The Significance of Water in Mrs. Dalloway

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it moving branches, children’s voices, the shuffle of feet, and people passing, and humming traffic, rising and falling traffic”
The use of water-like imagery starts at the very beginning of the story, as Clarissa “plunges” into her day on the first page (“What a lark! What a plunge! For so it had always seemed to her, when, with a little squeak of the hinges, which she could hear now, she had burst open the French windows and plunged at Bourton into the open air.”) Also included in the very beginning of the book are phrases that relate to waves and the ocean, such as “the flap of a wave,” “the kiss of a wave,” and “rising” and “falling” of the rooks on page 1.
Water is like the backbone that ties together all of the events and characters in the story. Similar to how Clarissa “plunges” into her day on the first page, Septimus feels that he is slowly sinking into insanity after his experience in World War I, and his subsequent shell-shock as a result of the horrible ...

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