Mental Illness as a Theme/Final Thoughts

 Note: I used a PDF version of the book, so I don’t have page numbers.

         Content warning: discussion of mental illness and suicide

This is my final blog post about my experience reading Mrs. Dalloway. As the last one, I think that it would be appropriate to have this post recap my final thoughts and appreciate my favorite aspects of the book. 

In previous posts, I have discussed many different aspects of the book, from themes to characters to narration style, so I want this to have a little bit of everything. Something important about the book that I haven’t discussed yet is the recurring themes of mental health struggle. Septimus is an important character in the novel, and it follows his struggle with “shell shock,” or PTSD, after returning home from war. He is incredibly detached from reality, distant from his wife, and experiences hallucinations. 

In the book, he has a significant ongoing battle with his mental state. His struggle with PTSD after returning home from the war consumes his life. Throughout the book, Woolf shows us what he deals with. About Septimus being looked at by a doctor, she writes, 

“So there was no excuse; nothing whatever the matter, except the sin for which human nature had condemned him to death; that he did not feel. He had not cared when Evans was killed; that was worst; but all the other crimes raised their heads and shook their fingers and jeered and sneered over the rail of the bed in the early hours of the morning at the prostrate body which lay realising its degradation; how he had married his wife without loving her; had lied to her; seduced her; outraged Miss Isabel Pole, and was so pocked and marked with vice that women shuddered when they saw him in the street. The verdict of human nature on such a wretch was death.”

This passage speaks to how separated he is from reality; he didn’t feel love for his wife, didn’t feel pain when his friend died. His life was made to be torturous by his mind. Evans, however, does not leave his mind even though he passed; Septimus has visions of him, hallucinations induced by his poor mental state. Often in the book, Septimus will see Evans briefly, see him walking around, or even speak with him. 

“It was at that moment (Rezia gone shopping) that the great revelation took place. A voice spoke from behind the screen. Evans was speaking. The dead were with him. ‘Evans, Evans!’ he cried. Mr. Smith was talking aloud to himself, Agnes the servant girl cried to Mrs. Filmer in the kitchen. ‘Evans, Evans,’ he had said as she brought in the tray.”

He can’t shake the haunting of his experiences from the war. Instead of being present in reality and functioning well, he is stuck in a state of illusion. 

His wife struggles with managing his mental health; she is self-conscious, ashamed of him and what people think. Septimus is not “normal,” and she feels as if he garners negative attention from those around them. When these characters are just introduced, Woolf immediately includes a passage about how she perceives the world around her as judgemental toward her husband’s struggles. She thinks, 

“People must notice; people must see. People, she thought, looking at the crowd staring at the motor car; the English people, with their children and their horses and their clothes, which she admired in a way; but they were "people" now, because Septimus had said, "I will kill myself"; an awful thing to say. Suppose they had heard him? She looked at the crowd. Help, help! she wanted to cry out to butchers' boys and women. Help! Only last autumn she and Septimus had stood on the Embankment wrapped in the same cloak and, Septimus reading a paper instead of talking, she had snatched it from him and laughed in the old man's face who saw them! But failure one conceals. She must take him away into some park.”

“"Septimus!" said Rezia. He started violently. People must notice.”

“Far rather would she that he were dead! She could not sit beside him when he stared so and did not see her and made everything terrible; sky and tree, children playing, dragging carts, blowing whistles, falling down; all were terrible. And he would not kill himself; and she could tell no one. "Septimus has been working too hard"--that was all she could say to her own mother. To love makes one solitary, she thought. She could tell nobody, not even Septimus now, and looking back, she saw him sitting in his shabby overcoat alone, on the seat, hunched up, staring. And it was cowardly for a man to say he would kill himself, but Septimus had fought; he was brave; he was not Septimus now. She put on her lace collar. She put on her new hat and he never noticed; and he was happy without her. Nothing could make her happy without him! Nothing! He was selfish. So men are. For he was not ill. Dr. Holmes said there was nothing the matter with him. She spread her hand before her. Look! Her wedding ring slipped--she had grown so thin. It was she who suffered--but she had nobody to tell.”

Her husband doesn’t fit into the strict social rules prescribed by English society, and she knows that better than anyone. She seems more concerned about what people think about her husband wanting to kill himself than the fact that he thinks those things in the first place. She is not without her struggles by any means, but she seems to lack empathy for the horrors that her husband experiences. She tries to cope with Septimus as best she can, but she feels alone (especially since she is not from England, her only connection to it is by him). Her only link to the place she lives is the husband that is no longer living in reality. His visions scare her, understandably so, and so while he clearly suffers, she deals with the burden of taking care of a husband who can’t take care of himself. 

A passage in which Septimus sees Evans illustrates this clearly. He sees him and perceives him as real, to the point where his actual wife talking to him is an interruption. 

“There was his hand; there the dead. White things were assembling behind the railings opposite. But he dared not look. Evans was behind the railings! ‘What are you saying?’ said Rezia suddenly, sitting down by him. Interrupted again! She was always interrupting.” 

He saw Evans just as clearly as he saw his wife, and doesn’t even realize that it isn’t reality. He descended so deep into his delusions due to the regression of his mental state that he cannot separate fiction from reality.

Septimus’s grim mental health is an interesting contrast to that of the other main character, Clarissa. Her experience with mental struggles manifests more in a form of existentialism and cynicism, which while difficult, is a result of her class privilege. She can be depressed in a nice house with a rich husband and throw a party to fill the void within her, whereas Septimus, a working-class man who returned from war, struggles with his wife and descends deeper into despair. They are similar, and yet different at the same time, making the themes of mental health in the book very interesting to delve into. 

Eventually, Septimus ends his own life. I can’t say I didn’t expect it, after mentions of his suicidal tendencies throughout the book and his intense trauma from the war. At Clarissa’s party, the guests catch wind of it. Woolf writes, 

“Lady Bradshaw (poor goose--one didn't dislike her) murmured how, ‘just as we were starting, my husband was called up on the telephone, a very sad case. A young man (that is what Sir William is telling Mr. Dalloway) had killed himself. He had been in the army.’ Oh! thought Clarissa, in the middle of my party, here's death, she thought.”

I chose this passage because it mentions his death, but also shows how Clarissa copes with difficult situations. As mentioned in a previous post, she distracts herself with frivolities. Instead of dwelling on a tragic event, the death of a young man, she is irked because she received bad news during her party. Woolf delves into her indignance further, saying that

“What business had the Bradshaws to talk of death at her party? A young man had killed himself. And they talked of it at her party--the Bradshaws, talked of death. He had killed himself--but how? Always her body went through it first, when she was told, suddenly, of an accident; her dress flamed, her body burnt. He had thrown himself from a window. Up had flashed the ground; through him, blundering, bruising, went the rusty spikes. There he lay with a thud, thud, thud in his brain, and then a suffocation of blackness. So she saw it. But why had he done it? And the Bradshaws talked of it at her party!”

While she thinks about the gravity of the situation momentarily, she always comes back to being more upset about hearing news that could dampen the energy of her party. Since her parties are how she copes with unhappiness and emptiness, I understand why Woolf decided to write this section the way she did. However, I can’t help but feel frustrated by her lack of empathy towards Septimus’s end (though she didn’t know him, and I spent the book empathizing with him). 

I could spend pages and pages talking about mental health in this book and the way that Woolf handles it. Since she was someone with these struggles, she conveyed them very realistically. She had what was suspected to be bipolar disorder, and drowned herself in a river. Woolf was no stranger to mental illness, and it was palpable in Mrs. Dalloway. Like her same-sex attraction, she wrote about things she knew, which shows in the accuracy and passion of her work.

I appreciate how she didn’t shy away from difficult topics like this, and wrote them beautifully. I enjoyed her way of describing things and narrating events, which made sad parts of the book better in the sense that they weren’t dreadful to read. While awful, it was beautiful at the same time. 

When I started this post, I didn’t think that it would be almost exclusively about the themes of mental illness in the book, but I got swept away. It was definitely my favorite aspect of the book, so I understand why I could write about it so easily. 

At the beginning of the book, I had no idea where it would go, and though it took place in a day, it kept my attention. I would highly recommend it, and I’m sure I’ll read it again at some point in the future just to appreciate it.