Clarissa's Destiny example essay topic

" Destiny is not a matter of chance, it is a matter of choice; it is not a thing to be waited for, it is a thing to be achieved" (William Jennings Bryan) Both Septimus and Clarissa, two unrelated narratives, fell into the superego stage. They both believed that what they had to do were necessary to be expected and what was necessary to be achieved. Clarissa's relationship with both her childhood love, Peter Walsh, and her present husband, Richard Dalloway, helped to clime from the id to the superego. Her life has been spent in regret and sorrow, forcing her to think suicidal thought like Septimus and living everyday not knowing real love. Clarissa always believed in finding her own destiny, she found it, she just took the wrong road path too it.

Clarissa is very heart broken woman who made the wrong choice to her destiny and future. In the novel Mrs. Dalloway, Virginia Woolf uses the element of conflict to illustrate the theme that one shapes their own destiny and future. Through the character of Peter Walsh, Woolf uses conflict to show how one makes their own destiny. Peter sat down beside Clarissa, and everything seemed to race past him "he just sat there, eating, and then half way through dinner he made himself look across at Clarissa for the first time" (61). Peter was very much in love with Clarissa.

Every time Peter saw Clarissa it was like for the first time, his eyes would light up and in his mind he would think she was my destiny that's filled with our future. He wanted to marry her he thought they where destined to be together. He expressed his love by bringing the fun to her life, meaning taking her to new places and doing new things. Peter wanted to be with her to see their future together but she just didn't get the picture. Clarissa loved Peter very much but in her mind Peter was the guy "that had no heart, no brain, nothing but the manners and breeding of an English gentleman" (7).

Clarissa, at the time, id personality, made her want more and more and his is what she loved most about him, his on going personality. Peter Walsh loves Clarissa very much but he couldn't give her the kind of life that Richard could. Clarissa wanted the kind of future where she never had to work hard for anything. Clarissa's destiny was to always have her hands dry of everything. Clarissa loves to be alone and read and just think about different things in life "But with Peter everything had to be shared" (8). Peter Walsh a very jealous man, he didn't let Clarissa do anything without him, and she did not appreciate his possessiveness about him very much, in fact she hated that about him.

As Clarisa's life progressed, and Clarissa grew older, she stares to regret the past and what is now her future. Everyone is coming over to my house I am " worried about the success of the party that evening and from time to time she thinks of her old friend, Peter Walsh, who has returned temporarily to England after five years in India" (67). Although it seemed her mind had left Peter for good, her heart never really departed with her. Even after thirty years of marriage to Richard, Clarissa still loves Peter Walsh and always wonders why destiny never trapped them two together. When Peter walks in the doors of her house Clarissa "leant forward, taken his hand, drawn him to her, kissed him, actually felt his face on hers" (46). In the novel "Mrs. Dalloway, in whom these thoughts originated, is less fixed within the conventional life that she is leading and less firmly anchored in the self that she appears to be" (Newman 45).

Clarissa hasn't seen Peter in so long that her heart trembled as no tomorrow. Clarissa always had thoughts in her mind, what would happen if Peter was my husband and Richard was my guest at my party? Clarissa looks around the room as "Peter Walsh had gone up and crossed the room to the window and stood there with his back to her" (47). Clarissa trembled she didn't know what to do or say. Clarissa thought to her self, could that have been my husband twenty years ago? Would I have had a great future with him if I had married him?

Clarissa worried about the success of her party but most of all her destiny if would have married Peter. In Mrs. Dalloway Septimous Warren Smith and Clarissa both unrelated narratives end their lives with regret over not finding their own destiny into the future. She felt that the night was very ' extraordinary night! She felt somehow very like him the young man who had killed himself. She felt grad that he had done it; thrown it all away' (186). Clarissa thought ' Life is experienced in successively created moments' (Bloom 11).

Septimous' this man of lightning skill and almost infallible accuracy who never spoke of madness; he called it nit having a sense of proportion' (Garrigan 450). Clarissa was glad that 'he thrown it all away' because he enacted what she wanted. Septimus's suicide paralleled with Clarissa's decision, which came to take on the tone of a symbolic suicidal choice she was never brave enough to take or to make. After Clarissa found out ' that he young man had killed himself, but she did not pity him; with the clock striking the hour one, two, three, she did not pity him; with all this going on' (186). Clarissa's life has been filled with unwise choices that she was not brave enough to make or to create her own perfect future. She always felt this suicidal feeling because she was so unhappy with the decision she made towards her destiny.

Her memory kept taking her back to the day when she was really happy with Peter, like Septimus's mind always took him back to the time he was at war and before his friend was killed. No ' novel of Woolf is an sutured with the pain and exultation of living, the obsession with death, the terror of loneliness as is Mrs. Dalloway' (Rosenthal 87). Septimouses wife would do ' Anything, anything in the whole world, any little bother with her work, anything that struck her to say she would tell him, and he would understand' (146). In the novel 'Mrs. Dalloway has that rare virtue of defying all interpretations that would set a final seal upon it's meaning ' (Harley 456).

Septimus assumed the society didn't need him anymore, so he did as society asked, and killed himself. Septimous wife loved him very much and she would do anything for him just like Peter would do for Clarissa to make her happy. Septimous and Clarissa are very similar characters in which they were both unhappy with the future they created for themselves. In conclusion Clarissa thought she made the right step towards her destiny and future but in fact she took a step backwards. All Clarissa wanted was to be happy with Peter but she choose money over love. Her destiny became a disaster she never wanted to have.