“There was nobody. The party’s splendour fell to the floor, so strange it was to come in alone in her finery.
What business had the Bradshaws to talk of death at her party? A young man had killed himself. And they talked of it at her party—the Bradshaws, talked of death. He had killed himself—but how? Always her body went through it first, when she was told, suddenly, of an accident; her dress flamed, her body burnt. He had thrown himself from a window. Up had flashed the ground; through him, blundering, bruising, went the rusty spikes. There he lay with a thud, thud, thud in his brain, and then a suffocation of blackness. So she saw it. But why had he done it? And the Bradshaws talked of it at her party!
She had once thrown a shilling into the Serpentine, never anything more. But he had flung it away. They went on living (she would have to go back; the rooms were still crowded; people kept on coming). They (all day she had been thinking of Bourton, of Peter, of Sally), they would grow old. A thing there was that mattered; a thing, wreathed about with chatter, defaced, obscured in her own life, let drop every day in corruption, lies, chatter. This he had preserved. Death was defiance. Death was an attempt to communicate; people feeling the impossibility of reaching the centre which, mystically, evaded them; closeness drew apart; rapture faded, one was alone. There was an embrace in death. (Mrs. Dalloway, 184).
In her foreword for Mrs. Dalloway, Maureen Howard notes that Virginia Woolf described Septimus as Clarissa’s “double” (xi). This passage juxtaposes the two characters, linking them. To achieve this, Woolf isolates Clarissa, setting her apart from the party. As the “party’s splendour fell to the floor,” Clarissa is able to reflect on her own identity (184). Woolf emphasizes two themes in this moment of reflection for Clarissa: being forced to confront death, and what that confrontation means for her. Four times, Woolf repeats an iteration of the Bradshaws talking of death at her party. Clarissa is upset that such a weighty issue has come into her carefully-curated space. Amidst the usual long, flowing sentences of Woolf’s prose these short sentences catch the reader off guard, much like the news of Septimus’s suicide knocks Clarissa out of her usual rhythm. Woolf further highlights this through the use of em dashes within these short phrases, further punctuating them: “And they talked of it at her party—the Bradshaws, talked of death. He had killed himself—but how?” (184). Thus, through her prose Woolf shows the reader how learning of Septimus’s death punctures the bubble Clarissa has constructed via the party. Importantly, Septimus remains unnamed in Clarissa’s mind. He is just a “young man” to her (184). For Clarissa, Septimus represents death itself, and what it means to her.
To explore this meaning, Woolf illustrates the connection Clarissa feels towards this young man, despite not knowing who he is. Clarissa puts herself in Septimus’s shoes, not only wondering what he must have felt, but feeling it herself: “her dress flamed, her body burnt” (184). Rather than framing the sentence as, “Clarissa imagined that he had thrown himself from a window…”, Woolf simply writes, “He had thrown himself from a window” (184). Thus, Woolf shrinks the distance between Clarissa and Septimus. Something links them that enables Clarissa to put herself into his frame of mind. Yet as clearly as she “saw” Septimus’s suicide, Clarissa wonders “why he had done it?” (184). As Clarissa considers this, Woolf draws out the differences between the two characters. While Septimus “had flung it away,” “they”—Clarissa and her party guests—“would grow old” (184). As Clarissa mulls their divergent paths, Woolf uses anaphora to emphasize the mundane future Clarissa faces. The repetition of the word “They” distinguishes Clarissa and her peers from Septimus. Yet, Woolf’s use of the third person, even as Clarissa describes herself, also links Clarissa and Septimus even as their life paths contrast. Clarissa knows she is part of the group that “went on living,” yet she does not say “we” (184). This partial belonging characterizes much of Clarissa’s character throughout the novel, as the reader gets hints that her status as the social nexus of her society is a carefully constructed identity which requires her to mask parts of her true self. Between these moments of anaphora as Clarissa contemplates how life will go on for her, Woolf returns to using long sentences stretched out with parentheticals and semicolons. In these asides Clarissa lists the social burdens that await her when she returns to the party. Woolf’s rhetorical devices here convey to the reader how these obligations feel to Clarissa—as things piling on, overlaying these inner feelings.
Woolf further explores this burying sensation as Clarissa explores the meaning of Septimus’s suicide. Woolf again uses repetition to communicate her theme, repeating an undefined “thing” that Septimus “had preserved” through his death. Within the paragraph, the language mirrors the meaning. The “thing” becomes buried amidst the words and commas, like the thing itself feels “wreathed about, defaced, and obscured in [Clarissa’s] own life” (184). Septimus’s death shows Clarissa that what “mattered” in life is missing in hers, “let drop” amid the “corruption, lies, chatter” of her society (184). While she allows it to slip away, Septimus refused to do so. Thus, Clarissa realizes, “Death was defiance” (184). Rather than suicide being an act of resignation (as Dr. Bradshaw viewed it) Clarissa sees it as an intentional choice, “an attempt to communicate” (184). Clarissa understands Septimus’s message while others cannot. She sees that the sensation of being “alone” can be a comfort. Instead of seeing it as isolation, she believes there “was an embrace in death” (184). Thus, through Clarissa’s internal reflection on Septimus’s suicide, Woolf shows how the characters’ perspectives are similar. Despite not knowing Septimus or the circumstances of his death, Clarissa intuits what he feels. Even though she will live on, she understands what compelled Septimus to take his life. She sympathizes with the need to hold onto the “thing… that mattered” and how death can feel like an “embrace” when life feels like anything but.
Thinking about the historical context of the novel helps the reader understand what it is that connects Clarissa and Septimus. Both characters are struggling with the aftermath of traumatic experiences: Clarissa recovering from her bout with influenza and Septimus from the shell-shock of World War I. Yet the characters’ arcs show how they deal with this trauma in very different ways. Clarissa suppresses that pain—early in the novel she reflects that she “drew the parts [of her self] together…. never showing a sign of all the other sides of her” (37). Septimus, however, is unable to escape his trauma while he lives and becomes trapped inside it—trapped by his own mind but also by the failure of those in a position to help like Dr. Bradshaw, who cast his interiority aside. Through these two characters recovering from trauma, Woolf explores the broad psychological effects of the turbulent time in which she writes. By aligning Clarissa—who appears on the surface to be a typical well-to-do upper class British woman who is contented with and in control of her life—with the nearly-incapacitated Septimus, Woolf suggests that the trauma of this era affects all parts of society. Neither the shell-shocked veterans nor the pandemic-surviving housewives can find the care and resolution to their trauma that they need; both are neglected and overlooked by society. The customs of society force both Septimus and Clarissa to suppress their pain; Septimus’s refusal to conform affects Clarissa so much because feels some of the same pressure. Thus, through the doubles of Septimus and Clarissa, Woolf depicts both the trauma that hangs over postwar Britain and the society’s failure to effectively address these wounds.
