Mrs. Dalloway

Compare the journey of Mrs. Dalloway and Septimus?

how the journey of both characters is compared in the novel

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The heroine of the novel, Clarissa is analyzed in terms of her life, personality, and thought process throughout the book by the author and other characters. She is viewed from many angles. Clarissa enjoys the moment-to-moment aspect of life and believes that a piece of her remains in every place she has visited. She lacks a certain warmth, but is a caring woman who is touched by the people around her and their connection to life in general. Clarissa feels that her parties are her gift to the world and is proud to share herself with others. She loves to be accepted but has the acuity of mind to perceive her own flaws, especially since her recent illness. Clarissa is a representative of an uppity English gentry class and yet, defies categorization because of her humanity and her relation to her literary double, Septimus Warren Smith. She is superficially based on Woolf's childhood friend, Kitty Maxse.

Often considered Clarissa's doppelganger, Septimus was a successful, intelligent, literary young man before World War I. During the war, he wins many honors and friends. After a good friend, Evans, is killed, he realizes that he can no longer feel. Marrying Rezia in an attempt to move on, Septimus never regains an emotional attachment to the world. The couple moves back to London and Septimus returns to his good job, but he slowly slips into further depths of despair and horror. He hears voices, namely of Evans, and becomes extremely sensitive to color and natural beauty. The doctors compound his problems by ignoring them, and they become the embodiment of evil and humanity, in his mind. When Dr. Holmes pushes into his home to see him, Septimus throws himself out the window to his death.

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