Relationship Between Clarissa and Septimus in Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
Throughout the novel, Woolf contrasts Clarissa with Septimus Warren Smith, who is suffering from mental health after World War I. At first, there are several differences concerning how the two characters see themselves and how other people see them. Both have an external as well as an internal perception of the world, in terms of reality and imagination, which separate and unite them at the same time. By having a closer reading of the characters Septimus and Clarissa, it is easy to identify their relationship. Both characters mirror each other by sharing similar experiences by being exposed to comparable environments and experiences in life.
Both Septimus and Clarrissa are fragmented and torn between their thoughts. People would consider Clarrissa to be a woman well adjusted to society, a great hostess, mother, and wife belonging to the middle class. This is the kind of life she is trying to live though she remains fragmented in her thoughts. She loves her current situation in life, her parties, and her family. The fact that she is aging every day makes her wonder how life could have been if she made different decisions when she was young. She loses the connection between her name and her body; she believes that other people see her as Mrs. Richard Dalloway and not Clarissa. Septimus experiences similar thoughts and feels that death is the only way to liberation. From outside, other people will see him as a brave war hero who made his country great. He is considered to be a happily married man who is contented in life. This is, however, far from the truth because he is struggling to live a normal life after the death of his friend Evans. He only sees the cruelty of human nature and fails to find happiness in life.
Septimus and Clarissa have two images that affect their experience and thoughts about the outside world. Clarissa is torn between being Mrs. Dalloway and being Clarissa. She is constantly swayed between perception and memory, between present and past, fantasy and reality, and this creates a web of consciousness. Just the other moment, she was back in her twenties having fun with Peter Walsh and Sally Seton. The other moment she in London, cherishing life, but in a depressed mood (Woolf 42). She can disappear from the present life any moment as she tries to find events that will imaginably make her happy. From the outside, she is totally different as she portrays a composed, cold surface. She is always divided between sadness and happiness. Just as Clarissa, Septimus creates a web of imagination and reality about how he sees the world. Despite having post-traumatic stress, he pretends that everything is fine. This is evident in an instance where he floats in and out of imaginations and ends up mistaking Peter Walsh for his dead friend Evans. Septimus is not able to ignore his internal emotions and deal with the external due to his health condition.
Clarissa and Septimus are united in the way they translate their emotions into physical metaphors by treating their feelings as physical emotions and experiences. Septimus, for instance, feels that he doesn’t belong to the world at one point. This makes him believe that he was sent there by mistake: “the flesh was melted off the world. His body was macerated until only the nerves fibres were left. He lay very high, on the back of the world. The earth thrilled beneath him” (Woolf 68). Although Clarissa is firmly attached to the world, she has fears that her days are limited, and this is a major cause of anxiety to her. When she starts thinking, her emotions turn to physical feelings: “Since she was lying on the sofa, cloistered, exempt, the presence of thing which she felt to be so obvious became physically existent…” (122). Both characters find it difficult to live normal lives, but they are hiding it from other people.
Clarissa and Septimus share a kind of sincerity that death can be an option of finding freedom. They both want to be free, and they believe that they can only discover freedom if they escape the physical world and stop living. Clarissa and Septimus are united by their internal view of death, while it separates then from the external world. The fact that both characters face rejection at different stages in life makes their lives complicated and are forced to adapt to society. They develop a feeling of being uncertain of the importance of existing in time.
Clarissa and Septimus face exclusion, and this pushes to a smaller circle which they do not like. At her youth, Clarissa lives in a comfortable environment with her family. After she marries Richard, she is excluded from the female environment of her aunt, sister, and mother. The fact that she is excluded from family life makes her feel like she is being distanced from her younger self. Septimus is also excluded from the patriarchal society. He was once a young healthy who made a significant contribution to saving the country during the war (Woolf 14). He is no longer part of society he once protected. He feels neglected and that he no longer fits in society, and people are just forcing him to see the world their way. He becomes hopeless because he is in a situation that is difficult to escape while in the presence of people since no one can understand him. Both characters keep missing their memories when they were young because they could find happiness by having fun with those around them.
Woolf suggests that Septimus is the alter ego of Clarissa, and this is an indication that Clarissa is submerged in madness. By Septimus committing suicide at the end of the novel, it is proof that he is Clarissa’s soul twin, who has to die so that she can survive. Clarissa and Septimus seem to be communicating because they understand their gestures about society. They can be described as bird-like since they no longer care and are not willing to act inside the society’s normal laws. Both characters have also made choices in the past that have left them in deep regrets in the present. There are a lot of similarities between the choices they make in life. The experiences they went through when they were young and what they are currently going through makes them a mirror of each other.
Work Cited
Woolf, Virginia. “Mrs. Dalloway.” Collected Novels of Virginia Woolf. Palgrave Macmillan, London, 1992. 1-176.
