". . . providing it is a cheerful lie."

While reading Mrs. Dalloway I found myself wondering about Septimus Smith's agency. Distinguishing how much of a person's life is determined by their environment versus their personal choices can be difficult, but I thought it'd be an interesting question to explore - especially in the context of Mrs. Dalloway , since one of its major themes is how one's surroundings - particularly society's expectations - can drastically affect someone's life. We can see a lot of Septimus's character from the descriptions of him pre-war. He pursues his passions. He writes poetry and reads Shakespeare. He's rather sensitive, and keenly attuned to his surroundings. So why does he fight in the war? Certainly one reason is that he must; society needs him to fight. But perhaps he also wanted to prove himself - we know he was quite proud that he felt nothing after Evans' death. In that case, is it a display of agency, that he pursued his own goal, or is it yet anothe...

The question of whether someone is a kind person is a difficult one to answer, especially when it's about a real person. Similarly, Clarissa from Mrs. Dalloway  is not a clear-cut case, which speaks to the realistic characters Woolf has created. Certainly she can behave or think in nasty ways. While we have not yet finished the book, there are a number of moments when she seems unkind. For example, during the motorcar scene, she thinks condescendingly of the "British middle classes", thinking about the ridiculousness of their clothes and their unrefined manner. She blames the buses, and, in a way, the lower classes, for blocking the Queen (Woolf 17). This may be interpreted as classism, although I wouldn't be so hasty in labeling her as a classist, since this is, after all, early twentieth-century England, and the context is very different from our world today. Clarissa also appears to be frequently subject to jealousy. In the space of a couple hours, we see h...