The Smiths are still here in the park and, by bringing Peter to the park, Virginia Woolf provides a seemingly chance link between the two narrative threads of the novel — Clarissa's story and Septimus' story. Peter does not speak to the Smiths, nor they to him; in passing, they merely observe one another. The linking of Clarissa to Septimus, via Peter, is frail but Virginia Woolf is structuring each world — Clarissa's and Septimus'- linking them as if by chance. Later in the novel, again as if by chance, the two worlds will collide: Septimus' death will intrude upon Clarissa's party.
Up to now, Virginia Woolf has incorporated interior monologues, scenes from past and present, brief conversations, and lyric interludes into her narration; there have been few passages which could be called directly expository. Midway in her novel, however, she inserts this long section dealing with Septimus Smith — why he is insane and how his wife deals with his insanity. During the first half of the book, Clarissa (and Peter, to a lesser degree) has been stage center and the Septimus scenes have seemed only distant, distilled echoes of the lonely Clarissa-Peter situation. Virginia Woolf has pieced together the riddle of Clarissa's isolation very artfully, but she deals differently with Septimus' situation. We are told starkly what Septimus did before the war and his madness is not explained in depth. One might naturally think that the techniques used to tell Clarissa's story might lend themselves more readily to exploring Septimus' insanity but Virginia Woolf makes a reversal. This insane situation is described almost clinically and Septimus' insanity becomes all the more horrifying thereby.
