Mrs. Dalloway's Transcendentalism Anonymous

After Septimus' suicide, we encounter Peter Walsh hearing the "light, high bell of the ambulance," and deeming it, in his mind, "one of the triumphs of civilization" (151). He ponders the "efficiency, organization, the communal spirit," of the city, thereby allowing the ambulance to pick up the necessary individual and maneuver through the streets as carriages and carts move out of the way. He describes the moment as one, "in which things came together; this ambulance; and life and death" (151). The moment however, ties more ends together for the purpose of the book than it does for Peter. Peter's recollections of traveling with Clarissa on the omnibus that lead to the summation of Clarissa's transcendental theory of interconnectivity serve both as an immediate example of the theory in action as demonstrated by his thought progression, and as a thesis for the entire novel and underlying structure.

Before examining the passage from the beginning, I would like to introduce Clarissa's "transcendental theory:" "since our apparitions, the part of us which appears, are so momentary compared with the other, the unseen part of us, which spreads wide, the unseen...