Septimus in the context of Clarissa

 Today, we got a notebook assignment prompting us to think about Septimus and Clarissa's plotlines with Woolf's original plans for the book in mind. I thought this was a very interesting topic so I will expand on my thoughts here:

Firstly I'd like to address the part of the prompt that says the Clarissa never heard anything about Septimus. I disagree completely with that statement because she did hear about him at her party. I think this scene is relevant because it reveals such a fascinating part of Clarissa's mind. She envies him. Besides how little she knows of him, she recognizes that he took his own life to preserve his soul. With all of her thoughts, dwellings in the past, leading up to this moment, she finally expresses that she feels she has lost not only her passion but her soul in marrying Richard. She feels ashamed of who shes turned out to be and the way she let go of herself to climb the social ladder. News of Septimus's death, in combination with seeing the old woman out of her window, prompted clarity in Clarissa and she comes to terms with her past decisions which ultimately enables her to carry on into whatever her future has in store for her. Conceivably, this is the most important moment in the book. Therefore, I think that Septimus's plotline is not only intertwined with Clarissa's but highly influential on it. 

Next, to take into context Woolf's original plans for this novel's main character to commit suicide at the end of the book greatly impacts how the reader perceives Septimus. At a base level, he's a surrogate for Clarissa. On a more complex level, however, I believe that they're a lot more connected than the book portrays. We've discussed the possibility that Clarissa isn't sharing everything about herself with the reader to preserve the facade of her social status, which makes a lot of sense if she was willing to trade her soul for it. In this sense, I look at Septimus as a sort of outlet for Clarissa's inner thoughts and feelings that she doesn't advertise to the reader. He could be her alter ego of sorts. This perspective would explain why they never met even though other characters in the book seem to be related to Clarissa in some way or another. In other words, their plotline, even though it follows different stories, might actually be the same plotline. It might be a stretch but I think there's a lot of evidence pointing in that direction. 

Comments

  1. MitchellOctober 26, 2020 at 9:02 AM

    Clarissa does hear about a "young man who was in the army" at the party, and she gets the stark information that he's taken his own life and was a patient of Bradshaw's--that's all she hears, and she knows next to nothing about Septimus as an individual. So on the surface there is only a glancing connection between the storylines, a degree of separation as Bradshaw mentions his patient at a party where Septimus would never attend and usually never be spoken of. It's true that Clarissa then has a very intense, almost "psychic" visualization of Septimus plunging from the window, and the novel offers no explanation for how she seems to intuit such details based on the very limited information she's heard.

    But yes, it's true--and important to note--that at a narrative level, the storylines definitely intersect at the party. There are other "near misses," as when Peter walks past Septimus and Clarissa at the park, or when Septimus is right outside the flower shop when Clarissa is startled by the backfiring car.

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