her, but in Mrs. Dalloway Clarissa needed the approval of all the upper society. The party that Clarissa throws parallels to Woolfs writing. Both tasks require much time and are bound to be criticized and scrutinized. Woolf was a perfectionists if not neurotic, she criticized every novel or essay that she wrote, continually trying to improve her own writing. In the novel Clarissa is known for the parties that she throws. Clarissa is always nervous and she is always trying to improve these parties, to draw in the right crowd and to exclude those who are embarrassments. Up until the last moment Clarissa fears that her party will be a disaster, “ Oh dear, it was going to be a failure, Clarissa felt it in her bones as dear old Lord Lexham stood there apologizing for his wife who had caught cold at the buckingham Palace garden party.” (MD 183-184) At the same time Clarissa parallels Woolf on yet another level, Clarissa is as physically ill as Woolf is mentally. Woolf suffered through illness even in her old age; she was plagued by nightmares and visions, painfully going through life. Clarissa suffers the same pain, only hers is physical “Clarissa, over fifty, weakened by illness, feels painfully the passage of time and, fighting her impulse to withdraw, forces herself to grasp as much as she can of life, of sensation, of intensity.” (WOL 128)Woolf also used Septimus to express herself in the novel Mrs. Dalloway. Septimus is used to express some of Woolf’s deepest most painful thoughts and memories; Septimus represents her mental illness. “Septimus, reflecting as he does a central and traumatic part of the novelist’s own personal history.”(VW 146) Woolf was continually ill but she did experience “good” and “bad” days. When she was writing she was generally feeling better, she was proud of what she had done. Septimus was he same way, he felt pride in all that...
