Queen Victoria's son Edward inherited the throne in 1901 and reigned until 1910. This period is referred to as the Edwardian age. Edward VII's reign was marked by a noticeable decline in lavish spending and overindulgence by the wealthy class. The term Edwardian is still used to describe restrained elegance in art, fashion, and architecture.

Many Victorian ideas lingered into the Edwardian era. For example, wealthy Edwardians largely agreed with their Victorian counterparts on issues of class and social hierarchy. According to the Victorian aristocracy, social classes should be separate and unequal. The lower classes were seen as inferior. This social rigidity was also common to the Edwardian era.

Despite the retention of conservative views, a sense of change was bubbling under the surface of Edwardian society. New inventions, such as electricity, revolutionized the workday, while the telephone and automobile altered communication and travel.

Perhaps inspired by these changes, many segments of society began to fight for their rights. Women lobbied for the right to vote. A new labor party fought for better benefits for the working class. The times were changing rapidly. Attacks on traditional Victorian attitudes toward family, education, and religion were widespread.

By the time King George V came to the throne in 1910, the elaborate Victorian way of life was fading into memory. The era that followed seemed to be a time of stability and reassurance. But this calm did not last long. Civil war broke out in Ireland in 1912, and two years later, World War I began.

In "To an Athlete Dying Young," the narrator comments on a funeral procession for a champion athlete who died at a young age. The poem opens with a description of a post-victory celebration. A young athlete is carried home on the shoulders of fans. The second stanza repeats the image. This time, however, he is being carried in his coffin on the shoulders of pallbearers. He travels along "the road all runners come." This is a metaphor for the journey of life and death that everyone experiences.

This poem has a central message about life. The speaker feels that the athlete was lucky to die at the height of his glory, rather than live to see his accomplishments fade away. In other words, if a young man dies at the height of fame, he will be immortalized as a success in the memories of admirers. The cynicism of this thought reflects the rising pessimism of the late Victorian period. The British watched as the glorious era crumbled and faded, much like an athlete's fame fades with old age.

Click here to read the poem!

Hardy's "The Darkling Thrush" captures the looming pessimism and anxiety of late Victorian England. The poem was written in 1900. Hardy watches the sun set on one century and dawn on a new one. The opening stanza is scattered with dark, ominous imagery and figurative language.

The frost of winter is personified as a gray host. Hardy compares winter to a consumed beverage. All that is left are the undesirable dregs at the bottom of the glass. This remaining sediment blocks out the setting sun, which Hardy compares to a weakened eye. These metaphors convey the pessimism that Hardy and many other people felt as they watched the sun set on the Victorian era. In the poem, the vitality of summer has slowly moved into a dark, dreary winter.

Click here to read the poem!

Kim, one of Kipling's most successful novels, was published in 1901 and takes place in India. It's an adventure story about a young boy named Kimball O'Hara. Kim's adventures along the Grand Trunk Road paint a vivid picture of India, Imperial Britain, and the relationship between the two.

Kim, an orphan, lives on the streets of Lahore, where he is known as "the little friend of all the world." Although Kim is obviously from European parentage, his skin is tanned from the sun. His dark skin helps him blend in, and he lives as an Indian. Kim is the embodiment of the blending of the East and West that was common in colonial India.

Click here to read the excerpt from Kim!

Speculative fiction is a broad genre (category) of storytelling that is quite ancient. It includes subgenres such as historical fantasy, science fiction, horror, and fantastic voyages. 

Speculative fiction deals with the question “what if?” or with incidents and characters outside the realm of known reality.

Science fiction authors use a number of common conventions and elements in their stories. They include space and time travel, robots, prophecies about future technology, and futuristic utopias (perfect worlds) or dystopias (miserably dysfunctional worlds). Some authors even imagine alternate histories or universes.

Science fiction delves not only into the possibilities of science but also its effects on civilization as a whole, which can be either positive or negative. Utopias and dystopias are the hypothetical extremes that result when we try to imagine the consequences of human choices or changes in society. When the choices or changes depend on science, the imagined consequences fall within the genre of science fiction. 

Many fictional utopias require science-driven advances—for example, the elimination of disease. In fact, some thinkers once held the view that the well-being of humankind could be achieved through advances in technology alone. Technology tends to play a major role in fictional dystopias as well.  Undesirable technologies, such as easily available weapons of mass destruction, are also based on science.

Science fiction has roots going back to the early 1800s, with the publication of famous works such as Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and some of Edgar Allan Poe’s stories. Scholars of science fiction are undecided about who the true inventor of the genre is. However, most agree that French author Jules Verne should be among the top contenders because of the breadth of science fiction topics his works explored.

Some of his best-known works include Journey to the Center of the Earth (1864), Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (1870), and Paris in the Twentieth Century (1863). This last novel has all the trappings of a good science fiction story, including futuristic utopias and dystopias, advanced technology, and changing social structures. Writing about a futuristic Paris of 1963, Verne managed to predict the invention of cars, elevated trains, and even computer-like machines.

In Britain, the two heavyweights of science fiction were Robert Louis Stevenson and H. G. Wells. Stevenson wrote The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in 1886. 

The novel tells of the experiments of Dr. Henry Jekyll, who tries to separate his "evil side" from his “good side" by drinking a special potion. Eventually he loses control over his evil side, which often takes over his mind and body to commit evil deeds. It was one of the first novels to explore psychopathology (the scientific study of mental disorders), a field that was up and coming during the late Victorian era.

H. G. Wells wrote many pioneering science fiction novels. The Time Machine is one of his most famous works. It delves into time travel, the evolution of humankind into separate races, and a dystopian world, although it wasn’t the first novel to do so. Another of his well-known works, The War of the Worlds, was one of the first science fiction books to describe aliens and interplanetary wars. Wells’s novel The Invisible Man, introduced one of the most iconic characters of science and horror fiction. Over the years, the book has inspired comic books, films, and TV shows. 

In The Island of Doctor Moreau, Wells tells the tale of a mad scientist who carries out horrific experiments on a secluded Island, where he creates human-animal hybrids called “Beast Folk.” It was one of the first novels to deal with the theme of the importance of ethics in science, especially the testing and dissecting of animals. This work also explores the consequences of experimentation with humans and animals.

The protagonist, Edward Prendick, is shipwrecked and then rescued and taken to a mysterious Island owned by a Dr. Moreau. While on the island, Prendick comes in contact with many of the strange Beast Folk that the doctor has created. These creatures start attacking the humans on the island, but Prendick manages to escape. The novel ends with his return to London, where he is shown to have lost his faith in humanity.

The War of the Worlds is told by an unnamed narrator and his brother, who describe the events leading up to the invasion of Earth by an extraterrestrial race from Mars. The aliens are first greeted with peace signs. However, when the welcoming party is scorched to death by the Martians, war is declared and the military is called in to handle the threat. The Martians defeat all the military powers with their heat rays and chemical weapons, but in the end, they are defeated by their lack of immunity to Earth’s native bacteria. The War of the Worlds is one of H. G. Wells’s most influential works. It has been adapted into film, television, and radio.

The most famous adaptation was the 1938 radio play directed by Orson Welles. This adaptation lived long in public memory, mostly because of the mass panic it caused when it was mistaken for a real news bulletin. Many families left their houses and ran for safety because they believed that Martians had actually invaded Earth. Listen to part of the broadcast.

The Time Machine is the story of an unnamed English scientist, dubbed the Time Traveller, who has devised a special kind of machine. The novel begins with the Time Traveller calling some acquaintances to a special dinner, where he claims that he can travel back and forth in time. A week later, he invites them to dinner again and tells them about his adventures in the dystopian society of the future year 802,701. The Time Traveller's story, it turns out, is told within the frame story of the narrator, one of the men the Time Traveller had invited to his dinner party. 

In the selection from chapter 5 of The Time Machine that you will read, the Time Traveller loses his machine after successfully traveling to the year 802,701. He later meets and befriends one of the little Eloi people, Weena, after rescuing her from drowning. The Time Traveller also encounters the mysterious and frightening Morlocks, who live in the underground wells.

On the day after the dinner, the narrator returns to meet the Time Traveller, who tells him that he is going on another time traveling trip. He promises that he will return with proof of his adventures. The Time Traveller asks the narrator to wait for him. Despite his promise the traveler never returns.

In the epilogue, you will read the narrator’s conclusions about the fate of the Time Traveller and his own thoughts about the fate of the human race.

Click here to read Chapter 5!

Click here to read The Epilogue!

For a refresher on what a frame story is, head back and take a look at Unit 1!

Another source of difficulty for postwar Britain was population loss. Of the six million men from the British Isles who served in the military, one in eight died in the war. In 1914 alone, nearly one third of British men aged 20 to 24 were killed in battle.

These staggering death rates gave rise to the idea of a "lost generation." Many of those who died were young, professional men who could have contributed their skills to the nation. Famous writers such as Wilfred Owen and Rupert Brooke were among those killed. The death of so many young and promising men caused many to mourn the loss of Great Britain's best and brightest.

Those who survived the war were sometimes just as lost. New advances in medicine allowed soldiers to survive horrific injuries; often their physical injuries were not the worst part. Psychological trauma, such as depression and stress disorders, plagued returning soldiers. In addition to their physical and mental injuries, soldiers had to contend with the social and political troubles of postwar Britain.

Siegfried Sassoon was born into a wealthy family in 1886. His father was Jewish, and his mother was Anglo-Catholic. He achieved academic success at Cambridge University but was more interested in poetry than in his studies. 

Captured by the spirit of patriotism, Sassoon enlisted in the army as soon as war broke out. He was wounded twice during World War I and won two medals for his bravery. Before ending his military career, he was promoted to the rank of captain.

During his time in the trenches, Sassoon developed a fierce hatred for war. Upon returning to Britain, he became an outspoken anti-war voice. To express his views, he published a public letter to the British war department. In it, he argued against the continuation of the war based on his experiences as a military officer. Sassoon thought and hoped he would be court-martialed for his written protest. Instead, he was hospitalized for temporary insanity. In the hospital, he met poet Wilfred Owen. Sassoon became a mentor to Owen, and the two men encouraged each other to continue their literary pursuits.

Wilfred Owen was born in 1893 in Shropshire, England. He received his early education at Birkenhead Institute and Shrewsbury Technical School. He passed the entrance exam for the University of London but did not do well enough to receive a scholarship. Instead, he worked in several jobs, eventually ending up as a tutor in France. 

Owen returned to Great Britain after the outbreak of World War I and joined the fighting in 1915. Two years later, he experienced a terrible event that left him wounded and severely traumatized. While leading his platoon into battle, he fell into a deep hole and was trapped there for three days. He was diagnosed with shell-shock, which today we would call post-traumatic stress disorder. 

Owen was sent to a hospital in Edinburgh, Scotland, where he met Siegfried Sassoon. The two men bonded over their wartime experiences and became friends. Over time, Owen became more and more influenced by Sassoon's bleak outlook on the war. At the urging of Sassoon, he published four poems. 

Owen returned to the war in 1918 and died a week before the fighting ended. He was only 25 years old. Sassoon recognized Owen's talent and published many of Owen's poems posthumously. Ironically, many scholars consider Owen the greatest poet of World War I; today, he is more widely known and acclaimed than his mentor, Sassoon.

Prior to World War II, Joseph Stalin took control of the Soviet Union and exiled some of the former leaders. He persuaded Soviet citizens to follow his lead by acting as if he always had the best interest of the citizens in mind. He used many persuasive tactics to persuade Soviet citizens to follow his cause.

Winston Churchill was prime minister of Great Britain for much of World War II. He is remembered for his strong leadership and his powerful rhetorical skills. He used speeches to inspire and motivate the British in the fight against Germany and its allies.

Joseph Stalin rose to power in the Soviet Union by overpowering his rivals for control of the Communist Party. Once in power, he collectivized farming to give the government control and exiled or executed any potential enemies.

In the late 1920s, Stalin launched his Five-Year Plan that was centered around government control of the economy. He wanted to change the Soviet Union from an agricultural economy to a primarily industrial country quickly.

Stalin had a totalitarian hold on Soviet citizens. However, many of the citizens did not agree with his political stance. Therefore, he was known for persuading citizens to follow him by the use of harsh tactics and censorship.

Joseph Stalin made many persuasive speeches. In "Order of the Day, No.55", Stalin gives a persuasive speech to the need for the Red Army to act against Germany in World War II. 

Click here to read the speech!

Churchill is remembered as a gifted orator whose speeches propped up a nation during a dark time.

Click here to read an excerpt from the speech!

By the end of World War I, modernism had become the dominant force in art and literature. In the broadest sense, modernism was an artistic reaction to the grim state of the modern world. It was especially influenced by the war, which left cities in ruins and devastated the European economy.

Advances in photography and war journalism brought harrowing images to people who lived far from the battlefield. The widespread destruction coincided with an burst of artistic creativity. Painters, sculptors, architects, and writers experimented with artistic boundaries and questioned the very definition of art.

Modernism is primarily a twentieth-century movement, hints of it emerged during the Victorian era. Thomas Hardy and A. E. Housman, for example are often considered early modernists, although both wrote at the peak of the Victorian era. 

Click here to watch a video giving an overview of how art changed during the modern era, from the tutorial "The Twentieth-Century Poetic Revolution."

Modernist poetry also brought a new set of perspectives about poetry:

• locating meaning in the viewpoint of the individual rather than some larger truth

• focusing on poems as an exploration of the inner self through perception and knowledge

• believing the very essence of poetry was to suggest and not to offer complete statements or all-encompassing judgment

• believing each reader could be affected differently by the same poem

A key aspect of modernist poetry is its experimental form. Modernist poets deliberately broke from rhyme and meter and frequently used free verse.

Another common characteristic of modernist poetry is its minimal language, which can be identified by the following features:

• using common language rather than flowery and wordy speech

• holding that the form and language in a poem is art in and of itself

• carefully focusing on symbols and vivid imagery

• stressing economy of language; using few words

• leaving behind the literal meaning of words in favor of figurative language

Here are some kinds of figurative language commonly found in modernist poems:

• symbolism: recurring and unexpected uses of terms that stand for something else

• allusions: classical allusions to Greek culture and mythology

• unconventional, unexpected, or bizarre metaphors, similes, and personification replacing the established metaphors of their predecessors 

Typical modernist themes include the question of experience (What is real?), the loss of meaning in the modern world, the search for meaning in a world without God, the critique of traditional values, and the search for self.

Need a refresher on elements of poetry? Click here to see notes from ENG 11A!

The figurehead of imagism was Ezra Pound.

Despite his tremendous influence in Great Britain, Ezra Pound was a US citizen. He was born in Idaho in 1885 and was educated in Pennsylvania. After college, he became disillusioned with the state of the arts in America and moved to London, where he became an editor and an advocate for the craft of poetry. Pound was an influential figure in poetic modernism and imagism as well as in literature in general. He attracted much attention from the literary world and befriended and mentored many poets.

Pound had a venturesome, erratic mind that continually, almost feverishly, strived to perfect his poetry. He believed there was a poetic perfection that could be reached and that imagism was the key to achieving it. Pound claimed that poetry's purpose was to achieve an intellectual and emotional experience in a brief amount of time through the description of an image. He once said that the image was an emotionally charged idea that occurred "in an instant of time."

Like many groundbreaking artists, Pound was a controversial figure—and not just for his artistic philosophies. During World War II, he helped broadcast Italian fascist ideas to the United States. He was later charged with treason for his actions. Declared mentally unfit to stand trial, he was confined to a mental hospital in Washington DC. Eventually, a jury ruled to overlook his politics in the interest of recognizing his poetic achievements. After his trial, he moved to Italy, where he died in 1972 at age 87. 

Broadly, symbolism is the use of one object to suggest or represent another object. In literature, it is the extensive use of symbols throughout a text.

Symbolism is a movement that began in France in the late 1800s. Founded by the French poet, Charles Baudelaire, the movement peaked in the 1890s. Symbolists rejected the stark, everyday subject matter of realists and naturalists, and they tended to be more romantic in their outlook than the modernists. They favored multifaceted symbolism and rich, dark imagery. Symbolist literature can be quite confusing. For example, many symbolist works contain symbols layered in patterns; however, the symbols often lack any logical relationship to one other.

David Herbert Lawrence was born in Nottinghamshire, England. Though his first published pieces were poems, he is better known for his novels, most notably Lady Chatterley's Lover. He also wrote essays and short stories.

Lawrence's work was considered radical, even in the relatively liberal artistic atmosphere of the early twentieth century. Some of his works were even censored for their scathing critiques of modern society. Lawrence's personal life was also a source of controversy. His wife's allegedly pro-German stance was unpopular, and it forced the couple to leave England. They traveled all over Europe and the United States in search of the ideal place to live. Often ill during his life, Lawrence was diagnosed with tuberculosis in 1925. He died in France five years later when he was only 44 years old.

Lawrence's poems are clear, concise, and frequently cynical. He often used his work to express his disgust at the hypocrisy of mainstream society. Another theme common to Lawrence's work is the celebration of instincts and impulses of humankind. He thought that human bodies and their instincts were wiser and more beautiful than any intelligence gained from education. At times Lawrence's poems exhibit an almost romantic attitude toward nature; some of his best-known poems explore the secret inner life of plants and animals. 

William Butler Yeats was born in Dublin, Ireland, and spent his childhood in both Ireland and England. He enjoyed painting and began studying art, only to find that he enjoyed poetry more.

During the Victorian period, Yeats was heavily involved with the Celtic revival, a movement against English rule and culture in Ireland. Along with others in the movement, Yeats sought to preserve Ireland's native heritage. He even served as a senator for the Irish Free State during the 1920s. Yeats's work often reflects his pride in Irish mythology and folklore. At the same time, it exhibits a resigned pessimism toward the future of his native country. 

In addition to being a renowned poet, Yeats was a major playwright in his day. In fact, he founded a theater in Dublin. He is still remembered as an important cultural leader in Ireland's history.

Yeats was influenced by many different schools of modernist thought. He admired Ezra Pound and other imagists, as well as those in the symbolist movement. Many of his poems display the economy of language and vivid imagery that is characteristic of modernist poets. Despite these influences, Yeats's poems are largely traditional in structure. They lack the free-form style common to most modernist poetry. Yeats won the Nobel Prize in 1923 and remains one of the greatest poets of the twentieth century.

Yeats, like many poets of his generation, was profoundly affected by World War I. He knew many men who fought and died in the war. Yeats wrote "An Irish Airman Foresees his Death" in honor of his close friend, Major Robert Gregory. Gregory, a pilot, fought and died in World War I. Gregory was a member of the aristocracy, and his mother, Lady Gregory, was a big supporter of the arts. Like many of Yeats's poems, "An Irish Airman Foresees His Death" is a blending of traditional and modernist elements. 

Click here to read the poem!

"The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" brought Eliot immediate acclaim and became a landmark of the emerging modernist style. The poem combines Victorian form and rhythm with a pessimistic worldview and an emphasis on self-examination, which is characteristic of modernism. The poem opens with an epitaph from Dante's Inferno, which establishes a parallel between hell and the streets of London. The speaker addresses an unidentified "you" as he walks those streets, describing his doubts and insecurities. 

The poem is full of allusions. Throughout the poem, Eliot references other poets including Andrew Marvell and William Shakespeare. Eliot also alludes to the Bible and to Greek mythology.

Click here to read the poem!

In this poem, "A Bird in the House," Jennings explores the nature of grief and loss, and the significance of rituals related to death in the light of her own experience. She compares her response to death as an adult and her response to the death of her family's pet bird when she was a child. Though Jennings used traditional forms in some of her other poems, this poem reflects a more modernist form: the number of syllables varies from line to line, there is no rhyme scheme, and the language is direct and simple.

Click here to read the poem!

The term perspectivism as applied to literature means locating meaning in the viewpoint of the individual rather than in some larger truth. Here are some of the main features of perspectivism:

• use of narrators located within the action of the story rather than a third-person omniscient perspective

• use of multiple perspectives within one work (called parallax)

• use of metanarrative, a story told to justify or contextualize another story or a story that binds or explains several lesser stories

Modernist writers intentionally departed from the normal or literal meaning of words. Here are some of the notable ways in which they used figurative language:

• symbolism: recurring and unexpected use of items that stand for something else

• allusions: references to Greek culture and mythology

• metaphors: unconventional and unexpected comparisons

Need a refresher on figurative language? Click here for the definition from ENG 9A! 

When you're done with that, see these notes from ENG 9B on examples of different kinds of figurative language techniques!

By the mid-twentieth century (mid 1900s) , a new movement had begun to emerge called postmodernism. In some ways, postmodernism was an extension of modernism: experimentation with form and language and the rejection of traditional values are central to both. However, postmodernism largely emerged as a reaction to modernism. Today, modernism and postmodernism are both influential, but in different ways and in different genres.

In literature, postmodernism is at once more serious and more absurd than modernism. (Here, the word absurd is used in the sense of "lacking meaning or purpose.") Whereas modernists sought meaning in a world without God, postmodernists boldly claimed that there was no meaning in anything. In contrast to the serious tone of modernists, postmodernists were more likely to use dark humor or absurdity. In fact, postmodernists were often accused of not treating serious issues with the respect they deserved. From the postmodernist perspective in which there is no meaning, nothing is sacred.

James Joyce revolutionized British literature and led the modernist prose movement in Great Britain. In fact, he is often referred to as its founder. Joyce used language to reflect the psychological states of his main characters—to mirror their development, or, as the case may be, their deterioration. His use of language, though innovative, can also be intimidating and distracting. His final work, Finnegan's Wake, is considered a masterpiece by some, while others find it difficult to understand.

Joyce was born in Dublin in 1882. His father was an impoverished gentleman who had tried his hand (and failed) at many different professions. Joyce's mother was a pianist whose life was driven by the Catholic Church. For most of Joyce's childhood, his family struggled to stay out of poverty.

Despite his family's financial troubles, Joyce received a good education at a series of private schools. From childhood, he was interested in the literary arts, especially the works of authors who were not afraid to experiment. Joyce began writing professionally when he was still in school.

Joyce died in 1941, a year that has since been established as the end of the modernist period. Joyce's firm belief in experimentation and the artistic process paved the way for other literary movements, such as postmodernism. He was particularly influential to many notable authors, including Virginia Woolf (whom we'll discuss later), Samuel Beckett, Salman Rushdie, Umberto Eco, and William Faulkner. Many believe Joyce was the most influential author of the twentieth century. 

Viriginia Woolf was born in 1882 into a family of seven children. When she was just 13 years old, her mother passed away. This death brought on the first of several mental breakdowns for Woolf. Her father was a strict, traditional figure who did not believe women should receive the same education as men. Woolf and her sister were educated at home. But their father later allowed them to take courses in the women’s department of a local college.

While studying classical literature, Woolf became intrigued by female reformers. She joined the movement in support of women's voting rights and devoted herself to similar causes of equality. She also loved literature. She read and wrote book reviews. Eventually, she started writing original material.

Woolf experienced cycles of depression and manic behavior throughout her life. The year after her marriage to Leonard Woolf in 1912, she had a severe breakdown. As Leonard helped her recover, she finished her first novel, The Voyage Out. Over the next 15 years, Woolf composed several successful works: Jacob's Room (1922), Mrs. Dalloway (1925), To the Lighthouse (1927), A Room of One's Own (1929), and The Waves (1930).

Woolf, like many other modernists, rejected traditional narrative structure. In Mrs. Dalloway, for instance, she starts the book without an exposition. Like Joyce, Woolf also uses language to reflect the inner feelings and psychology of her characters. She employs a stream of consciousness style and unconventional punctuation to achieve these ends.

Woolf was always concerned with the public's reaction to her work, and by the mid-1930s, many scholars considered her a literary genius. She might have produced many more works, but her life ended in 1941. In the midst of a deep bout of depression, she committed suicide by loading her pockets with rocks and drowning herself in a river.

Although Clarissa's life at first seems comfortable and happy, readers soon realize that not all is as it appears. Her relationship with her husband is strained. The two are not very close. For the most part, Clarissa cherishes her privacy, but she also feels sadness for the distance between them.

Clarissa also encounters a past love, Peter Walsh, who still has feelings for her. He stops by Clarissa's house when she returns from her errands. Peter proposed to her many years ago, and he has never quite gotten over her rejection. This meeting brings up memories of the past for both characters.

A parallel plot follows Septimus, a veteran of World War I who suffers both physical and psychological injuries. Septimus is waiting on an appointment with Sir William Bradshaw, a celebrated psychiatrist who also happens to be friends with Clarissa and who will attend the party later that evening. These two plots intertwine first when Peter hears ambulances on his way to the party, and later when Sir William arrives late to the party and explains that a patient of his has committed suicide. The intertwining of two plots in this manner is called parallax. Though it is quite common today, especially in movies, it was a new technique at the time.

Clarissa leaves the party for a moment to think about the death of this unknown soldier. She feels a connection to Septimus and judges Sir William Bradshaw harshly for his ability to treat life and death so lightly. She even admires Septimus's choice. Clarissa returns to the party as her guests begin to leave. As she enters the room, Peter watches her with great excitement. The novel ends as abruptly as it began.