Essay On Clarissa And Septimus

In Mrs. Dalloway Clarissa and Septimus smith have various similarities. Clarissa eventually triumphs over her issues/depression in her life unlike Septimus that eventually loses and commits suicide. Mrs. Dalloway an upper class 50 year old British wife the central character of the novel, struggles constantly to balance her thoughts and world. Her world consists of a fabulous lifestyle such as fine fashion, parties, and aristocratic society, but as she the novel goes on she looks beneath the glamour of her life and searches for a deeper meaning. Looking for privacy, Clarissa has a tendency toward introspection that gives her a capacity for emotion. She is always concerned with appearances around other people and no matter the pressure she keeps herself composed. She uses a lot of useless talking and activity to keep her ideas and emotions safe and locked away, which can make her seem shallow even to those who know her well.

‘Mrs. Dalloway’, by Virginia Woolf is a derivative text of ‘The Hours’, written by Michael Cunningham. The novels both share an important theme of mental health. The circumstances of mental health are commonly sympathetic, and empathetic. The characters Septimus and Clarissa in ‘Mrs. Dalloway’ and Richard, Laura Brown, and Virginia Woolf in ‘The Hours’ show the strongest symbols for this theme. Most of the problems and treatments these characters face are in direct result of the age they live in. Both novels express a relationship between era, illnesses and treatments.

Clarissa is a creditable character in the story. This is because she has such a different set of mind than everyone else and proved that when she talks to Montag about the daisies and her family. Also she has a huge impact on Montag because she makes him question whether or not he likes his job. This moves the story forward and stirs up things.

Women and Expectations in the 1920s Virginia Woolf expresses a lot of different aspects of characters in Mrs. Dalloway, and one of them is the relation of the characteristics of Clarissa Dalloway and women in the 1920s in general. In this story, Clarissa Dalloway is a character who most likely to be expressed as mellow and miserable. She is miserable and sad because she is most likely stuck in her previous life, regarding her previous relationship and memories with somebody. She has been thinking about it every single day and she cannot get rid of it. Her unhappiness is caused by her lack of activities and social life, and she was encouraged to choose quick decision by her mindset at that time period.

Clarissa Dalloway walks across London towards the florist’s. As she approaches, the narrator says; “Bond Street fascinated her; Bond Street early in the morning in the season; its flags flying; its shops…one roll of tweed in the shop where her father had bought his suits for fifty years” (13). While Clarissa is in Mulberry's flower shop, a violent explosion from a motorcar is heard. People spread the rumour that the passenger is a famous person; “the Prince of Wales, the Queen, the Prime Minister” (17). Septimus Warren Smith, standing in Bond Street, also hears the explosion. The writer uses this place, an emblematic London street, to switch from one character’s mind to another’s. The reader goes from Mrs. Dalloway’s nostalgic remembrance to the disturbed mind of a World-War-I veteran who suffers from shell-shock. Septimus and his wife, Lucrezia, leave Bond Street and continue walking. As they approach Regent’s Park, Lucrezia tells her husband that it is time to see the doctor. When she says “time”, Septimus sees Evans and the clock strikes eleven forty-five. Septimus confuses his dead friend and officer in World War I and Peter Walsh. Septimus is disturbed. The narrator says; “He [Septimus] had only to open his eyes; but a weight was on them; a fear. He strained; he pushed; he looked; he

They had undergone severe psychological duress, and were thought of as weak and unmanly. In a novel by Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway, a man known as Septimus is a character with shell shock. His young wife and him have a very broken relationship. She is not empathetic to his condition, and does not understand what he is going through. Their problematic relationship is first shown when Septimus is frightened by a car going down the street in London. He then sees a plane, and believes that he is receiving some sort of secret message, while Rezia takes the message in a way that makes her upset and angry towards her husband. She is hurt by the way he is behaving, and his constant depression, especially because the doctor he is seeing said that there is nothing wrong with him. She wants him to be normal, and seems to regret marrying him, instead of being kind and understanding to his condition. Septimus sees the world as a cruel, evil place, and Rezia sees this, but she does not agree, and she wants him to get over it and go back to normal. Since he has shell shock, her constant displeasure only worsens their relationship. In another part of the novel, Septimus confuses Peter with a man he served with in the army. He is visibly upset and frightened. Later on, Rezia and Septimus see Dr. William Bradshaw, who Septimus believes is evil. Bradshaw believes that Septimus should be isolated in the country, away from Rezia. He arranges for a pick up that evening. Later that evening, Septimus and Rezia finally connect, because she finally is empathetic and kind. Rezia is hopeful that Septimus will return to normal, but then Bradshaw and Holmes come to retrieve Septimus, who then kills himself due to pressure from the doctors. When Rezia and Septimus connected, it showed that Septimius was able to recover with the proper support, not by the forcible methods the doctor were

Lisa Zunshine establishes through her theory “Theory of Mind and Experimental Representations of Fictional Consciousness” the readiness of human cognitive abilities to read physical behaviour as indicative of mental states. Although seemingly automatic, “mind-reading” abilities are not always correct. Readers' interpretation of physical cues stem from personal thoughts and beliefs and dominate narratorial voices that skew intended meaning. Zunshine’s “Theory of Mind” explores behavioural interpretation in Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway character Septimus Warren Smith. The novel challenges readers “mind-reading” abilities in deciphering Septimus’s mental illness through dominant narratorial voices and levels of intentionality and their own interpretations.

but she envied Clarissa’s class. Furthermore, mental health is essential because throughout the novel Septimus is misunderstood and is not helped properly when it comes to his PTSD. Sir William, Dr. Homles, and Rezia believe he is being selfish and even Dr. Homles called Septimus a coward when he commits suicide. The novel shows the ignorance people had when it came to mental

Virginia's inability to interact with servants in a perfect manner grants the reader a deeper understanding of the intricacies of Clarissa Dalloway. Clarissa so elegantly talks to others in an almost perfect manner, she even has the ability to interact with her servants perfectly, but in reality her desire for perfection in social interactions leaves her feeling internally judged and criticized. Her internal struggles are noticeable in her interactions with Peter. While visiting Peter, Clarissa feels judged as she thinks of her life and says to herself, "what have I made of it? What indeed?

In their scene at the park, Rezia uses many means to distract Septimus from his reflections by pointing out planes and a troop of boys playing cricket (22-23). While having little to no understanding on her husband’s condition, she is the most willing to help him adjust back to normal life. Woolf uses characters like Dr. Holmes and Sir William Bradshaw to criticize many of the doctors after the war for pushing aside soldiers suffering from shell shock and claiming, “ there was nothing whatever the matter” (72). She also addresses her displeasure with the treatment of mental illnesses, depression, and other psychological conditions that were ignored by doctors. This could stem from Woolf also being afflicted by many psychological problems throughout her life. In Jean M. Wyatt’s “Mrs. Dalloway: Literary Allusion as Structural Metaphor,” she explains that the reason Septimus ended his life was because he saw an innocence and life in Rezia that he no longer possessed and decided that by committing suicide he was giving society a kind of renewal (443). His war experience, like that of many soldiers, shattered his perception of life and left fragments of it so deeply instilled in his life after the war that it impaired his ability to regain his past perceptions of life

What sets Clarissa apart is what damns her. "Your merit is your crime" Anna Howe tells her (74), "You can no more change your nature than they can theirs." But this intractability is Clarissa's inheritance from the Harlowes. Anna Howe says, significantly, of Clarissa: "I am fitter for this world than you; you for the next than me" (19). Not only is this an apposite description, it sets up the incontrovertible opposition between the two "worlds" that determines the impracticability of Clarissa's life. Howe might as well be saying, you are fitter to be dead than I. Anna's observation describes the difficulty of persisting in a state of grace. Innocence, and

Even though Woolf tried often to hide her feelings, many knew of her distress, as she makes these inner battles obvious through her short story, Mrs. Dalloway. This story is of Clarissa who is throwing a grand party shopping and Septimus who is a man who had to leave the war on account of him slowly losing his sanity. Septimus commits suicide when brought back from the war. The two characters’ lives are connected when the doctor who was treating Septimus arrives at the party and tells Clarissa about the tragedy that has just occurs. The connection between the main character and the author can be made when she contemplates and admires a man for having the courage to throw him out of a window to end his suffering.

Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway is a piece of literature that helped to push forward a culture of writing that she felt was otherwise stuck. Along with a style that transcended how people thought about telling a story, was the commentary. The story is riddled with commentary on politics, society, war, class, and the medical system. Virginia Woolf lets her worldviews bleed into her writing in a way that is somehow both subtle and also still direct. She lets the characters have their own experiences and dialogue, which show her views from different perspectives and without just coming out and saying it. The commentary that this is most evident in is Woolf’s commentary on doctors and the medical system as a whole. Throughout Mrs. Dalloway, Virginia Woolf shows the incompetence of doctors and the medical system through Clarissa and Septimus’s interactions with them.

Humans possess the feature of long-term memory, which enables their past experiences to continuously affect their contemporary lives. Though long-term memory is a significant component in the development of an individual’s identity, many times this factor prevents one from discovering opportunities to modify one’s present and future lives. One’s long-term memory can cause a person to revisit and enhance false emotions about one’s past to ultimately lose sense of reality. In Mrs. Dalloway, Peter Walsh and Clarissa Dalloway reflect upon their younger selves; however, they both result in different outlets to combat these thoughts. Peter keeps a pocket-knife with him in case his past with Clarissa confronts him though he chooses to see Clarissa. As Peter physically comes back into Clarissa’s life, she is determined to change her feelings that her long-term memory provokes in her especially concerning Peter. However, Rezia and Septimus take a different approach to dealing with their long-term memories, as Rezia wants to rekindle her pre-war relationship with Septimus, which is unsuccessful. Virginia Woolf uses the motifs of cutting and sewing simultaneously to illustrate that to find contentment in one’s current life, one must cut off one’s past to be able to progress forward into a new life.

A lot can happen over the span of about twenty four hours. As a matter of fact, all the events that occur in the novel Mrs. Dalloway take place in a little less than twenty four hours. It starts off with Clarissa discussing the need to get flowers for her party that night. Throughout the book the point of view switches between different characters while also shifting in and out of the past to present time. Suddenly the reader will go from hearing Clarissa Dalloway describe a time from her youth to Peter Walsh’s thoughts on society. Due to the fast past changing and multiple insights on events, the plot in very thick and difficult to thoroughly explain. If one was to describe the plot briefly, they could say that Mrs. Dalloway is about a women in London after the war who is prepping for her party later in the evening. Over the course of the day Clarissa runs into two past relationships which make her travel back to when they were together. At the same time she is stressing over the present and the challenges she faces. During this time the reader learns of the more difficult problems that Septimus and Lucrezia Warren Smith; his mental breakdown after the war. All of this occurs over one hundred ninety four pages and less than twenty four hours. Author Virginia Woolf uses incredible writing styles and techniques in the novel Mrs. Dalloway to show how import time is in life.