Here is my response in a form of PDF.
christine mrs. dalloway

I chose to draw a portrait of what I believe Virginia Woolf is trying to represent. Both Mrs. Dalloway and Peter feel trapped, unable to express their feelings.  There is a lack of connection between the characters because they cannot fully express themselves. Instead, they are isolated in many ways. Peter creates life through his dreams frequently where his problems are gone, such as fear of aging. Mrs. Dalloway feels isolation through Richard. Richard provides her a stabled and dull life where Sally and Peter could have provided her a passionate, meaningful life. Septimus also feels isolated through his suffering from World War I. He experiences post-traumatic stress disorder, where in his world, he is the only one to relive and experience World War I. We see Septimus suffer psychologically, battling his own thoughts while his wife is unable to help him.

Richard suffers from the fact that he can never express his love for Mrs. Dalloway, where Peter suffers from the rejection 30 years ago. Rezia suffers from the fact that she is unable to provide support for her husband’s psychological problem. Mrs. Dalloway suffers in that she doesn’t feel love from Richard.

Ivy Qiu

response to Mrs. Dalloway

This is a diagram of characters

Virginia Woolf once wrote, that the world is full of “hidden pattern”. That people are somehow connected with each other and their surroundings. Despite Clarissa’s and Septimus’ clear differences in social class, there are a lot of similarities on how these two think about life. This shows that Woolf is in fact correct in writing that their are hidden patterns in reality which keep everything together and make up what we call the world.

One commonality between Clarissa and Septimus is how they see themselves being part of the society. Both think that they are very much part of the nature that they live in. This can be seen when Clarissa walks to get the flowers and thinks about death. Woolf writes, “ did it not become consoling to believe that death ended absolutely? but that somehow in the streets of London, on the ebb and flow of things, here, there, she survived, Peter survived, lived in each other, she being part, she was positive, of the trees at home; of the house there, ugly, rambling all to bits and pieces as it was; part of people she had never met; being laid out like a mist between the people she knew best, who lifted her on their branches as she had seen the trees lift the mist, but it spread ever so far, her life, herself.” This shows that Clarissa believed that she would still be alive in people’s memories and other facets of the world such as the nature. Similar kind of understanding is also shown by Septimus when he was outside at a park thinking about the nature. Woolf states, “leaves were alive; trees were alive. And the leaves being connected by millions of fibres with his own body, there on the seat, fanned it up and down; when the branch stretched he, too, made that statement.” This personification of the nature shows that Septimus thinks about the nature in a very similar way that Clarissa does. He believes that nature is a an integral part of life which holds together and makes up what people are and ultimately how its shapes our world.

Another “hidden pattern” comes from the social standings of both these characters. Ironically, even though both the character are from completely different backgrounds they are subject to the pressure the society has on both of them. On one hand, Clarissa is doing what is expected from a housewife of well-known politician, such as throwing parties. However, it can be clearly seen that she is not sure of the situation that she lives in. For instance, she always seems to be very doubtful of her marriage. She repeatedly thinks about Peter and questions whether she made the right choice by rejecting his proposal marry him, and deciding to marry Richard instead. While Clarissa still seems to have and enjoy the amenities of the high society, Septimus, who fought in war to the protect those amenities also lives a similar life. As a war veteran, I think he has lost a lot of his mental capability from the shock that he went through during the war. However, in his thoughts he still has to meet the society’s expectation from a soldier and he always feels the need to perform a patriotic duty.

In conclusion, Woolf shows the hidden pattern that are very present between Clarissa and Septimus. Both characters have very similar understanding of how nature plays a role in connecting the world. Both also have very similar kind of expectations that they are pressured from. On on hand, Clarissa is under constant pressure to live up to the expectation of high-life society, and Septimus has to live of to the expectation of a patriotic soldier.

I wanted to first state that this might be the last time I ever try to be artsy. After countless and countless attempts I was able to scratch out these two pieces on a map I used of Mrs. Dalloway’s path (red), Septimus’s path (green), and Peter’s path (blue).( I did not map their paths out it is a picture I found) That being said I hope you enjoy!

When making these mosaics, I searched for different groupings of pictures:

Imagery from the text, places, themes, terms and works from class discussion, Woolf’s A Sketch of the Past, pictures that came to my mind when I thought of Mrs. Dalloway and the time period, and key aspects that connect to both Mrs. Dalloway and Septimus together and separate.

Maxx Baldassare

For my character map, I decided to connect Clarissa Dalloway and Septimus through a short, picture book. Though the images are not crafted by me, I specifically selected this set of images to curate my visual thoughts of Mrs.Dalloway into a graphic representation. The link can be found below.

http://storybird.com/books/mrs-dalloway-character-map/?token=p5nd4vf86d

Web of Connections

I decided to do this week’s assignment in a PowerPoint.

-Taf

Angela Ramasar

In Mrs. Dalloway, Septimus Smith and Clarissa Dalloway are seen as each other’s doubles. Even though Clarissa and Septimus never actually meet, their characters reflect each other, in terms of their similar visions of life and society, built up from a mixture of reality and imagination. Clarissa is portrayed as the sane woman and Septimus as the insane man. Septimus refuses to face reality. He’s completely removed himself from the physical world, and lives in an internal world where he sees and hears things that others do not. Clarissa is very much involved with the physical world. Her life is a constant engagement with society, doing things such as throwing parties. Judging from the differences between these two characters, it would seem that Woolf intended for Clarissa to be the voice of reason and Septimus to be the voice of insanity.

Although they can be seen as each other’s opposites, Septimus and Clarissa are actually quite similar, both in action and in thought. Both characters have beak-noses, a fondness for Shakespeare, and a fear of oppression. Septimus fears oppression by the world while Clarissa fears oppression by her lifestyle and her past. They both share common thoughts, such as their response to the trees in the park, and both have the same Shakespeare verse floating through their minds throughout the day. Both characters are also detached from their spouses.

In Mrs. Dalloway, Virginia Woolf uses different connections to explore the inner mind of both Clarissa and Septimus. Although the book was very confusing at first because I couldn’t understand the flow of the continuous sentences and it seemed a bit overwhelming, last Tuesday’s class clarified a lot. As I read more into the book, I started noticing more of these different connections that make it easier for us as readers to understand what the different characters are thinking as the day goes by. One connection that is seen often is one between the past, present and future. For example, both Clarissa and Septimus like to think about the what happened in their life before. Clarissa is constantly thinking about her life when she was younger and about her relationship with Peter, while thinking about her party that is supposed to occur at night. The topic of death is also something that comes up but she chooses to continue living despite the fact that she finds life quite lonely. Septimus also seems to connect his past with his present; he is constantly thinking about his friend who died in the war and even claims that he has seen him in the present. He also always tells his wife about taking his own life. Through their thinking process about different time periods, we learn more about their relationships with other people.

In terms of their connections with other, they seem to be lacking any actual genuine relationship . For example, although Clarissa is planning for her party in which others will attend, we can see that she seems to feel quite distant from her husband and Peter at some parts. In the case of Septimus, we can clearly see that there is a disconnect between him and his wife; his wife even talks about leaving him because she could not deal with him anymore and he seems to feel as if no one can understand him.