it would never be seen; never be hung either and there was Mr. Tansley whispering in her ear –Women can’t paint, women can’t write…” (Ref TTL p 54)However To the Lighthouse was not the only book in which Woolf used charters to express herself, this style was also present in her novel Mrs. Dalloway “Mrs. Dalloway represents Woolf’s fullest self portrait as an artist.” (WOL 126) In this novel she used Clarissa, the central character, mainly to convey her feelings and thought about death and suicide. Having had a very troubled childhood, not to mention having a family history of severe mental depression Woolf floated in and out of states of suicidal depression. In order to express some of these thoughts she used Clarissa Dalloway, a woman about to through a party. Virginia viewed death as a way of expressing that that cannot be expressed by merely using words and actions. To her it was a method to escape the feelings of low self worth and self-hatred. In the novel Mrs. Dalloway Clarissa expresses her views on Septimus' death, thus reflecting Woolf’s own views on the subject, Death was defiance. Death was an attempt to communicate, people feeling the impossibility of reaching the center which mystically evaded them; closeness drew apart; rapture faded; one was alone. There was an embrace in death.But this young man who had killed himself – had he plunged holding his treasure? “If it where now to die, ‘twere now to be most happy,” she had said to herself once, coming down, in white. (MD 202)This passage may have even foreshadowed to Woolf’s own suicide in 1941, at the age of only 59. However Clarissa is not only used to express Woolf’s views on death, this characters also reveals Woolf’s fears. Woolf feared failure, for with failure comes the loss of respect that one has earned. In Woolf’s eyes she needed the approval of her fat...
