Poor Clarissa Dalloway - she doesn't seem to know what she wants in life. Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf follows Clarissa and several other characters throughout one day, ending with a party at the Dalloway home. The book tends to jump from person to person with little warning which made me go back and reread passages a few times.
Most of the characters in the story were tragic, but Septimus Warren Smith with by far the most pitiful. Septimus seemed to be suffering from what we now know as post-traumatic stress disorder, stemming from his stint in World War I. However, the two doctors he meets with in the book are not as sympathetic as they should be which causes even more problems. This also caused much strife in his marriage, because he felt "One cannot bring children into a world like this. One cannot perpetuate suffering, or increase the breed of these lustful animals, who have no lasting emotions, but only whims and vanities, eddying them now this way, now that." page 135
One thing I learned from this book is that whelmed is actually a word. I have heard of being overwhelmed and underwhelmed, but Woolf uses the word whelmed on page 172. According to Merriam-Webster online, whelmed means to cover or engulf something with usually disastrous effect. Who knew?
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