Mrs. Dalloway By Virginia Woolf

In Mrs. Dalloway Clarissa and Septimus smith have various similarities. Clarissa eventually triumphs over her issues/depression in her life unlike Septimus that eventually loses and commits suicide. Mrs. Dalloway an upper class 50 year old British wife the central character of the novel, struggles constantly to balance her thoughts and world. Her world consists of a fabulous lifestyle such as fine fashion, parties, and aristocratic society, but as she the novel goes on she looks beneath the glamour of her life and searches for a deeper meaning. Looking for privacy, Clarissa has a tendency toward introspection that gives her a capacity for emotion. She is always concerned with appearances around other people and no matter the pressure she keeps herself composed. She uses a lot of useless talking and activity to keep her ideas and emotions safe and locked away, which can make her seem shallow even to those who know her well.

Moreover, the fluidity, represented by the thoughts of the characters, is enhanced by the form of the novel: Mrs Dalloway is not divided into chapters; thus, it does not leave behind a sense of completeness. It is largely intertwined with the narration of Clarissa and that of the other characters and the action largely takes place in the mind. This is presented in form of free indirect discourse: the narrative conveys the thoughts of the selected character. This leaves the readers with an impressionistic story. To demonstrate how different characters bring about unequal messages, here is an illustration from the work: when Clarissa is strolling the streets of London, she and Septimus both see the same car. The vehicle leads them to different thoughts: for Septimus it is seeing in it the power of the modern world, which “was about to burst into flames” (13) or rather the oppressive relationship of technology and war, which ultimately leads to his suicide. He is bound by the internal, his suffering thoughts cannot help but to be captured in the memories of the World War I he fought in. For Clarissa, hearing the noise of the car provokes her to think she has heard “a pistol shot in the street” (12) (which later turns out to be true). By using such a form of representation, Woolf points to the invisible connections of people in a dehumanised, yet technology-bound, world, which create between them a form of interaction that serves as compensation for what Septimus (and

Dalloway is related to the characters’ being queer-- Clarissa is explicitly and Septimus ambiguously queer. Conformity in this case takes the form of compulsory heterosexuality (the societal pressure to be a part of heterosexual relationships and dynamics). Clarissa Dalloway’s relationship with Sally Seton is defined as romantic with the two being in love. Septimus and Evans’ relationship is more unclear, but a romantic connection is implied. The two “had to be together, share with each other” (130), which could imply only a deep friendship but within the context of the hints at each character’s homosexuality the relationship seems more romantic than friendly. Evans was “undemonstrative in the company of women” (130), and Septimus, who values Shakespeare so highly that it is the heart of his version of England which he fought for, considers that “love between man and woman was repulsive to Shakespeare” (134), which says more about him than it does about Shakespeare. His relationship with Evans also is reminiscent of Achilles and Patroclus, whose relationship has traditionally been considered to be homosexual. Like Achilles, Septimus forms an extremely close bond during wartime with a fellow fighter. Like Achilles, Septimus is deeply affected by the death of his companion. Where Achilles’ response to this death is brutal slaughter that leads to his downfall, Septimus’ reaction is a downward spiral into mental illness ending in his suicide.

The Victorian Era encompassed a time of great discrepancy between the sexes, especially for women. The polarization of gender roles reflected on a basis of gender sexuality where men and women were granted certain advantages and disadvantages. Women were expected to realize a specific position in society based on morals of submission, passivity, and a complete lack of selfishness and independence. Constrictive notions such as these prevent individual expression and expansion. Therefore, while struggling to fill the pre-conceived expectancies of society, one forces true desires and happiness to pass as a scant priority. Charlotte Brontë's Victorian novel, Jane Eyre, explores the significance of individual fulfillment in an oppressive

Throughout her life, novelist Virginia Woolf suffered with mental illness, and she ultimately ended her life at age 59. As art often imitates life, it is not surprising that characters in Woolf’s works also struggle with mental illness. One of her novels, Mrs. Dalloway, recounts a day in the life of Clarissa Dalloway, a high society woman living in London, and those who run in her circle. As the novel progresses the reader sees one of the characters, Septimus, struggle with post-traumatic stress disorder brought on by serving in war. At the end of the story, he commits suicide. While there is no explicit articulation of any other character suffering from mental illness in the novel, Septimus is not alone. Through her thoughts and actions, we can deduce that Clarissa also endures mental and emotional suffering. Though Clarissa does not actually attempt to end her life in the novel, her mental and emotional suffering lead her to exhibit suicidal tendencies. To prove this, I will examine Clarissa’s thoughts and actions from a psychological perspective.

The Woman Upstairs is a novel that holds deep deception at its heart. Deception triggers and promotes Nora 's anger ,it has shaped Nora 's angry character from the very beginning . Nora has been deceived by her own-self ,her society and when she has found a family she could trust , they brutally betrayed her too.Even the title of the novel The Woman Upstairs is deceiving , one would immediately think of the madwoman in the attic, the 19th century’s best-known "woman upstairs" In Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte, Bertha Mason the protagonist is the first wife of the master of Thornfield Hall, who has shut her away and has opened the door to more than a hundred years of impassioned feminist criticism, “People don 't want to worry about the Woman Upstairs”.(Bertha 95) To the contrary , Nora describes The Woman Upstairs as an unmarried school teacher who is approaching forty without having accomplished anything she set out to do ,causing the sparkle of suppressed passive anger from the early beginning of Nora 's adult life .Like someone scratching an infected wound, Nora returns to the phrase “the woman upstairs” again and again:

During World War One, many societal norms became disrupted and thrown aside. Everything became displaced, including gender roles. People stopped fretting about a woman’s place in the kitchen when people were dying in the trenches everyday. World War One was a time of progressive change–however, it was only temporary. Both One of Ours, written by Willa Cather, and Mrs. Dalloway, written by Virginia Woolf, take place around World War One. Despite taking place around World War One, a time associated with progress, there is not a stark contrast in the roles that women were expected to fulfill. Examining these novels, it becomes apparent that the roles of women did not change as a result of the war. In fact, Enid, in One of Ours, and Mrs.

Everyone has experienced some sort of loss, heartache, or tragedy in their life. These situations can cause a major toll on the human mind and the way that it deals with tragedy and loss. Throughout her life, author Virginia Woolf had to handle situations like being sexually abused by her half-brothers, and the deaths of her mother, father, half-sister, and older brother. How a person handles death, rejection, and loss on a mental level is called coping. In Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway, coping is evident through the death of Septimus Warren Smith, the thought of rejection in society and in love, and the denial of love that both Clarissa Dalloway and Peter Walsh feel towards each other.

They had undergone severe psychological duress, and were thought of as weak and unmanly. In a novel by Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway, a man known as Septimus is a character with shell shock. His young wife and him have a very broken relationship. She is not empathetic to his condition, and does not understand what he is going through. Their problematic relationship is first shown when Septimus is frightened by a car going down the street in London. He then sees a plane, and believes that he is receiving some sort of secret message, while Rezia takes the message in a way that makes her upset and angry towards her husband. She is hurt by the way he is behaving, and his constant depression, especially because the doctor he is seeing said that there is nothing wrong with him. She wants him to be normal, and seems to regret marrying him, instead of being kind and understanding to his condition. Septimus sees the world as a cruel, evil place, and Rezia sees this, but she does not agree, and she wants him to get over it and go back to normal. Since he has shell shock, her constant displeasure only worsens their relationship. In another part of the novel, Septimus confuses Peter with a man he served with in the army. He is visibly upset and frightened. Later on, Rezia and Septimus see Dr. William Bradshaw, who Septimus believes is evil. Bradshaw believes that Septimus should be isolated in the country, away from Rezia. He arranges for a pick up that evening. Later that evening, Septimus and Rezia finally connect, because she finally is empathetic and kind. Rezia is hopeful that Septimus will return to normal, but then Bradshaw and Holmes come to retrieve Septimus, who then kills himself due to pressure from the doctors. When Rezia and Septimus connected, it showed that Septimius was able to recover with the proper support, not by the forcible methods the doctor were

In their scene at the park, Rezia uses many means to distract Septimus from his reflections by pointing out planes and a troop of boys playing cricket (22-23). While having little to no understanding on her husband’s condition, she is the most willing to help him adjust back to normal life. Woolf uses characters like Dr. Holmes and Sir William Bradshaw to criticize many of the doctors after the war for pushing aside soldiers suffering from shell shock and claiming, “ there was nothing whatever the matter” (72). She also addresses her displeasure with the treatment of mental illnesses, depression, and other psychological conditions that were ignored by doctors. This could stem from Woolf also being afflicted by many psychological problems throughout her life. In Jean M. Wyatt’s “Mrs. Dalloway: Literary Allusion as Structural Metaphor,” she explains that the reason Septimus ended his life was because he saw an innocence and life in Rezia that he no longer possessed and decided that by committing suicide he was giving society a kind of renewal (443). His war experience, like that of many soldiers, shattered his perception of life and left fragments of it so deeply instilled in his life after the war that it impaired his ability to regain his past perceptions of life

In Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway, Clarissa Dalloway and Septimus Warren Smith are perceived as completely different people, but as one looks deeper, their characters become hard to differentiate from one another. While Septimus is a young, male, middle class veteran suffering from post traumatic stress disorder, Clarissa is an older woman in the upper class who enjoys throwing parties. However, as the day continues one can see these two characters share more in common than previously determined. All in all, Clarissa and Septimus are an unlikely pair of characters to relate to each other, but the two are more alike than different.

The effect of Sally on Clarissa's life runs deep, as she is a close friend as well as a physical attraction. In fact, in

Once Woolf chose to combine the two separate stories, with the loss of unity this would imply, she must dramatize the split in structure and make a virtue out of it. The contrast between the minds of Clarissa and Septimus is but one way; another is the split within the characters themselves. Septimus is a schizophrenic, in the common (although not the medical) view, a split personality; and he alternates between normal and abnormal behavior. Clarissa is divided in another way; she is born under Gemini, the sign of the twins, indicated by Woolf s mention that she had "just broken into her fifty-second year" With this Gemini or twin motif, Woolf was able to accomplish several things: achieve a balance between the two characters and story lines which fall into place as twin stories and use the motif as a basis for a complicated network of

Woolf says that Septimus is a spitting image of Clarissa as both share the same feelings about their history with the medical industry. The both share a dark side that cast out to the reader their personality from within. Even though Clarissa showed many similar qualities in regards to Septimus, she decided upon herself to live as she has things to take care of in her life. Like Septimus, Clarissa too suffers from the war. Even though they were both emotionally beaten to the bone, Clarissa decided to stay where she’s at while Septimus chose another route.

Although Peter claims that they also had that kind of intimate relationship as she and Richard have, “this queer power of communicating without Words…he always saw through Clarissa. Not that he said anything, of course; just sat looking glum. It was the way their quarrels often began.“(Woolf 49). she however did not share this opinion with him as she thought “It was extraordinary how Peter put her into these states…He made her see herself; exaggerate. It was idiotic.“(Woolf 137). It is evident that Peter never actually managed to have that kind of connection with her; he just had an influence on her without being able to break those boundaries she set up in her mind. Furthermore, Peter believed that by marrying Richard she lost her identity as she was now „the perfect hostess“(Woolf 6) which organizes parties in order to compensate for her lack of “self”. Peter is too self-centred in order to be a good husband to Clarissa. In his dream he imagines and objectifies women and then wishes to be saved by them but the traveller in the dream eventually realizes he has nobody there to share his difficulties with. In addition, Clarissa’s isolation can also be connected to her rejection of religion. As she was annoyed by Peter’s intrusion in her privacy she was equally annoyed by Miss Kilman’s intrusion in her daughter’s life. “Love and religion! Thought Clarissa…How detestable, how