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Fiction

Notes and Richard shared a special bond. Almost everyone had left the party now. Sally rose to
speak with Richard. Peter waited a minute, soon overcome by great elation. He realized that
he was happy because Clarissa had finally come.

Part II Section Six Analysis
Clarissa’s role of the hostess is fulfilled with the occurrence of the actual party in the last
section of the novel. The final preparations take place as the servants hurry around with last
minute additions and gossip. People begin arriving and Clarissa is put into play. For the rest
of the novel, she rarely has time to stand with any one guest and speak with him before she
must run off to greet another. She is a servant to societal conventions and her offering to
society forces her to sacrifice herself to its performance. One can see this best when Clarissa’s
great old friend, Sally Seton (now Lady Rosseter), is surprisingly introduced. Even though
Sally has lost some of her old luster, Clarissa is overjoyed to see her. Yet, a moment later, she
is called upon to attend to another guest. She is pulled away before she knows whom the
guest is, and after hearing that it is the Prime Minister, she must show him around the party
personally.
As the Prime Minister walks around the party, Woolf describes the guests trying not to laugh
or notice how common the man looked. She writes, “He tried to look somebody. It was
amusing to watch. Nobody looked at him.” How one is perceived is examined in this section,
as the partygoers clearly notice that the man is trying to look important and yet, they are still
impressed. Their perception of the name, the symbol, the status of the Prime Minister overcomes
any physical evidence in the contrary. The prestigious car that slowly made its way through
London, peaking everyone’s curiosity and wonderment, foreshadowed this moment of the
Prime Minister’s actual appearance. In a similar fashion, the onlookers of the event feel important
simply to have been present. Woolf’s description of the reaction to the Prime Minister parallels
the earlier viewing. She describes the crowd, “...they all knew, felt to the marrow of their
bones, this majesty passing; this symbol of what they all stood for, English society.” The figure
of the Prime Minister symbolizes the hierarchy of English society and the deeply encoded
sense of civility and status that still ruled the society even after the devastation of World War
I. The society continues to look down upon young men such as Septimus who have suffered
in the War while also continuing to glorify men such as Hugh Whitbread who do little else
but write pithy articles and attend meetings.
This thread of society, symbolized by the figure of the Prime Minister, carries the reader
through the novel, from the car that stirs all of London’s citizens to Richard’s post in Parliament
to Hugh Whitbread’s gatherings at Buckingham Palace to Lady Bruton’s luncheon to the party
where the Prime Minister appears in the flesh. The Prime Minister is a metonym for English
society itself. Even Peter Walsh recognizes that England has not changed much in this sense
during his absence. He comments, “Lord, lord, the snobbery of the English!” Peter had foreshadowed
the role that Clarissa would play in the furtherance of English snobbery in his retort to her
that she would someday be the Prime Minister’s wife. Standing atop the stairs, greeting the
guests of her party, leading around the Prime Minister, she nearly fulfills this prophecy. And,
as one critic states, Richard’s career is not over, and so she may someday be married to the
Prime Minister.
The break in the mood of the party occurs with the arrival of the Bradshaws. After hearing
of Septimus’ death, Clarissa is no longer worried about making sure everyone is happy or
leading around the prestigious members of the crowd. She retires to a small room in order to
deal with the feeling of death that has invaded her party and her being. She, of course, does
not know the stranger who committed suicide, but the doppelgangers of Woolf’s imagination
become connected in this moment. They become physically connected as Clarissa reflects the

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