The idea of estrangement is encapsulated in last lines. An Italian lady has a symbolic function, he embodies the feeling of estrangement as Mrs. Dalloway: the beauty of the world and the monster inside. The idea of not felling a part.