Mrs. Dalloway Group

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ricci1
ricci1

What are the similarities between Septimus and Clarissa in Mrs. Dalloway?

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Posted by ricci1 on Sunday January 28, 2007 at 4:32 AM and tagged with mrs dalloway, mrs. dalloway, septimuscharacters.

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  1. a-b

    They are both very isolated and feel alone. They're also not comfortable in their situations and at odds with the world at large.

    Sources:
    http://www.enotes.com/mrs-dalloway/13601

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    Posted by a-b on Monday January 29, 2007 at 9:38 PM


  2. sagetrieb Teacher
    Doctorate

    Woolf tells us in the introduction to the 1928 eidtion of her book that Septimus is intended to be the double of Mrs. Dalloway.  Indeed, she first thought that he might live while Clarissa would die. As a result, many critics understand his death to be a substitute for Clarissa, for if he dies for his war experience (especially the death of his friend) and his inablility to adjust to life, she is able to live, to adjust to the confinements of her married life.  Clarissa's meditation on Septimus's death at her party indicates this intuitive closeness she feels to a man she has never known.  "Death was defiance," she tells herself.  "Death was an attempt to communicate. . . . Had he plunged holding his treasure?"  "What a plunge" begins Mrs.Dalloway, and the treasure she holds was her moment when Sally Seton kissed her.  Septimus shared a similar close relationship with his friend who died at the front.  Clarissa also says at her party, "She felt somehow very lke him....she felt glad that he had done it; thrown it away. . . . He made her feel the beauty."

    Sources:
    http://www.enotes.com/mrs-dalloway

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    Posted by sagetrieb on Thursday July 12, 2007 at 1:17 PM


  3. rosei Teacher
    Graduate School

    They both couldn't adjust to the world like it was, full of minor worries and major prejudices.

    Sources:
    http://www.enotes.com/mrs-dalloway

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    Posted by rosei on Monday August 18, 2008 at 11:28 AM

  4. revolution
    revolution Teacher
    Doctorate

    The similarities are that both Septimus and Clarissa feel that they are outside floating in the world, looking on at themselves at the world ahead of them and their actions but at the same time dashing headlong throughout the passage of time. They feel very lonely and also very isolated from the world and feel very uneasy about themselves.

    But they do differ from each other. Septimus went to war and tried to defend his country from being attacked and attempted to become a "man"" but unsuccessfully lost the war. At the other hand, Clarissa, did not fight in the war. she married a safe man who would not dared her to become more of a woman that she believed herself capable to do it, but she was wrong.

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    Posted by revolution on Sunday July 26, 2009 at 7:04 AM