Mrs. Dalloway? …spoiler alert
“She felt somehow very like him—the young man who had killed himself. She felt glad that he had done it; thrown it away. The clock was striking. The leaden circles dissolved in the air. He made her feel the beauty; made her feel the fun. But she must go back. She must assemble.” 186
This moment–the moment in which Clarissa retreats into her own thoughts long enough to truly reflect on not only Septimus’s death but on her own life (and eventual mortality)– is the culmination of everything she has been through on this day. Septimus was, in a way, Clarissa’s counterpart. He echos her, in a way, and almost demonstrates her true, uncensored self. Septimus, being a shell-shocked veteran, has retreated into his mind and forsaken reality. Though he has a few brief moments before his suicide of being lucid and in touch with reality (or at least, the reality in which his wife lives), his world was the one inside his head. Clarissa leads two lives, really–the one in public and the one in her head. Septimus represents the one in her head…
His suicide and her reaction to it is the culmination of her thoughts and doubts and struggles with her public life, preparing for a party and holding back words to Peter. Repeating the line from Cymbeline “fear no more” represents her gathering of strength and preparing for life, which is what Septimus could ultimately not do. It shows their divide as well as their eternal connection.
