Wrapping up Mrs. Dalloway, I close this delightful book with only one regret. It's a small nagging burst of thought that I can't suppress - what if Clarissa and Septimus had met? Would they have been friends? Could they have fallen in love? Would she have been able to save him, or am I naive for wishing so? They are so impossibly similar and yet their fates are infinitely different. Whereas he chose to leap to his death in defiance, she paused, wondered, and lived.
Comparing the two, it's possible to see parallels: for instance, they were both victims of excruciating loneliness despite the comfort of their respective situations - he a favored worker and she a successful housewife - and the love they receive from their spouses. They each experienced a sort of past trauma - he the death of a close friend and she the death of a talented sister. And they both approach life with a unique perspective - he from the eyes of a poet and she with the theory that all life was interwoven. The one significant aspect on which they diverge is the ability to feel; whereas Clarissa is overflowing with empathy, Septimus despairs his stoic personality. This, combined with the joyous celebration of life that swirls around him in central London, overwhelms him to madness.
Yet, think for a moment, pretend Clarissa was a central figure in Septimus's life (just as she had been in Richard's life in The Hours), would she have been to help him move on from the struggles of life? The movie doesn't believe so, but that is only one interpretation. I personally believe (maybe because I'm passionately optimistic) that such a happy ending would have been possible. For while Virginia Woolf was a poetically wonderful writer, she was also a victim of suicide trapped in an unhappy marriage, and there are times when I think she underestimates the human resilience. That Septimus may have lived had he a Clarissa-like figure is the dream I hold on to.
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