Discussion Question 4 **SPOILERS**

4. What is Woolf s purpose in creating a range of female characters of various ages and social classes—from Clarissa herself and Lady Millicent Burton to Sally Seton, Doris Kilman, Lucrezia Smith, and Maisie Johnson? Does she present a comparable range of male characters?

I hadn't thought of it while I was reading, but it's true. There is a large range of female characters, but the male characters all seem to lump into the same middle-aged man category. Perhaps her purpose was to show how varied women are and how one-dimensional men are (just kidding).
Seriously. I think that women tend (much more than men) to see themselves through the eyes of other women. So maybe Woolf was trying to do that here: Show Clarissa as she sees herself through others' eyes, and compare her to other women of the time in different circumstances.

Septimus? What about him?

I think Woolf's portraits of men tend toward the reductionist in this book, because it's well it's HER and her cronies and the men she populates the book with are the ones the women know...Leonard Woolf and his set.

In the collection Mrs Dalloway's Party, Woolf goes much more into the awfulness of the men at the party. One story, "Together and Apart', has Clarissa introducing a pair of misfits with the words "You will like him" to Miss Anning. Mr. Serle then waxes and wanes in the eyes of the shy, unworldly Miss Anning..."{She} felt that she had struck accidentally the true man, upon whom the false man was built" heralds her dismissal of Yet Another Dull Man, then: "Sometimes the cool peace of middle life, with its automatic devices for shielding mind and body from bruises, seemed to her, compared with the thunder and the livid apple-blossom...base. She could imagine something different, more like lightning, more intense. She could imagine some physical sensation...strangely enough, for she had never seen him before...she and Mr. Serle knew each other so perfectly...were...so closely united that they had only to float side by side...."

This ambivalence and ill-informed fantasizing seem to me the hallmark of all the women's relationships to the men in the book. Lucrezia Smith particularly!

Okay, Septimus was far more interesting than the other men, but look what happened to him.

I certainly agree with your comment about the "ambivalence & ill-informed fantasizing" of the women. But I think women do that a lot. I know I do, much as I hate to admit it. We'll fantasize, but then shy away from a reality that might actually be a good thing, but we are afraid to take a chance.

As far as Lucrezia Smith, I never could see what would bring her together with Septimus, except a need to escape where she was. And after, she had to fantasize to validate what she had done.

Gosh, I think of Lucrezia as the heterosexual counterpart of Miss Kilman! She's never going to fit in and she's latched onto a person as her means to make her life have meaning (Septimus, Elizabeth...both are the objects of a profound case of projection).

I think Woolf put Miss Kill-Man in to iillustrate that no one is immune to the siren call of Saving the Other, meaning saving yourself via the other. It's a well-trodden path, that one, the Savior Who Needs Saving.

Seems to me that the insular nature of people, where each person's view of another, male or female, is made of their created image of that person is central theme of the book. With stream of consciousness, she shows the reality of that person and their fantasied image of others. By doing that with a variety of characters, the reader can see the gap between reality and fantasy.

I will chime the view that the book was crafted in part to covey the self-centered focus of Clarissa. All the females, outside of Lucrezia Smith, - and please remind me.... who exactly is Maisie Johnson? Did I blank out during that part of the book? - well, they had a direct link to Clarissa. The male characters - barring Dr. Holmes and Septimus - also appear to have a direct link to Clarissa.

Am I over simplifying this?

I just thought that Woolf was more interested in female characters than male characters.
--BJ

>7 lkernagh: No, Lori, that's about it...Maisie is Peter's mesalliance.

>8 billiejean: An observation borne out in any reading of her works, BJ. Spot on.