Quote 4
Clarissa
had a theory in those days . . . that since our apparitions, the
part of us which appears, are so momentary compared with the other,
the unseen part of us, which spreads wide, the unseen might survive,
be recovered somehow attached to this person or that, or even haunting certain
places after death . . . perhaps—perhaps.
This quotation occurs as Peter Walsh
walks back to his hotel. He hears the ambulance go by to pick up
Septimus’s body and remembers Clarissa’s passion during their youth.
Clarissa was frustrated at how little one person could know another
person, because she felt that so much of a person existed out of
reach of others. A person’s soul was like a plant or a tree, with
a small part showing aboveground and a complex, unseen root system
existing underneath. Although Clarissa had experienced death at
a young age when her sister Sylvia died, she did not want to believe
that death was the absolute end. Instead she believed that people
survived, both in other people and in the natural world. To know
someone beyond the surface, one had to seek out the people and places
that completed that person. The structure of Mrs. Dalloway supports
Clarissa’s theory, since most of the novel concerns people’s thoughts rather
than surface actions. These thoughts connect to people and things
far beyond the people and things that are ostensibly closest to them.
Clarissa told Peter of this transcendental theory while
riding on an omnibus with him through London. The omnibus, an open-air bus
that offers a view of everything around, symbolizes the ease with
which the friends could once share their deepest thoughts. As adults,
they are restricted by the repressive rules of English society, which
is symbolized by great and somber automobiles with their blinds
drawn. Clarissa still believes in the interconnectedness of humans
and the natural world, and she thinks about it during her walk to
the shops. However, Peter and Clarissa no longer feel so easy sharing
their most deeply held ideas with one another, and Peter supposes
Clarissa has hardened into a boring and shallow upper-class society
wife who would no longer consider such ideas true or important.
