Discussion Question 11 **SPOILERS**

11. Clarissa reads lines from Shakespeare's Cymbeline (IV, ii) from an open book in a shop window:

Fear no more the heat o' the sun
Nor the furious winter's rages.
Thou thy worldly task hast done,
Home art gone and ta'en thy wages:
Golden lads and girls all must,
As chimney-sweepers, come to dust.

These lines are alluded to many times. What importance do they have for Clarissa, Septimus, and the novel's principal themes? What fears do Clarissa and other characters experience?

I love that passage. I want it read at my funeral.

And it's even more significant, given Richard's comment on Question 3 about Woolf's original intention to have the book end with Clarissa's suicide. As we age, or, in some cases, reach the depths of despair that result in suicide, I think we begin to see death as a release from all of the aggravations of life. Maybe that's intentional, to make it easier to face. I think the biggest fear experienced by Clarissa and the others is mortality. Having survived a horrible war, that would have to remain at least in the background of their minds.

I agree with tloeffler - as we age, death is a release, I also see it as a reminder that irregardless of what we make of our selves here on earth, be it good or bad, socially climbing or accepting of our station in life, we all come together as one race, one society, one social standing, in death.

I love the quote as well!

I too, love that quote. And I too, agree that as we mature a great many of us come to not fear death. We may fear how we die; we may fear suffering through the process of death; but in death we do become, as God desired us to be, all brothers for death is death. To some of us, as we age and death comes nearer and nearer, we become more calm in our lives and in our emotions. It becomes a friend we look forward to seeing, to being with, spending time with and getting to know.
As to the question above, I will have to put some thought into that one.
belva

I agree that the war would overshadow how everyone is feeling in this book, but until Clarissa heard about Septimus at the party, I did not really think that she was thinking about death. But she definitely had some second thoughts and what ifs about her life.
--BJ

I think re-evaluating one's life is a sort of contemplation of death...asking what-if is shorthand for "assuming *I* don't exist as I am now" which, I contend, is thinking of one's death.