The gap between sharing a room and sharing an experience.
What interests me most about Clarissa’s party is the possibility that bringing people together in a lovely enviroment is not the same as making them feel understood. At first, the preparations seem like a strange focus for a novel– why spend so long on flowers and guests when right in front of our eyes, Septimus is struggling with PTSD the war caused him? But placing these experiences beside each other makes the party more complicated than a symbol of wealthy shallowness. Clarissa spends her day arranging an occasion for people to gather and be together, while Septimus’s story exposes how badly people can fail to recognize another person’s suffering. The circumstances are very different, but I read both stories as asking a question about connection.
How close can we actually get to someone whose inner life that we cannot fully see?
That question becomes especially uncomfortable when unfortunate news of Septimus’s suicide reaches the party. Clarissa never meets him, but she learns about his death through the Bradshaws and then excuses herself into a separate room to think about it. At the moment when she feels an unexpected connection to someone else, she steps away from everyone around her. To me, this complicates the assumption that being sociable means being emotionally close to people. A crowded room usually leaves little space for serious attention, while solitude can make someone else’s experience feel suddenly urgent. It reminds me of the difference between participating in a busy group chat and actually understanding what one person in it is going through. Still, I am not sure we should accept Clarissa’s sense of "identification" without questioning it. Does she recognize something about Septimus, or does she turn a stranger’s death into a way of understanding herself?
I think that uncertainty makes the book as a whole more powerful. Clarissa returns to the party after reflecting on Septimus's passing, but the gathering cannot undo his death. I do not read her return as proof that the party is meaningless either. Instead, it suggests a limited but worthwhile response to isolation–people can keep creating opportunities to meet, even when those encounters cannot guarantee feeling included because of who you are. Woolf makes me wonder whether genuine connection begins not when we decide that we understand someone completely, but when we recognize how much of that person remains after us.
- Kimberly Rivas
I think the factor that really ties them together in this balcony scene is that they both faced extreme societal pressure. Septimus' constant anguish as doctors pounce on him in a sad attempt to fix him, and Clarissa's need to become the perfect hostess to conduct her party connect them together. Great blog post!
ReplyDeleteKimberly, I think the way you put the juxtaposition between Clarissa's party and Septimus' death is really interesting! I also think that while Septimus' struggles with PTSD are an example of how someone's suffering can be so easily looked over, Clarissa's also struggling with feeling like she lost herself after she married Richard. I think that both of these characters and their individual struggles are looked over for different reasons-- because Clarissa is trying so hard to mask that she feels depressed and missing a part of herself, and Septimus because of the lack of understanding of PTSD in the 1920's at the time. Great post!
ReplyDeleteThis is such a great post! You're comparisons of Clarissa and Septimius' outside appearance versus their internal struggles is really interesting. I also think you're philosophical ideas and questions around knowing someone are extremely thought-provoking and insightful. You really speak to the spirit of the novel, your ideas here seem similar to something one of the characters may think about. Good job again!
ReplyDeleteIt's true that we see a wide range of different "experiences" at Clarissa's party, and that because of her intersubjective narration we can't really say that everyone has the "same" experience, even though they go through the same event. Even apart from the complicated Septimus question, we see a range of connection and disconnection throughout the evening. Peter would certainly agree that being around other people and talking to them doesn't necessarily amount to "knowing" those people in any deep way--his criticism of Clarissa as a phony "hostess" standing at the top of the stairs, giving everyone the same enthusiastic greeting. But then when we see Peter and Sally/Lady Rosseter reconnecting through their conversation, we kind of DO see an example of people who share the same room and share something of the same experience. I always wonder what happens once Clarissa joins them at the end--Woolf is diabolical for cutting off the story at that point!
ReplyDeleteOne of the things i love most about this novel is how it puts different experiences into perspective in an out of body way. It's crazy to think about how different timelines collide. And I think this blog is very insightful in it's way of presenting clarissa and septimus's "connection" throughout this novel! It was one of those topics I found myself stumped on and you made some very relevant points!
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