Though apparently content, Clarissa can never reconcile with her life:

“Like a nun withdrawing, or a child exploring a tower, she went, upstairs…There was an emptiness about the heart of life; an attic room. Women must put off their rich apparel. At mid-day they must disrobe…The sheets were clean, tight stretched in a broad white band from side to side. Narrower and narrower would her bed be. The candle was half burnt down and she had read deep in Baron Marbot's Memoirs. She had read late at night of the retreat from Moscow … So the room was an attic; the bad narrow; and lying there reading, for she slept badly, she could not dispel a virginity preserved through childbirth which clung to her like a sheet.” 49

 

This private moment of hers describes her emotional virginity and her partly living. Like a nun, who has run away from the intensity of life and love, Clarissa feels the emptiness of the life she chose. The sobering reality of her isolated life in the attic room reminds her over and over again that she has never been able to plunge into the sea of her emotions, or to stop fearing “the heat o' the sun” 50 . Taking off her clothes, that is, her social pretence, she gets in touch with her fragile and vulnerable being. The image of the room is that of death-in-life: the narrow bed like a coffin, and the half-burned candle like her half-spent life. The Memoirs that she reads suggest that her past is the only place where her thoughts reside. The book is about Napoleon's retreat from Moscow because of the harsh Russian winter; about the city that could not be conquered because it was too cold. Just like Clarissa's heart.

As her loneliness and lack of intimacy in her marriage are symbolized as the metaphor of a virginal nun, the most intense moment in Clarissa's life is symbolized through reference to Shakespeare:

“…feeling as she crossed the hall ‘if it were now to die ‘twere to be most happy.' That was her feeling – Othello's feeling, and she felt it, she was convinced, as strongly as Shakespeare meant Othello to feel it, all because she was coming down to dinner in a white frock to meet Sally Seton!” 51

 

She is aware that she betrayed the voice of Shakespeare within her; she is aware that many moments when she was really alive were over because she let them pass by her.

On the other hand, Septimus Warren Smith, the shell-shocked war veteran, who can be observed as Clarissa's double, her alternate persona, or her more internal personality, makes a quite different choice in his life. In fact, Septimus can be said to fill the void of feelings that Clarissa lacks.

Being the victim of psycho-social establishment of post-War-England, Septimus suffers from delusions and hallucinations. He was one of the first volunteers for the army in World War I. He went to protect England , Shakespeare and Isabel, the woman who stirred the poet in him by lending him books and speaking of Shakespeare. When his friend Evans died in the war, Septimus was glad that he felt no fear over his death, until he realized that he lost his ability to feel.

Septimus knew that nothing was physically wrong with him, but he figured that his crimes were still great. He felt nothing, he had married without love. The real truth is, however, that Septimus felt too deeply, that he was shaken and numbed by the war, and specifically by the death of his friend.

In his fits of hallucinations Septimus mentions killing himself, because, he explains, people are wicked. He particularly shows disapproval of his doctors who prescribe “proper sense of proportion”, as well as conversion into a suitable personality, in order to straighten out his delusions. He even pictures dogs turning into men. Woolf's intention to illustrate the humanity lacking in a sane person and the depth of feeling possessed by an insane character shows that something has gone wrong with people.

The war did not allow Septimus to keep neither Shakespeare nor Isabel. He becomes stripped of his passions. His mentality is replaced by a hardened vision that teaches one not to love and not to care. The corruptness of the world he lived in destroyed his noblest emotions.

Septimus feels pushed into a position where he must save himself from the overpowering grasp of conversion and proportion. Septimus, last alive in the hot sun, decides to “hold his treasure”, that is, his deep-rooted love for Shakespeare and the glimpse of life as a beautiful place, and oppose the approaching and inevitable conversion by jumping to his death.

Although they never meet, Septimus' destiny strikes a melancholy chord of truth deep in Clarissa's soul that she cannot deny.

A striking similarity to Woolf's “Juliet” can be percepted in How Romeo and Juliet Loved , a film made by Jovan Zivanovic, who decided to depict the lives of all those modern Juliets who enjoyed everything in their lives except the most beautiful feeling of loving and being loved.

One of the three Juliets in the film is an actress, both on the stage and in her real life, playing the role of false happiness. Another Juliet is a ballet dancer, who, although an artist, loves neither poetry nor any serious thinking about literature or life itself. Jasna, the third one, is an embodiment of the fallen Juliet who renounces the love of her life in the name of money and social security.

Although at first glance their lives look bright and carefree, each of the Juliets is empty, lonely, and unhappy. But Jasna, whose sin is the greatest, seems the most unsatisfied of them all, living in her dreams of the past and, ironically enough, fantasizing about the true love of Romeo and Juliet.

Unlike their falsehood and insincerity, Zoran, that is Romeo, who remained faithful to his emotions, is shown as a victim in the world where “love doesn't mean a thing”. Although his Juliet left him because of a prosperous diplomat, who is not half as imaginative, witty, or charismatic as Zoran is, he is still not ready to give up the love that hurts him inside. He follows Jasna, he tries to win her back, but she still remains unable to deny her false life of appearances and choose the man her heart so strongly desires.

In sharp contrast to both Clarissa and Jasna, who are afraid to plunge into the sea of their emotions, Zoran, upon realizing that the life he has imagined cannot come true, plunges into the see from the highest cliff, unwilling to make a compromise when love is concerned.

49 Virginia Woolf, Mrs Dalloway , (Penguin Books, 1996), pp. 35-36
50 W. Shakespeare, Cymbeline , (Act IV, ii ) quoted in Mrs Dalloway , (Penguin Books, 1996), p. 34
51 Virginia Woolf, Mrs Dalloway , (Penguin Books, 1996), p. 39