Septimus' Role in Clarissa's Story

While reading through Mrs. Dalloway, a lot of people, myself included, questioned why Septimus was in the novel, as until the very end he sort of seemed like a very separate story. When Clarissa was told about his suicide and the connection became evident, a fairly prominent theory for his role in the story was that his personality was there to represent or reflect a part of Clarissa's. The sections involving Septimus were by far my favorite in the book, as his sort of crazy perspective was very interesting, and I actually felt much more invested in his story than Clarissa's, which I found less important. I don't agree with the theory that he represents a "darker side" of Clarissa, as I don't think they have a ton in common, and I think that Septimus was a completely separate person, and that it's how his story impacts Clarissa that reflects on her personality.

There are some obvious parallels between Septimus' suicide and Clarissa's moment at the window; Clarissa can for some reason perfectly visualize Septimus' fall, both of them at least consider dying as an act of "defiance," and, strangely, both see people across from them in different houses looking at them at the moment they're considering suicide. For me, the connections stop when I consider the character's motivations during these scenes. While they both seem to be sort of tired or fed up with life, this is for completely different reasons.

Septimus pretty clearly explains his reasons for committing suicide to the reader; he both feels that he committed a terrible crime against humanity for which he deserves to die and that he wants to have some control over his fate rather than let the doctors take control of him. We see during the course of the novel that his shell shock has greatly affected him and made him somewhat insane, which is evident in his narration. He seems to be at least partially recovering from this right before his jump out of the window, but the arrival of Doctor Holmes makes him want to escape and sort of rekindles these feelings again, leading him to kill himself.

Clarissa, on the other hand, just seems sort of bored and like she doesn't have a purpose, and she also is feeling some regret about the way her life has gone. She doesn't exhibit any signs of insanity even close to those Septimus does because of his shell shock. When she's thinking about Septimus' death alone in the room at the party, some of her potential motivations for suicide become clear. She mentions her moment at Bourton where she would have been happy dying, and I think that this news of Septimus sort of brings back that feeling, leading her to consider jumping. She thinks about the years of her life she's spent with Richard and how none of it compared to how good her time at Bourton was, and that seems to lead her into a lot of regret and sadness (one other potential motivation, which I thought of as she was describing death as a means of communication, is to prove to Sally and Peter (who seems especially disappointed with how she's turned out), who are both present, that she is more than she appears, that she's not satisfied with her somewhat boring life with Richard).

Clarissa, in the end, does not kill herself, though she doesn't seem to see it as a very bad idea, as she understands the potential reasons that Septimus has done it and says that she's happy for him. It's perhaps the presence of Peter and Sally, her friends from her Bourton days, that give her hope to reclaim the feeling of happiness that she had there; to give life another chance. It's this vast difference in the character's final decisions, as well as the completely separate initial motivations, that show that Septimus is a completely independent character whose story helps Clarissa reflect on her own life and not just a physical representation of a darker part of Clarissa's personality.