“…feeling as she crossed the hall “if it were now to die ‘twere now 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!” (Woolf 51).
The quote in this passage, “if it were now to die, ‘twere now to be most happy,” is from Act 2, Scene 1 of Shakespeare’s Othello. It is were he is reunited with his wife, Desdemona, and is fully in love with her and is happy to see her. This reference, placed in a memory of Clarissa’s, when she is about to meet Sally Seton for dinner, implies a great love between the two of them. The play Othello is a tragedy, in which Othello is tricked by his attendant, Iago, into believing that his wife is untrue, and murders her. The play ends in almost every character’s downfall and death. This quote appears in the play before all of this destruction has happened, however. It implies, therefore, the happiness that can come from youth and innocence and love. Virginia Woolf uses this quote in discussing Clarissa’s youth and love to show these themes of limited innocence and happiness.
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