[Bookpossum]

Yes, it would be hard to hang on to what (if anything!) is going on when you are reading under those circumstances.

When seeing what people had to say about the book after I had finished it, I read that Woolf originally planned to have Clarissa kill herself at the end of the book, and that this earlier version did not have Septimus in it. So in a way he was there to die for her, so that she could go on with her floaty life (I like your term!).

And of course one could be pardoned for thinking that so many did die or survived in a terribly damaged state while the Clarissas of that world just went on with their self-centred and meaningless little lives.