The "Clearer" Parallels between Septimus and Clarissa
In Virginia Woolf's novel Mrs. Dalloway, the story is, as we can tell from the title, supposedly centered on Mrs. Clarissa Dalloway. However, as the book drags on, it often gives characters other than Clarissa more pages in the book. Characters like Peter, Sally, Elizabeth, and Richard do play important roles in the book, but the most crucial ideas of the book feel more centered around just two characters; Clarissa and Septimus. When we first discussed Septimus' larger significance in class, we drew a bubble diagram of the interconnectedness of all the characters' interactions in the novel. In the diagram, our class gave Septimus and Clarissa seperate central bubbles because they interact with seperate sets of characters in the book. However, I do think that Clarissa and Septimus are connected, except on a deeper level that is not as simple as a visible line on a bubble diagram. The only physical branch between Clarissa and Septimus is Peter's senseless interaction wit...