We'll talk about this in class somewhat, but for our panel presentation, we found an article that talks about Clarissa with respect to Septimus. The article as a whole took the view that the novel was really about Septimus and that Clarissa was just supposed to add to the tragedy of Septimus' life. At first I didn't quite see where the writer was going, but she went on to explain how Clarissa was also a trauma victim. She went off in that other room and looked out the window and, as Mr. Mitchell said in class, was originally going to commit suicide as well, but she chose not to. With that information, I think the ending makes more sense to me now.
Septimus challenged the widely held view that war was good for you; made you tough and strong and honorable. Clarissa, after her earlier relationships with Peter and Sally, chose to be conventional. She constitutes so much of the social norm of her day and purposely embodies her position in the world as she puts her 'Mrs. Richard Dalloway' face on in front of the mirror and as the mysterious car goes by. Septimus' doctors are the same way. They disregard shell-shock and say there's nothing wrong with Septimus, that he just needs a break from the world, that he should go away for a while. They also uphold the status quo where war is a concept in people's minds that is respectable.
Septimus is proof that they are all wrong. War can't be taken lightly and his suicide shakes up the doctors, certainly his wife, Rezia, and even Clarissa when she hears of it at her party. Something as dramatic as Septimus' suicide can't leave Clarissa totally untouched, but rather than focusing on how she didn't react to it, we should focus on how she didn't react. By this I mean that the fact that she returns to her party and acts the same way she did before can still tell us a lot about her. She seems to have considered doing the same thing, but she decides not to. Yes, it's great that she's still alive at the end of the book, but it seems that the way she deals with her past is by throwing these parties. It's like she has such a hard time really facing things the way she sort of did when she was on her own in the attic, that she puts on this facade of Mrs. Richard Dalloway so that she can somehow ignore her past.
In this light, it makes sense that Clarissa is so centered around her social life and also makes the ending more a profound statement about the flaws in modern society and also about how people communicate with one another. Sometimes you really are speaking a different language, like Septimus, just waiting for someone to understand. Waiting for that long would be frustrating. Septimus' suicide now seems less like an impulse and more like a last ditch effort at opening people's eyes to life as it really is and how frightening Human Nature really is. I know this is what I should be bringing up in our discussion tomorrow, but I promise there are other arguments to be made.
