Mrs. Dalloway By Virginia Wool

In Virginia Woolf’s book, Mrs. Dalloway, Clarissa Dalloway and Septimus Warren Smith grow up under the same social institutions although social classes are drawn upon wealth; it can be conceived that two people may have very similar opinions of the society that created them. The English society which Woolf presents individuals that are uncannily similar.

Clarissa and Septimus share the quality of expressing through actions, not words. Through these basic beliefs and idiosyncrasies, both characters mimic each other through their actions and thoughts, even though they never meet. Clarissa feels sadness and death around her. There is much routine and habit around her but she still seems dissatisfied. At her late age of fifty she sees herself as Mrs. Dalloway, not even Clarissa. She portrays her sense of happiness as something not monstrumental or graniose, but rather quite simple. She can be happy throwing a party, she can escape reality:

Every time she gave a party she had this feeling of being something not herself, and that everyone was unreal in one way; much more real in another.

…it was possible to say things you couldn’t say anyhow else, things that needed an effort; possible to go much deeper. But not for her; not yet anyhow.

(Woolf 171)

Kramer 2

With Septimus, seeing his best friend Evans die at war has been a major trauma in his life. His wife Rezia must constantly take him away from his reality and have him focus on things not involving war or him thinking of it...