Fourth year ENGLISH students

[mesho ~]

ya there is also

linguistics >>> The study of language

...

[mesho ~]

mariam sorry i can't help you ..

[كيلو تناحة]

wabel
you missed another subject




it
is
the history of language!!!!!
we have 11 subjects
may Allah help us

[moon2]

the main points that you have to study in prose

the first novel

The portrait of a lady

you have to make essyes about

Independence- conflict between individualism and social convention-

The elliptical technique that James use throughout the novel

Psychological realism

The character of Madame Merle- Where does she seem to fit on the spectrum between personal independence and social convention


James's idea about feminism representing with Henrietta and Mre.Touchett

Compare and contrast Isabel's three suiters,Osmond ,Goodwood , Warburton. What ideas do they each symbolize, What light do they cast on Isabel's relation to the idea of romance


The clash between American cultuer and British culture-James's use of geography -


Ralph's character

The mestery of the relationship between Madame Merle and Osmond throughout the novel

ولا تنسو الكتابه عن الأحداث المهمه مثل اول لقاء بين ايزابيل و مدام ميرل

وايضا لا تنسون علاقة ايزابيل مع رالف


وبعد يومين بإذن الله راح انزل عن الرواية الثانيه

Mrs.Dalloway

ادعو لي بنات واي اضافه للروايه الأولى اضيفوها وخلونا نستفيد

[moon2]

حبيت اقولكم اذا حابين تستفيدون وتكون الوايه عليكم سهله اقرأوها ولو بالعربي

وصدقوني اذا جئتو للمذاكره راح تكون كويسه


انصحكم بموقع سبارك نوتس من جد راااائع

www.sparknotes.com

بليز ادعولي انجح انا وصديقتي قوولو امين



Meshoo
يسلمووو ماقصرتي

بليز اكتبي اسئلة كل اختبار

تعرفين بنات الانتساب محتاجين انهم يستفيدووو

وانا واحده منهم


الله يعاااافيك تسلمين

[moon2]

sorry I have forgot somthing in The Portrait of a Lady

you have to write about The modern literature - the 20th century literature

[moon2]

ميشووو سؤال


بالنسبه للمقال هل يحتاج مذااااكره

او مثل السنه اللي فاتت تجيب لنا موضوع ونكتب عنه من انفسنا

وبالنسبه للترجمه كيف انطباعك عنها سهله والا صعبه


ايش اصعب ماده تدرسونها واللي تحتاج تركيز؟


بالنسبه للشعر ايش تركز عليه بالضبط ؟

والعربي وحاضر العالم الاسلامي هل هو خيارات وصح وخطأ في النهائي والا مقالي؟

ارجو الاجابه لأني لم احضر للكليه
انا بعيده عن الدماااام بأربع ساعات

[moon2]

Mrs.Dalloway

Plot Overview

M rs. Dalloway covers one day from morning to night in one woman’s life. Clarissa Dalloway, an upper-class housewife, walks through her London neighborhood to prepare for the party she will host that evening. When she returns from flower shopping, an old suitor and friend, Peter Walsh, drops by her house unexpectedly. The two have always judged each other harshly, and their meeting in the present intertwines with their thoughts of the past. Years earlier, Clarissa refused Peter’s marriage proposal, and Peter has never quite gotten over it. Peter asks Clarissa if she is happy with her husband, Richard, but before she can answer, her daughter, Elizabeth, enters the room. Peter leaves and goes to Regent’s Park. He thinks about Clarissa’s refusal, which still obsesses him.

The point of view then shifts to Septimus, a veteran of World War I who was injured in trench warfare and now suffers from ****************l shock. Septimus and his Italian wife, Lucrezia, pass time in Regent’s Park. They are waiting for Septimus’s appointment with Sir William Bradshaw, a celebrated psychiatrist. Before the war, Septimus was a budding young poet and lover of Shakespeare; when the war broke out, he enlisted immediately for romantic patriotic reasons. He became numb to the horrors of war and its aftermath: when his friend Evans died, he felt little sadness. Now Septimus sees nothing of worth in the England he fought for, and he has lost the desire to preserve either his society or himself. Suicidal, he believes his lack of feeling is a crime. Clearly Septimus’s experiences in the war have permanently scarred him, and he has serious mental problems. However, Sir William does not listen to what Septimus says and diagnoses “a lack of proportion.” Sir William plans to separate Septimus from Lucrezia and send him to a mental institution in the country.
Richard Dalloway eats lunch with Hugh Whitbread and Lady Bruton, members of high society. The men help Lady Bruton write a letter to the Times, London's largest newspaper. After lunch, Richard returns home to Clarissa with a large bunch of roses. He intends to tell her that he loves her but finds that he cannot, because it has been so long since he last said it. Clarissa considers the void that exists between people, even between husband and wife. Even though she values the privacy she is able to maintain in her marriage, considering it vital to the success of the relationship, at the same time she finds slightly disturbing the fact that Richard doesn’t know everything about her. Clarissa sees off Elizabeth and her history teacher, Miss Kilman, who are going shopping. The two older women despise one another passionately, each believing the other to be an oppressive force over Elizabeth. Meanwhile, Septimus and Lucrezia are in their apartment, enjoying a moment of happiness together before the men come to take Septimus to the asylum. One of Septimus’s doctors, Dr. Holmes, arrives, and Septimus fears the doctor will destroy his soul. In order to avoid this fate, he jumps from a window to his death.
Peter hears the ambulance go by to pick up Septimus’s body and marvels ironically at the level of London’s civilization. He goes to Clarissa’s party, where most of the novel’s major characters are assembled. Clarissa works hard to make her party a success but feels dissatisfied by her own role and acutely conscious of Peter’s critical eye. All the partygoers, but especially Peter and Sally Seton, have, to some degree, failed to accomplish the dreams of their youth. Though the social order is undoubtedly changing, Elizabeth and the members of her generation will probably repeat the errors of Clarissa’s generation. Sir William Bradshaw arrives late, and his wife explains that one of his patients, the young veteran (Septimus), has committed suicide. Clarissa retreats to the privacy of a small room to consider Septimus’s death. She understands that he was overwhelmed by life and that men like Sir William make life intolerable. She identifies with Septimus, admiring him for having taken the plunge and for not compromising his soul. She feels, with her comfortable position as a society hostess, responsible for his death. The party nears its close as guests begin to leave. Clarissa enters the room, and her presence fills Peter with a great excitement.
Part 1: From the opening scene, in which Clarissa sets out to buy flowers, to her return home. Early morning–11:00 a.m.
For Heaven only knows why one loves it so, how one sees it so, making it up, building it round one, tumbling it, creating it every moment afresh; but the veriest frumps, the most dejected of miseries sitting on doorsteps (drink their downfall) do the same; can’t be dealt with, she felt positive, by Acts of Parliament for that very reason: they love life

Analysis
Woolf wrote much of Mrs. Dalloway in free indirect discourse. We are generally immersed in the subjective mental world of various characters, although the book is written in the third person, referring to characters by proper names, as well as the pronouns he, she, and they. Woolf seldom uses quotation marks to indicate dialogue, as in most of Clarissa’s encounter with Hugh Whitbread, to ensure that the divide between characters’ interior and exterior selves remains fluid. In this way, Woolf allows us to evaluate characters from both external and internal perspectives: We follow them as they move physically through the world, all the while listening to their most private thoughts. The subjective nature of the narrative demonstrates the unreliability of memory. In this section, Clarissa, Septimus, and other characters interpret and reinterpret themselves and others constantly—changing their minds, misremembering, contradicting previous statements. Even simple facts, such as somebody’s age, are occasionally vague, since people’s memories are different and sometimes wrong.
Clarissa gains ****************ure and depth as her thoughts dip frequently into the past and begin to edge around the future and her own mortality. Clarissa is full of happy thoughts as she sets off to buy flowers that beautiful June morning, but her rapture reminds her of a similar June morning thirty years earlier, when she stood at the window at Bourton and felt something awful might happen. Tragedy is never far from her thoughts, and from the first page of the book Clarissa has a sense of impending tragedy. Indeed, one of the central dilemmas Clarissa will face is her own mortality. Even as Clarissa rejoices in life, she struggles to deal with aging and death. She reads two lines about death from an open book in a shop window: “Fear no more the heat o’ the sun / Nor the furious winter’s rages.” The words are from one of Shakespeare’s later plays, Cymbeline, which is experimental and hard to classify, since it has comic, romantic, and tragic elements, much like Mrs. Dalloway. The lines are from a funeral song that suggests death is a comfort after life’s hard struggles. Both Clarissa and Septimus repeat these lines throughout the day.
Though Septimus shares many of Clarissa’s traits, he reacts differently to the passing car that thrills Clarissa and other bystanders. World War I has prompted changes in traditional English society, and many of London’s inhabitants are lost in this more modern, more industrial society. People in the street, including Clarissa, seek meaning in the passing car, whose grandeur leads them to suspect it may carry the queen or a high-ranking government official. They want desperately to believe that meaning still exists in tradition and in the figureheads of England. For Septimus, the car on the street in the warm June sun does not inspire patriotism but rather seems to create a scene about to burst into flame. He has lost faith in the symbols Clarissa and others still cling to. The car’s blinds are closed, and its passenger remains a mystery. Any meaning the crowd may impart on the car is their own invention—the symbol they want the car to be is hollow.
Woolf reveals mood and character through unusual and complex syntax. The rush and movement of London are reflected in galloping sentences that go on for line after line in a kind of ecstasy. These sentences also reflect Clarissa’s character, particularly her ability to enjoy life, since they forge ahead quickly and bravely, much as Clarissa does. As Clarissa sees the summer air moving the leaves like waves, sentences become rhythmic, full of dashes and semicolons that imitate the choppy movement of water. Parentheses abound, indicating thoughts within thoughts, sometimes related to the topic at hand and sometimes not. Simple phrases often appear in the flow of poetic language like exclamations, such as when young Maisie Johnson encounters the strange-seeming Smiths and wants to cry “Horror! horror!” This line echoes Joseph Conrad’s novel Heart of Darkness, in which a character despairs over humanity’s cruelty. Later in the novel, we learn that Clarissa herself said “Oh this horror!” when Peter Walsh and Joseph Breitkopf, an old family friend, interrupted her encounter with Sally on the terrace. Society closes in on both Septimus and Clarissa, and the effect, conveyed through language and sentence structure, is terrible.

Part 2: From Clarissa’s return from the shops through Peter Walsh’s visit. 11:00 a.m.–11:30 a.m.
She had a perpetual sense, as she watched the taxi cabs, of being out, out, far out to sea and alone; she always had the feeling that it was very, very dangerous to live even one day

Analysis
Middle-aged Clarissa struggles to find her role in a society that places great importance on fulfilling sexual stereotypes. Clarissa feels invisible, virginal, and nunlike now that she is over fifty and will not have any more children. She feels silly in her yellow-feathered hat in front of Hugh, because Hugh is handsome and well dressed, and in some ways Clarissa now feels as if she has no sexuality. Clarissa’s daughter, Elizabeth, is nearly grown, and now, with mothering behind her, Clarissa tries to discover her purpose in life, since women of her class and generation were not trained for careers. Clarissa feels her role is to be a meeting-point for others. She gathers people together, as she will at her party that night. No matter how uneasy she feels in her own life, she hides it so that others can feel comfortable. She sews the torn folds of her party dress back into place, masking both the flaws in the fabric and her own uneasiness. She even gathers herself together by pursing her lips and making her face into “one diamond.” She feels it is her job to be a refuge for others and to conceal the strain and artificiality of gathering diverse parts of life together.

The difficulty of reconciling her innermost self with her exterior or surface self weighs constantly on Clarissa’s mind, and the doors and windows that appear throughout the book represent this conflict symbolically. At Clarissa’s house, workers take the doors off the hinges for the party, where Clarissa will gather people together and try to facilitate communication. She remembers that the blinds used to flap at Bourton, during a time when her need for privacy and her desire for communication were both, to some degree, attainable. Peter himself, in some ways, serves as a doorway between Clarissa’s two selves. Through him, Clarissa can return to the days at Bourton and evaluate her choices, as though she can go back in time and change her mind. When Peter runs from the room and leaves her house, the noise from the open door is overwhelming and makes Clarissa’s voice almost disappear. In his absence, real life, the present, sets in again. In real life, Clarissa is torn between the need for solitude and the glimmering surface world of society, and trying to move between the two states of being is almost a physical effort, much like physically removing doors from hinges.
Characters continually interrupt one another’s significant moments of communication. Peter interrupts Clarissa’s revelatory moment with Sally at Bourton, intervening before the women’s intimacy can continue or intensify. Elizabeth interrupts Peter’s encounter with Clarissa, another interruption that thwarts intimacy, stopping them from delving too deeply into their private feelings. Clarissa and Peter are both critical judges of others’ characters, and they meet like challengers, Peter with his knife in his hand and Clarissa with her scissors. They are conscious of one another’s failures—and of their own. This moment with Peter is charged with the potential to set Clarissa’s life on a new course, whether Peter reveals lingering feelings or simply raises doubts in Clarissa’s mind. For better or worse, Elizabeth halts the communication of their interior selves with her entry. Time moves on, and Peter walks out. Clarissa struggles to maintain communication and reminds him about her party, but her voice nearly disappears in the rush of the opening and closing door.
Clarissa is aware of having compromised by marrying Richard, who offered her a traditional, safe life path that is less threatening than the passion-filled path Peter or even Sally could have offered her. Though she enjoys beautiful things and society and appreciates the privacy she has with Richard, she is dissatisfied in some ways and worries that she fails to satisfy him as well. Richard, unlike more passionate characters, such as Sally and Septimus, has no association with nature, which underscores his pedestrian personality. Clarissa has found safety and comfort with Richard, a simple upholder of English tradition, but she felt passionate love for Sally, who subverted that tradition in many ways. Sally sold a family heirloom to go to Bourton, held feminist views, and shocked the upholders of old England, such as Aunt Helena. Clarissa describes her feeling for Sally as a match that burns in a crocus, a type of flower. The natural imagery of heat and flames often marks the thoughts of characters who feel deeply, including Clarissa and Septimus. The fire is spectacular, but never without threat. Richard is the foundation of her life, Clarissa admits, but part of her wonders what life could have been like without him, danger and all.
The line Clarissa quotes from Othello not only foreshadows Septimus’s suicide but also points to the magnitude of Clarissa’s own youthful feelings for Sally. In the play, Othello fervently loves his wife, Desdemona, but eventually kills her out of mistaken jealousy. Tortured by regret, Othello then kills himself. Othello cannot trust his good fortune, and loses it. By likening herself to Othello and Sally to Desdemona, Clarissa suggests not only the depth of her feeling, but also that it was she who killed the possibility of love with Sally—and with that some part of herself.

Part 3: From Peter leaving Clarissa’s house through his memory of being rejected by Clarissa. 11:30 a.m.–11:45 a.m.
This late age of the world’s experience had bred in them all, all men and women, a well of tears. Tears and sorrows; courage and endurance; a perfectly upright and stoical bearing.
Analysis
Peter Walsh is insecure and unsure about who he is, and these weaknesses in his character complicate his interactions with the world. Though likeable and fun to be around, Peter is highly critical of himself and others. He rarely voices these criticisms, but they echo constantly in his mind. The passage of time and the prospect of death frighten him, since he feels he has not accomplished anything substantial. He even goes out of his way to find a seat in the park where people are unlikely to ask him the time, since the question makes him nervous. Peter enjoys the sight of military boys passing by, because they seem oblivious to the reality of death and remind him of his own youth, when anything seemed possible. He takes an ironic pride in the civilization of London, with its butlers and chow dogs. He criticizes shallowness in others, particularly in Clarissa, but cannot help being attracted to a country that enjoys its excesses at the expense of colonies like India. England is broken, as Septimus’s narrative makes clear, and any appearance of civilization does not go below the surface.
Peter frequently invents life to satisfy his own needs and desires and to make sense of the world. If we are bombarded with impressions, or atoms, as Woolf suggested, then a love of life involves giving shape to the multitude of impressions. Peter takes this idea of constructing reality to a new level when he follows the anonymous young woman in the street. Through this imaginary escapade, he successfully forgets about his own aging and temporarily escapes from his reality. In the constant motion of an urban setting like London, actual meaningful encounters with people are rare, and Peter invents both his interaction with this woman and its meaning. Peter later sees the Smiths. Even though he observes that they are in some kind of trouble, he does not talk to them. He prefers to exercise his control over a fantasy he knows will not be realized.
Peter wants to be saved, and he seeks redemption through relationships with women. He believes that women can offer him solace, much as religion comforts others, such as Miss Kilman. Immature even in his mid-fifties, he feels he has suffered a great deal and that his nature is particularly sensitive. Clarissa sensed Peter’s huge, draining neediness in her youth, when she refused his marriage proposal. In the present, she wonders if life with Peter might have been more exciting than life with Richard, but at the same time she knows that Peter is too obsessed with himself to have been a good partner. In his dream Peter stereotypes women, imagining mother figures as well as cruel and beautiful temptresses. Peter is deluded in his wish to be saved by a female figure, and the traveler in the dream eventually realizes he has nobody to express his need to—there is no one for him to share his difficulties with. In the modern world, no God or woman or any figure at all exists to save him in the way he wishes to be saved.
Peter continues to seek Clarissa’s approval and attention thirty years after she turned down his marriage proposal. Clarissa is the first person Peter goes to see upon his arrival in London, and he spends his entire day thinking about her and telling himself that he is no longer in love with her. He reminds himself that he no longer loves her so frequently that we seriously doubt the truth of his conviction. Clarissa has had as profound an effect on his life as he has had on hers. He still sees much of the world through her eyes, just as his criticisms still affect Clarissa’s thoughts. Even his lover, Daisy, and her two children seem to improve when he observes them through Clarissa’s gaze. Though outwardly self-assured, Peter is inwardly full of self-doubt and still needs Clarissa to bolster him up after all these years.

Part 4: From little Elise Mitchell running into Rezia’s legs to the Smiths’ arrival on Harley Street. 11:45 a.m.–12:00 p.m.
Clarissa had a theory in those days . . . that since our apparitions, the part of us which appears, are so momentary compared with the other, the unseen part of us, which spreads wide, the unseen might survive, be recovered somehow attached to this person or that, or even haunting certain places after death . . . perhaps—perhaps
Analysis
Despite the disconnect between people in a modern urban setting like London, in this section we can see clearly the connection between Peter and Rezia. Woolf believed a complex web existed behind the “cotton wool” of the everyday, and this web allows her to make natural transitions between characters’ points of view. Often a memory or a visual image links characters, and in this section several major links appear. One is the child Peter watches as it runs into Rezia’s legs; another is the feeling of pity that an old woman singing in the street inspires in both Peter and Rezia. Parallels between Peter and Rezia allow us to compare as well as link them. Peter thinks of his rejection by Clarissa and cries that it was “awful, awful!” Several moments later, Rezia refers to Septimus’s mental illness with precisely the same expression. Peter’s self-pity at being spurned in love seems self-indulgent compared to the difficulties the Smiths must endure.
The old woman singing an ancient song is an affirming life force for Rezia. At first the woman seems sexless, and the song makes little sense. Both her physicality and her song become clearer under close observation. Though she is ancient, her song seems as though it will continue indefinitely, as will the love and death she sings of. Peter does not sense the joyfulness of this figure and feels only pity. Rezia, however, after her initial pity, draws strength from the woman and her words, “and if some one should see, what matter they?” Rezia is always very conscious of others’ watchful eyes, such as those belonging to her neighbor Mrs. Filmer, but the song gives her renewed hope and faith in life. Rezia feels that outside observers keep her and Septimus continually under their judging gaze, and when she listens to the old woman she is able to step outside the judging gaze, if only for a moment.
Members of the upper class, such as Peter, Hugh, and Mr. Brewer, often turn a blind eye to the suffering of others. Though Peter criticizes Clarissa’s worldliness, he is no better. He loves artifice and surfaces as much as anybody, admiring women’s makeup and a military parade. When he passes by the distressed Smiths in the park, he knows Clarissa would likely have stopped to talk with them to find out what was wrong. Though Clarissa does not run bazaars or take an organized interest in the plight of the poor, she might have spoken to them because of her interest in the world, an interest that keeps her from becoming callow. Hugh Whitbread, on the other hand, never looks beyond the socks displayed in a department store window, and Septimus’s boss, Mr. Brewer, resents the war mainly for what it did to his geranium beds. Though Clarissa is often as blind as anyone else, she is at least a close observer. She notices the world around her and wonders about the feelings of people beyond herself and her class.

Part 5: From Septimus’s appointment with Sir William Bradshaw to lunchtime at half-past one. 12:00 p.m.–1:30 p.m.
Analysis
The link between Clarissa and Septimus intensifies with their respective actions at noon, a moment in which one character is very nearly the opposite of the other. Clarissa puts down her party dress, which is part of the front she puts on for society. Septimus, at the same time, is exposed to society as he enters Sir William Bradshaw’s office for his appointment. Septimus sees doctors as the embodiment of human nature, which he saw at its ugliest during the war. Both Dr. Holmes and Sir William are older men who probably did not see any of the war firsthand, but they—and others—believe themselves to be experts on Septimus’s condition. Clarissa, by mending and preparing the dress, will be able to navigate social situations smoothly. Septimus does not have, and does not want, Clarissa’s charm and ability, and he is at the doctors’ mercy.

Science has become a new religion of sorts and Sir William is referred to as a “priest of science,” indicating the power he has over his patients. Just as religious believers often try to convert nonbelievers, Sir William seeks to convert the mentally ill to his sense of proportion. He preys on people like a vampire, sucking their souls out until they are his obedient followers. His wife, Lady Bradshaw, was one of his victims. Lady Bradshaw’s hobby, taking pictures of decaying churches, represents the twentieth-century transition from faith in religion or God to faith in science or technology. When the ill consider that no god exists, they begin to wonder if their life and death are perhaps in their own hands, but Sir William insists that his style of life is in fact the only choice. Patients must convert to the world as Sir William conceives it or else be considered insane. This bullying technique suffocates patients like Septimus, who saw the horrifying results of blind conformity during the war.
The question of what the war was fought to preserve is never far from Septimus’s thoughts, and he suffers from the lingering uncertainty. Peter Walsh and Clarissa might see English tradition as noble and worth fighting for, but Septimus, the veteran, does not read meaning in the symbols of England, at least not conventional meaning. The grand car at the opening of the novel does not give him shivers of excitement, the way it does for the other spectators, but seems only to point to his guilt for not being able to feel. Septimus no longer knows what the war was for. This doubt suggests that the very foundation of English society, an oppressive class system benefiting only a small margin of society, is problematic. Sir William, however, is uninterested in discussing Septimus’s loss of faith in England and believes individuality is a sign of mental illness. He wants patients to convert, conform, and forget about themselves and any doubts they may have about the war or the empire.
In Mrs. Dalloway, Septimus, Clarissa, Peter, and Sally are all readers, while Sir William, Hugh Whitbread, Richard Dalloway, and Lady Bruton are all nonreaders. Whether a character reads or does not read is a fairly reliable indication of their values and priorities, and tensions often rise between the two groups. For example, Sir William, a nonreader, is hostile to those who do read, like Septimus. Sir William finds Septimus’s bookishness nearly as repulsive as his shabby wardrobe. He sees a probing of the soul as a sign of illness, and later Clarissa, Peter, and Sally will share Septimus’s instinctive dislike for him. An interest in words also relates to an interest in the soul. Readers, particularly Clarissa and Septimus, who enjoy Shakespeare are deeper characters who probe surfaces and look beyond a thing’s given or expected meaning.

Part 6: From Hugh Whitbread examining socks and shoes in a shop window before lunching with Lady Bruton through Clarissa resting on the sofa after Richard has left for the House of Commons. 1:30 p.m.–3:00 p.m.
Analysis
Members of the upper class in Mrs. Dalloway, including Hugh Whitbread and Lady Bruton, are devoted to preserving their traditions and justify their supremacy by defending one another’s faults. Thus Hugh, a shallow glutton, is indulged and defended by Lady Bruton and Clarissa, among others. Likewise, money and a lordly demeanor ****************ter the psychiatrist Sir William from judgment. Lady Bruton would like to make the problems of the British Empire, such as unemployment, disappear by exporting them—and English families—to Canada. She has “lost her sense of proportion” in her Canada obsession, but she is exempt from the evil forces of Sir William, whereas Septimus is not, in part because she belongs to Sir William's class. The upper class lives in an insular and make-believe world that is declining, but they do not intend to acknowledge this decline. The Conservative Party is about to lose power and be replaced by the Labour Party, at which point Richard will retire and write a book about the great war-waging family of Lady Bruton. While Hugh might be preoccupied with society and Sir William with amassing power and money, they are forgiven their sins due to their social status. Miss Kilman in her ugly mackintosh and Septimus in his shabby coat will not be forgiven their sins, because they are not armored with money or status. Nobody will empower them or defend their faults.
Women of all classes have little power in Mrs. Dalloway. Lady Bruton, though she seems displaced in the feminine sphere and exhibits general-like qualities, becomes as helpless as a child when she faces writing a letter to the newspaper. Normally proud and serious, she shows ridiculous gratitude when Hugh arranges her thoughts in the manner accepted by the male establishment. When Richard sees a vagrant woman lying on the street, he sees not a figure rejoicing in her freedom, but rather a poor woman and a social problem that the government must deal with. Outside the repressive confines of society, the vagrant woman becomes a positive life force, like the old woman Peter and Rezia hear singing the ancient song. Richard, however, sees her only as a woman who needs his help, and he views Clarissa in somewhat the same way. Richard is a kind but simple thinker, and he finds reassurance in believing that women need him.
The luncheon at Lady Bruton’s effectively highlights the differences between the English establishment and Clarissa. Though Clarissa is a member of the upper class and can occasionally be a snob, she asks herself questions, judges herself, and tries to discover the truth about the world. No one at the luncheon puts forth a similar effort. Furthermore, none of the people at the luncheon have any rapport with or know how to handle flowers, which seem to stand in for beauty and emotion. The flowers Hugh and Richard choose, carnations and roses, are traditional. Richard carries his flowers like a weapon, while Lady Bruton first holds them awkwardly by her lace collar, then stuffs them down the front of her dress. Clarissa is natural around flowers, and they constantly surround her, suggesting her connection to nature and the deeper reaches of the soul. Finally, Clarissa believes that she throws parties to create but wonders to whom she gives her creation. This question echoes Peter’s dream, when the solitary traveler wonders to whom he can reply when the landlady asks if he needs anything. In the modern world, people are alone; they have no one to answer their questions or to make offerings to. Clarissa is aware of this tragedy of the modern era, while the insular characters representing the English establishment are not.

Part 7: From Elizabeth telling her mother she is going shopping with Miss Kilman through Elizabeth boarding an omnibus to return home to her mother’s party. 3:00 p.m.–late afternoon
Analysis

Miss Kilman bullies with her religion just as Sir William Bradshaw bullies with his science. The world has treated Miss Kilman badly because of her poverty, her ugliness, even her German name. She seeks revenge and wants to make Clarissa, who is likeable and attractive, unhappy the way she is. A falling tree killed Clarissa’s sister, and Miss Kilman would like to “fell” Clarissa. Trees, with their extensive root systems, are like the soul, so this ****************phor suggests that Miss Kilman is out to kill souls, just as Sir William is. Clarissa feels this murderous impulse masquerades as love and finds the deception horrifying, especially since she believes Elizabeth is vulnerable to it. Clarissa sees religious, scientific, and romantic belief as false justification for the flaws and weaknesses in people’s characters, and she does not feel that these beliefs can explain the mystery of human beings’ isolation in a world of activity. Clarissa believes that everyone is responsible for themselves and for others. As a born-again Christian, Miss Kilman seeks to convert Elizabeth to her beliefs the way Sir William seeks to convert people to his idea of sanity. Because Miss Kilman is a woman, she does not have the opportunities for success as Sir William, but both characters thirst after domination in similar ways.
Elizabeth does not return Miss Kilman’s lesbian attraction, as Clarissa suspected, but she is attracted to the new ideas and options that Miss Kilman puts before her, even if her laziness precludes her from pursuing them. Elizabeth enjoys exploring London for an afternoon and considers career options, but she is not a complex thinker like Clarissa. Though new careers are now open to women, Elizabeth is too passive to delve deeply into new territory. Richard says that if he had had a boy, he would have encouraged him to work, but he does not encourage Elizabeth in this regard. While the social climate is changing for women, it does not seem as though Elizabeth will take a groundbreaking path; it seems likely that she will probably follow her parents into an upper-class life.
The old woman Clarissa watches in the window reveals the human conflict at the heart of the novel—the interplay between communication and privacy. Clarissa struggles to understand why people need privacy, if they need it at all, and what makes communication so difficult. Clarissa and the old woman have been neighbors for years, but, though Clarissa knows the woman’s movements, she does not know the woman’s name. The woman is a mystery, and her distance is both a comfort and an ache for Clarissa. The human soul must exist alone and look to itself for answers, but it also craves communication and the company of others. The rooms of a house are a ****************phor for the soul, a safe but empty place where one can hide from or ignore the judgmental eyes of the world. Like the house ****************phor, the figure of the old woman also suggests both the solace of the human soul and its loneliness. The soul can be shared with others only to a small degree, though Clarissa tries to solve this dilemma by throwing parties and constantly calling out to people to remember them. Clarissa’s reaching out is also limited, and no one even considers that Clarissa will invite Miss Kilman to the party that evening. Before Septimus’s suicide, he sees an old man on the staircase opposite his window, a scene that parallels Clarissa’s watching the old woman and emphasizes the extreme loneliness of characters living in their own private rooms.

Part 8: From Septimus observing dancing sunlight in his home while Rezia works on a hat through Septimus’s suicide. Late afternoon–6:00 p.m
Analysis
In this section, Septimus seems to come out of his illness into a kind of remission. He is lucid, sees the world through clear eyes, and does not hear voices. He watches Rezia playing with the child, building up the moment into something wonderful, the way Clarissa does when she walks through the London streets or throws a party. Clarissa and Rezia act as life forces in the novel, and both are compared to trees. Septimus feels he is on the edge of a forest, because his and Rezia’s souls are now easy together, and they communicate naturally, like any other married couple, over the design of Mrs. Peters’ hat. As Rezia sews, the pair converses intimately, the threads of their thoughts intermingling in a beautiful pattern. Septimus seems to forget the approach of the doctors. When he wakes up after helping Rezia with the hat-making and sees he is alone, he experiences the same emotional shock as Clarissa did when she put down her yellow-feathered hat that morning and felt an emptiness at the heart of life. The world is beautiful, but Septimus’s soul has been severely damaged by the war, and the beauty he sees is ephemeral. He tries to preserve this soul from the clutches of the overbearing doctors by asking Rezia to burn the papers on which he drew and wrote his thoughts over the period of his illness. Septimus’s temporary sanity ends with his suicide.
Dr. Holmes’s arrival forces Septimus to choose between committing suicide or surrendering his soul. Opting for death of the body instead of death of the soul, Septimus flings himself onto the railings beneath his window. Throughout the novel, houses and rooms serve as ****************phors for the soul and its yearnings for privacy, and railings mark the border between the interior of the home and the public world of society. By throwing himself onto the railings, Septimus seems to attempt a kind of communication, while at the same time protecting his private soul from Holmes and Sir William. Before his plunge, Septimus sees an old man descending the staircase opposite his window. Unlike the old woman Clarissa observes ascending the staircase or wandering safely through the rooms of her home, the old man is symbolically leaving the privacy of his home. If Septimus must part with the privacy of his soul, he will make his soul public but refrain from sacrificing it. He does not want to die, but since he feels he has no alternative due to the doctors’ threats, he will make the decision and perform the action himself. He demonstrates his refusal to let the doctors take his soul when he announces, “I give it you!” Nobody has taken Septimus’s soul. The first-person pronoun indicates that he has given it himself. Though his death is tragic, he has maintained agency and dignity in choosing his destiny.
Septimus’s suicide reveals the blindness of human nature as embodied by Holmes and Sir William. Before this point, Septimus had given many indications that he contemplated killing himself, the most obvious being when he openly says that it is his intention to do so. Yet Holmes, referring to the suicide, asks how it was possible to predict it would happen and decides that it was an impulsive act for which no one is to blame. These are absurd claims and questions, and they reveal Holmes’s willful blindness to the truth. Nobody wishes to take responsibility for Septimus’s death or to believe its cause to be anything beyond a spontaneous impulse. Holmes would rather the world sleep quietly and drugged, as he forces Rezia to do, rather than wake up and ask questions about human cruelty. Acknowledging Septimus’s motivations would threaten the beliefs that are the foundation of the doctors’ lives.

Part 9: From Peter Walsh hearing the sound of an ambulance siren to his opening his knife before entering Clarissa’s party. 6:00 p.m.–early night
Analysis
The ambulance Peter hears is the one carrying Septimus’s body, and Peter’s adoring interpretation of the ambulance siren as a “triumph of civilization” is ironic, because Septimus has sought death to escape the very civilization Peter reveres. In the wailing siren, Peter hears all that is good about English society—its humanity, efficiency, and compassion. However, Septimus found those same things constricting and deadening, not liberating and inspiring. Peter stands across from the British Museum, a structure that suggests England’s might, tradition, and imperial power. Septimus fought to preserve these virtues during the war, and they eventually became hollow and meaningless to him. Peter hears humanity in the ambulance siren, but the inhumanity of the English medical system played a part in Septimus’s death. Peter constantly notices the civilization of England, and the repetition of the word, juxtaposed with Septimus’s death, calls Peter’s accuracy into question. London is surely no gentler than the countries, such as India, England sets out to “civilize” through colonization. Likewise, the communal spirit Peter observes in London is also questionable, since the Londoners in the novel, even Peter himself, are incredibly isolated. Peter reads the world only superficially, seeing what he wants to see and not probing too deeply beneath the surface. Septimus perhaps probes too deeply, and he cannot bear what he finds. Both Septimus and Peter read the same cricket scores and the same news in the evening paper, a similarity that emphasizes the different ways in which each man interprets the same world.

Though Peter constantly doubts himself and his decisions, at the hotel and the dinner he momentarily reveals the kind of man he could be, or wants to be. Until now, Peter has seemed hysterical, bursting into tears in front of Clarissa and claiming madly to himself that he no longer loves her. At the hotel, however, he seems composed and in control. As he moves about his room, he imagines how Daisy sees him: as a reliable man who shaves, dresses, and takes firm control of life’s small details. He suspects he cannot actually make her happy, and that she will be better off without him, but he seems to like the feeling of being depended on and looked up to by this younger, foolish girl. At the dinner Peter slides more fully into this version of himself. With dignified detachment he selects wine and eats his dinner, showing more composure than at any other point in the novel. When Peter orders his Bartlett pears, the new Peter seems to crystallize. He knows exactly what he wants, and says so clearly. Gone, for the moment, are the usual hemming and hawing, the incessant justifications and qualifications that usually bloat his thoughts and desires. For this short moment at the table he is comfortable in his own skin.
Clarissa recognizes the conflict between nurturing her need for privacy and fulfilling her desire to emerge and communicate with others, which is why she throws her parties. Peter compares people to fish that swim for ages in the gloomy depths and occasionally need to come to the surface and frolic in the “wind-wrinkled waves.” People need to form community, however brief; they need to gossip at parties. The effort to communicate requires endurance, which is why Peter prepares himself and opens his knife before entering the party and why Clarissa purses her lips and creates a composed “diamond” face for the world. Septimus was tortured in the private world of his own soul after the war and, with his inability to hold himself together, was also at the mercy of the public world. He could no longer summon the endurance necessary to face the world or even exist in it, and even Peter and Clarissa hang on by only a thread—the tenuousness of which is emphasized by the knife and scissors with which they greet each other earlier in the day. Though Peter often misjudges and criticizes Clarissa, he admires her endurance and strength. Clarissa may have her failings and weaknesses, but her determination to stitch together her internal and external worlds, however briefly or infrequently, makes her a remarkable woman.
Part 10: From servants making last- minute party preparations through the end of the party and the appearance of Clarissa. Early night–3:00 a.m.
Analysis
Septimus’s death makes Clarissa’s party seem even more indulgent than it is. Elizabeth’s obsession with her dog, the men’s enjoyment of their wine, and Clarissa’s gushing welcomes to guests all seem trivial in light of Septimus’s suicide. More troubling is the fact that Clarissa’s party entertains Septimus’s oppressors, the upholders of stifling British society, including Sir William. Most of the guests seem to have failed in some way, and nearly all live in the bubble world of upper-class England. Clarissa’s stuffy Aunt Helena, the botanist who believes in suppressing emotion and any interesting topic of conversation, spent a lifetime weighing flowers down with books to make them flat. This hobby suggests her wish to squash the human soul in order to preserve the social mores of English society; it also demonstrates the danger of applying analytic, scientific study to aesthetic values. The prime minister himself is present, a comical, slightly pathetic figure who struggles to be a figurehead to a public desperate for symbols. The social system is empty and even ridiculous, but Clarissa and her guests uphold it nonetheless.
Clarissa worries that the party will be a failure until she sees a guest beat back a blowing curtain, which serves as a kind of border between the private soul and the public world. Her guest refuses to let the curtain get in the way of his talking, and his beating it back reveals his dedication to communication. Clarissa imagined her party as a forum for discussion of topics that people would not normally discuss, and people are indeed emerging somewhat from their usual selves. The party seems to be a success. One of Clarissa’s happiest memories is of the blinds blowing at Bourton when she and her friends were young and honest communication was possible to a greater degree. As the old woman in the window across from Clarissa’s window suggests, true communication becomes harder as one grows older and more isolated. Clarissa’s party provides an outlet, however brief, where communication might take place once again.
Here at the party, for the first time, we see Sally Seton as she is in the present, outside of Clarissa’s memory. She swoops in unexpectedly, having heard of the party from a friend as she was passing through town. Clarissa’s first thought is that Sally looks nothing like what she remembered—the luster has left her. She observes this without judgment or reproach and still asserts that it is wonderful to see her, but even then she adds that Sally is “less lovely.” Clarissa remembers with some disbelief the Sally from Bourton and cannot reconcile those images with the Sally that has appeared in her home. Brazen, wonderful, creative Sally is now the wife of a miner, the mother of five sons, a gardener, and a lady (her married name is Lady Rosseter). Though Clarissa loves flowers, she does not grow them, and Sally’s passion for her garden gives her an earthy and immediate physicality that Clarissa lacks. Though Sally and Clarissa hug and kiss hello, this Sally seems less real than the Sally who has lurked in Clarissa’s imagination all these years.
Sally’s appearance at the party brings the past crashing into the present, and Clarissa, faced now with the real woman from her memories, must confront the present head-on. Clarissa and Sally barely have time to catch up before Clarissa leaves her with Peter to devote herself to other guests. Clarissa has spent years remembering, even lusting after, Sally, and now that Sally is here, in the flesh, Clarissa cannot face her; as with Peter and the young woman he follows, Clarissa prefers fantasy to reality. In many ways, Clarissa has spent her life stuck in Bourton, with her memories of Sally and her occasional regrets about Peter simmering constantly under the surface of her life. Now, here they are, the both of them—Sally and Peter—and Clarissa barely speaks to them. The feelings she has about them are distant and hollow, not within her heart but outside it. When she sees Peter and Sally talking and laughing about the past, she cannot join them. Only after watching the old woman next door and thinking about Septimus does she gather the courage to find them. To face the present fully she must first come to terms with her own aging and eventual death.
When Clarissa retreats to the small solitary room to reflect on Septimus’s suicide, she experiences a powerful revelation, which is the climax of the novel. The impression of the prime minister’s body is still on the chair in the room, emphasizing that the soul is never completely alone or free from the influence of social pressures. Clarissa feels that Septimus’s death is her own disgrace, and she is ashamed that she is an upper-class society wife who has schemed and desired social success. His death is also her disgrace because she compromised her passion and her soul when she married Richard, while Septimus preserved his soul by choosing death. She remembers the line from Shakespeare’s Othello, “If it were now to die, ’twere now to be most happy.” She has lived to regret her decisions, just as Othello did. Clarissa sees her life clearly and comes to terms with her own aging and death, which ultimately enables her to endure. When she returns to the party, we see her from Peter’s perspective, not her own, and the novel ends without any more glimpses into her mind

Important Quotations Explained
1. For Heaven only knows why one loves it so, how one sees it so, making it up, building it round one, tumbling it, creating it every moment afresh; but the veriest frumps, the most dejected of miseries sitting on doorsteps (drink their downfall) do the same; can’t be dealt with, she felt positive, by Acts of Parliament for that very reason: they love life.

This quotation, part of Clarissa’s thoughts as she walks to the flower shop in the early morning and Big Ben chimes the hour, reveals her strong attachment to life and the concept of life as her own invention. The long, galloping sentence, full of commas and semicolons, mirrors her excitement at being alive on this June day. Clarissa is conscious that the impressions of the things around her do not necessarily hold beauty or meaning in themselves, but that humans act as architects, building the impressions into comprehensible and beautiful moments. She herself revels in this act, in the effort life requires, and she knows that even the most impoverished person living on the streets can derive the same wonder from living. She sees that happiness does not belong to a particular class, but to all who can build up a moment and see beauty around them. Later her husband Richard sees a vagrant woman on the street but classifies her only as a social problem that the government must deal with. Clarissa believes that every class of people has the ability to conceptualize beauty and enjoy life, and she therefore feels that government intervention has limited uses. She does not equate class with happiness.


2. She had a perpetual sense, as she watched the taxi cabs, of being out, out, far out to sea and alone; she always had the feeling that it was very, very dangerous to live even one day.
Explanation for Quotation 2 >>
This quotation, which occurs during Clarissa’s shopping expedition when she pauses for a moment to look at the omnibuses in Piccadilly, emphasizes the contrast between the busyness of public life and the quiet privacy of the soul. Clarissa, even when she is walking in the crowded city streets, contemplates the essential loneliness of life. The image of water acts much like the image of the sun in the novel. The sun beats down constantly, sometimes creating a wonderful feeling of warmth, sometimes scorching unbearably. The rhythmic movement of the sea’s waves is similar. Sometimes the cyclical movement is breathtaking, while sometimes it threatens to drown whoever is too weak to endure the pressure, such as Lady Bradshaw or Septimus. Each person faces these same elements, which seems to join humans in their struggle. However, everyone is ultimately alone in the sea of life and must try to stay afloat the best they can. Despite the perpetual movement and activity of a large city like London, loneliness is everywhere.
Clarissa’s reflection occurs directly after she considers her old friend Peter, who has failed to fulfill the dreams of his youth. As Clarissa ages, she finds it more difficult to know anybody, which makes her feel solitary. She hesitates to define even herself. Failing, becoming overwhelmed by the pressures of life, and drowning are far too easy. Clarissa is fifty-two, she’s lived through a war, and her experiences amplify the dangers of living and of facing the world and other people.

3. This late age of the world’s experience had bred in them all, all men and women, a well of tears. Tears and sorrows; courage and endurance; a perfectly upright and stoical bearing.
Explanation for Quotation 3 >>
This quotation occurs directly after Clarissa reads lines from Shakespeare’s play Cymbeline in a bookshop window. The lines “Fear no more the heat o’ the sun / Nor the furious winter’s rages” come from a hymn sung at a funeral and suggest that death is a release from the hard struggle of life. The words speak very directly to Clarissa’s own time period, the years after World War I. England is still in shock after having lost so many men in battle, the world now seems like a hostile place, and death seems like a welcome relief. After Clarissa reads the words from Cymbeline, she considers the great amount of sorrow every person now bears. Everyone, regardless of class, has to some degree been affected by the war.
Despite the upright and courageous attitudes many people maintain, they all carry a great sadness, and people cry constantly in Mrs. Dalloway. Peter Walsh bursts into tears at Clarissa’s house. Clarissa’s eyes fill with tears when she thinks of her mother walking in a garden. Septimus cries, and so does Rezia. Tears are never far from the surface, and sadness lurks beneath the busy activity of the day. Most people manage to contain their tears, according to the rules of society, or cry only in private. Septimus, the veteran, is the only character who does not hesitate to cry openly in the park, and he is considered mentally unstable. People are supposed to organize bazaars to help raise money for the veterans. People are supposed to maintain a stiff upper lip and carry on. Admitting to the horrors of the war by crying is not acceptable in English culture, though as Clarissa points out, a well of tears exists in each of them.
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4. Clarissa had a theory in those days . . . that since our apparitions, the part of us which appears, are so momentary compared with the other, the unseen part of us, which spreads wide, the unseen might survive, be recovered somehow attached to this person or that, or even haunting certain places after death . . . perhaps—perhaps.
Explanation for Quotation 4 >>
This quotation occurs as Peter Walsh walks back to his hotel. He hears the ambulance go by to pick up Septimus’s body and remembers Clarissa’s passion during their youth. Clarissa was frustrated at how little one person could know another person, because she felt that so much of a person existed out of reach of others. A person’s soul was like a plant or a tree, with a small part showing aboveground and a complex, unseen root system existing underneath. Although Clarissa had experienced death at a young age when her sister Sylvia died, she did not want to believe that death was the absolute end. Instead she believed that people survived, both in other people and in the natural world. To know someone beyond the surface, one had to seek out the people and places that completed that person. The structure of Mrs. Dalloway supports Clarissa’s theory, since most of the novel concerns people’s thoughts rather than surface actions. These thoughts connect to people and things far beyond the people and things that are ostensibly closest to them.
Clarissa told Peter of this transcendental theory while riding on an omnibus with him through London. The omnibus, an open-air bus that offers a view of everything around, symbolizes the ease with which the friends could once share their deepest thoughts. As adults, they are restricted by the repressive rules of English society, which is symbolized by great and somber automobiles with their blinds drawn. Clarissa still believes in the interconnectedness of humans and the natural world, and she thinks about it during her walk to the shops. However, Peter and Clarissa no longer feel so easy sharing their most deeply held ideas with one another, and Peter supposes Clarissa has hardened into a boring and shallow upper-class society wife who would no longer consider such ideas true or important.
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5. She felt somehow very like him—the young man who had killed himself. She felt glad that he had done it; thrown it away. The clock was striking. The leaden circles dissolved in the air. He made her feel the beauty; made her feel the fun. But she must go back. She must assemble.
Explanation for Quotation 5 >>
This quotation occurs at the day’s end, when Clarissa is at her party and receives news of Septimus’s death from Lady Bradshaw. Clarissa retreats to the small room where the prime minister sat to reflect on the young veteran. She had never met him and does not even know his name, but she experiences a moment of clarity, or “moment of being,” in the small room when she identifies strongly with him and his dramatic action. Woolf created Septimus as Clarissa’s double, and throughout the book he has echoed her thoughts and feelings. In this scene, Clarissa realizes how much she has in common with this working-class young man, who on the surface seems so unlike her.
Everything converges in this one moment, and this scene is the climax of the book. The narratives of Clarissa and Septimus finally meet. A wall separates the public sphere of the party from Clarissa’s private space, where her soul feels connected to Septimus’s soul. The clocks that have been relentlessly structuring the passing day continue to chime. Despite the sounding clocks and the pressures of the party outside, however, Clarissa manages to appreciate that Septimus has preserved his soul through death. Clarissa began her day by plunging ****************phorically into the beautiful June morning, and Septimus has now literally plunged from his window. An effort and commitment to the soul is necessary to plunge into life or death, and Clarissa, who has reached middle age and is keenly aware of the compromises she has made in her own life, respects Septimus’s unwillingness to be crushed by an oppressive power like the psychiatrist Sir William. Clarissa repeats the line from Cymbeline, “Fear no more,” and she continues to endure. She will go back to her party and “assemble.” In the postwar world, life is fragmented and does not contain easy routes to follow, but Clarissa will take the fragmented pieces and go on trying to make life up as best she can.
Study Questions and Essay Topics
Study Questions
1. “Fear no more the heat ’o the sun / Nor the furious winter’s rages” is a quote from Shakespeare’s play Cymbeline. The words are repeated or alluded to many times throughout Mrs. Dalloway, by both Clarissa and Septimus. What do the words mean, and why do Clarissa and Septimus repeat them?
Answer for Study Question 1 >>
Clarissa Dalloway first reads the words from Cymbeline in a bookshop window when she sets out to buy flowers for her party, and their meaning is particularly significant in light of World War I. The lines are from a funeral dirge and suggest that death is not a thing to be feared, but rather it should be seen as a relief from the hard struggles of life. World War I has wrought devastation throughout England, and tragedy or the possibility of it is never far from people’s thoughts. Clarissa, a middle-aged woman who is coming to terms with her own aging and eventual death, meditates on these lines throughout the day. The words foreshadow the death of Clarissa’s double, the veteran Septimus, who repeats them before he commits suicide.
The lines from Cymbeline connect to the strong use of nature imagery that appears throughout the novel. The characters who are most connected to nature, such as Clarissa and Septimus, are also the most responsive to poetry and reflect about death and their place in the world most frequently. Both Clarissa and Septimus feel the importance of fire. The “heat o’ the sun” can appear as something wonderful, like passion. Clarissa describes romantic love as “a match burning in a crocus.” The heat can also consume, however, and Septimus, mentally wounded by the horrors of war, feels that the world will erupt in flames, in a fire that can no longer be contained. Whether wonderful or deadly, the heat of the sun is constant, and something everyone must endure. The quote suggests that death be embraced as a release from the burden of endurance.
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2. Woolf created Septimus Warren Smith as a double for Clarissa. In what ways are Clarissa and Septimus different? In what ways are they the same?
Answer for Study Question 2 >>
Woolf originally planned to have Clarissa die at the end of Mrs. Dalloway, but she decided instead to create a double for her, Septimus Warren Smith. Septimus would die in Clarissa’s place, while Clarissa continued to endure. Many obvious differences exist between the two characters. Septimus is a man and twenty years younger who has fought and been damaged in the war. Clarissa is of the upper class, while Septimus is a working-class clerk. Clarissa still finds meaning in the symbols of English society, such as the prime minister and expensive cars, while Septimus sees them as meaningless. While Clarissa is able to gather her face into a neat diamond shape so she can meet the world with pursed lips and an unflappable demeanor, Septimus’s lips are loose and he has lost the ability to focus or distinguish reality from his own visions. Septimus’s inner world overflows into the public sphere, whereas Clarissa's interior remains contained. Septimus is considered insane, while Clarissa remains sane.
Clarissa and Septimus differ, but they also share many physical and emotional qualities. Each has a beak-nose, enjoys being at home in the domestic sphere, and quotes Shakespeare. Both have doting spouses. The first time we encounter Septimus, he is observing the car that backfires, just as Clarissa is. Their similarities also go beyond these surface details. Both have an instinctive horror of those who crave power, such as Sir William and Miss Kilman. Both Clarissa and Septimus believe that people are connected to trees in a spiritual way, and nature matters a great deal to both of them. At the end of the novel, in a very direct link, Clarissa “felt somehow very like him—the young man who had killed himself.” She realizes that Septimus's death is, like her party, an attempt to communicate. This moment is an epiphany, or moment of being, when Clarissa realizes that Septimus is in some way a part of herself.
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3. Conversion is seen as a constant threat in the novel. Which characters wish to convert others, and what are they trying to convert others to? Are some characters more susceptible to conversion than others?
Answer for Study Question 3 >>
The two characters who try most actively to convert others in the novel are the psychiatrist, Sir William Bradshaw, and Elizabeth’s history teacher, Doris Kilman. Sir William ostensibly attempts to convert people to his conception of health and science, while Miss Kilman introduces people to her views on religion and God. Both characters, however, seek dominion over others and use the concept of conversion only to gain power. Miss Kilman admits to herself that it is Clarissa’s soul she wishes to “subdue” and “make feel her mastery.” Miss Kilman seeks power in the name of Christianity, just as Sir William exiles people to mental institutions in the name of science.
The very sight of Sir William makes Clarissa uncomfortable, and she is highly sensitive to his desire to convert people to his worldview. Her awareness and vulnerability to Sir William’s and Miss Kilman’s greed for power comes from her ability to think deeply and empathize with others’ emotions and motivations. Septimus also has this acute awareness about the world around him, and he is even more susceptible to conversion than Clarissa, due to his low social status. English society is another force that tries to convert people, but it also, to some extent, protects the upper class from the control of someone like Sir William. While Lady Bradshaw succumbs to social—and marital—pressure, Lady Bruton, in contrast, is safe from Sir William’s clutches due to her close association with the empire. She may have lost her sense of “proportion” with her Canada obsession, but other members of her class will indulge and protect her. Characters who are more individual, like Clarissa and Septimus, are more at risk than those who view themselves purely as part of English society.
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Suggested Essay Topics
1. Mrs. Dalloway is constructed from many different points of view, and points of view are sometimes linked by an emotion, a sound, a visual image, or a memory. Describe three instances when the point of view changes and explain how Woolf accomplishes the transitions. How do the transitions correspond to the points of view being connected?
2. Flowers, gardens, and nature are important motifs in the novel. Choose three characters and describe their relationships to the natural world. What do these relationships reveal about the characters or their functions in the novel?
3. Characters in the novel come from a range of social classes. What does Peter mean when he feels the “pyramidal accumulation” that weighed on his generation is shifting? How did the old social order weigh particularly heavily on women?
4. What role does Sally Seton play in Clarissa’s life, and what is the significance of her surprise appearance at the party?
5. World War I affected all the characters in the book to some degree. How did the war influence at least three of the characters?
6. The multitude of minor characters in the novel can be compared to the chorus in a classical Greek drama. They are often observers in the street. Choose three or four minor characters and describe their roles. What is their importance to the novel as a whole?
7. When Clarissa reflects on Septimus’s death at the end of the novel, she experiences a moment of being, or an epiphany. What truth becomes clear to her, and why is it significant?

Quiz
1. What does Clarissa set out to purchase in the novel’s opening scene?
(A) A bag of ice
(B) Flowers
(C) Champagne
(D) Fairy lamps

2. What object does Peter Walsh always have with him?
(A) A banjo
(B) A flashlight
(C) A silver comb
(D) A pocketknife

3. What color is Clarissa Dalloway’s party dress?
(A) Lavender
(B) Peach
(C) Green
(D) Red

4. In which month does the novel take place?
(A) June
(B) October
(C) December
(D) April

5. Which male character proposes marriage to Clarissa and is refused?
(A) Hugh Whitbread
(B) Septimus Warren Smith
(C) Joseph Breitkopf
(D) Peter Walsh

6. Septimus feels human nature is essentially evil. Which character does he claim embodies “human nature”?”
(A) Lucrezia
(B) Richard Dalloway
(C) Dr. Holmes
(D) Doris Kilman

7. Which line from a Shakespearean play is repeated several times throughout the novel?
(A) “Out, damned spot! Out, I say!—”
(B) “Fear no more the heat o’ the sun / Nor the furious winter’s rages”
(C) “If music be the food of love, play on”
(D) “But, soft! what light through yonder window / breaks?”

8. What is Lucrezia Smith’s profession?
(A) Schoolteacher
(B) Cellist
(C) Hat-maker
(D) Florist

9. Septimus goes to the doctor because he is suffering from what illness?
(A) ****************l shock
(B) A toothache
(C) Back problems
(D) The flu

10. Why does Lady Bruton invite Richard Dalloway and Hugh Whitbread to her home for lunch?
(A) She wants their advice on redecorating the parlor
(B) Richard and Hugh keep her in stitches with their crazy senses of humor
(C) She wants their help writing a letter to the editor concerning emigration to Canada
(D) She wants to warn them about Peter Walsh’s arrival in the city

11. When Richard returns from having lunch at Lady Bruton’s, what does he bring home to Clarissa?
(A) A little chow dog
(B) A bouquet of roses
(C) A fountain pen
(D) A Jacobean mug

12. Who does Clarissa compare herself to when she returns home to her attic room?
(A) A marathon runner
(B) A princess
(C) A prisoner
(D) A nun

13. What was the most exquisite moment of Clarissa’s life?
(A) When she got married
(B) When she met Hugh Whitbread in the street
(C) When Sally Seton kissed her on the lips
(D) When Elizabeth agreed to wear her pink dress to the party

14. Where does Peter Walsh live?
(A) Boston
(B) India
(C) London
(D) Sweden

15. Where did Clarissa spend her summers as a girl?
(A) Bourton
(B) Edinburgh
(C) Milan
(D) Calcutta

16. What is the name of Peter’s fiancée?
(A) Marigold
(B) Lily
(C) Lucy
(D) Daisy

17. What does Clarissa have in her hands when Peter Walsh makes an unexpected visit?
(A) A tambourine
(B) Scissors
(C) A book
(D) A spatula

18. What illness has Clarissa recently recovered from?
(A) Influenza
(B) Measles
(C) A nervous breakdown
(D) Typhoid

19. When Peter Walsh falls asleep in Regent’s Park, what does he dream about?
(A) A solitary traveler
(B) A giant squid
(C) His mother’s handbag
(D) An exam

20. Whom does Septimus hear speaking to him from behind trees and screens?
(A) Mrs. Filmer
(B) Lucrezia
(C) Clarissa Dalloway
(D) Evans

21. What does Sir William Bradshaw, one of Septimus’s doctors, believe in most strongly?
(A) Yoga
(B) God
(C) Proportion
(D) A protein diet

22. Who does Clarissa see twice in the window across from her own?
(A) A calico cat
(B) An old woman
(C) Septimus Warren Smith
(D) A young man smoking a pipe

23. Where does Doris Kilman go after having tea with Elizabeth?
(A) Regent’s Park
(B) Westminster Abbey
(C) Clarissa’s house
(D) The Salvation Army shop

24. Which shocking action did Sally Seton take at Bourton?
(A) She smoked opium at dinner
(B) She brought a pony into the breakfast room
(C) She ran naked through the hallway
(D) She threw away all of Clarissa’s father’s books

25. What does Lady Bradshaw tell Clarissa at the Dalloways’ party?
(A) That Septimus committed suicide
(B) That she’s taking a holiday to Greece
(C) That Sir William has killed her soul
(D) That she would like a copy of Clarissa’s punch recipe

[Wabel]

يعطيكم العافيه ما قصرتوا... لساني عاجز عن شكركم على تعاونكم معنا.. الله يجعلها سنه سهله علينا و عليكم يا رب ويسهل تخرجنا

[mesho ~]

welcom baib

any time