MASARYK UNIVERSITY

FACULTY OF EDUCATION
Department of English Language and Literature

Autobiographical features in Virginia Woolf’s

Mrs Dalloway
Bachelor Thesis
Brno 2020

Supervisor Author

Mgr. Barbora Kašpárková Veronika Moravčíková

Declaration

I hereby declare that I worked on the following thesis on my own and that I used only the

sources listed in the bibliography.

Prohlášení

Prohlašuji, že jsem závěrečnou bakalářskou práci vypracovala samostatně, s využitím pouze

citovaných literárních zdrojů, dalších informací a zdrojů v souladu s Disciplinárním řádem pro

studenty Pedagogické fakulty Masarykovy university a se zákonem č. 121/2000 Sb. o právu

autorském, o právech souvisejících s právem autorským a o změně některých zákonů (autorský

zákon), ve znění pozdějších předpisů.

V Brně dne 17. 3 . 2020 …………………………

Veronika Moravčíková
Acknowledgment

I would like to express my sincere gratitude to my supervisor Mgr. Barbora Kašpárková for the

guidance during the entire process of thesis writing as well as her useful comments and inspiring

remarks.
Annotation

This bachelor thesis explores the autobiographical features in Virginia Woolf’s novel Mrs

Dalloway. It analyses the primary source as well as several biographical and critical sources in

order to reflect on the influence of the writer’s life on the characters in the novel, especially the

character of Clarissa Dalloway. The thesis suggests that by pointing out and satirizing the

oppressive and close-minded aspects of the British post-war society, Woolf achieved her

ambition of showing the social system at work. The thesis also suggests that even though the

novel is not fully autobiographical, it is influenced by Woolf’s experiences. It attempts to show

how Woolf uses the character of Clarissa Dalloway to show how limited the role of middle-class

women was during her time. Woolf was able to criticize the inflexibility of the post-war society

and also the psychiatric treatment of individuals in the character of Septimus Smith. As this

thesis attempted to show, these are topics that were very personally significant to Woolf, thus

fulfilling the aim to explore the autobiographical features present in the influential modernist

novel.

Key words

Virginia Woolf, Mrs Dalloway, autobiography, Modernism, society, psychiatry, religion,

Bloomsbury, diary writing, The Great War

Anotace

Tato bakalářská práce se zabývá autobiografickými prvky v románu Virginie Woolfové

Paní Dallowayová. Analyzuje jak primární zdroj tak i několik životopisných a kritických zdrojů,

se záměrem prozkoumat vliv spisovatelčina života na postavy v románu, zejména na postavu

Clarissy Dallowayové. Práce naznačuje, že Woolfová tím, že poukázala na a satirizovala

utiskující a úzkoprsé aspekty britské poválečné společnosti, dosáhla svých ambicí ukázat vliv

společnosti na jedince. Tato práce má také za cíl dokázat, že ačkoli román není plně

autobiografický, je ovlivněn mnoha osobními zkušenostmi Woolfové. Tato práce se také

zaměřuje na to, jak Woolfová díky postavě Clarissy Dallowayové, poukázala na to jak omezená

byla role žen středních tříd. Virginie Woolfová také dokázala obratně kritizovat nepružnost

poválečné společnosti a také poukázala na špatné zacházení s jednotlivci vyžadujícími

psychiatrickou péči díky postavě Septima Smithe. Jak se tato práce pokoušela ukázat, jedná se o

témata, která byla pro Woolfovou velmi důležitá, a díky nim obohatila její novelu.

Klíčová slova

Virginia Woolfová, Paní Dallowayová, autobiografie, Modernismus, společnost, psychiatrie,

náboženství, Bloomsbury, deníky, První světová válka

Table of Contents

Introduction ........................................................................................................................ 8

1 Virginia Woolf’s Biography ............................................................................................. 10

1.1 Bloomsbury Group ........................................................................................................... 11

2 Mrs Dalloway ................................................................................................................... 13

2.1.1 The process of Writing...................................................................................................... 14

3 London .............................................................................................................................. 16

3.1 Clarissa’s London ............................................................................................................. 16

3.2 Elizabeth’s London ........................................................................................................... 18

3.3 Converging Paths ............................................................................................................. 20

4 Age.................................................................................................................................... 23

4.1 Youth ................................................................................................................................ 23

4.1.1 Sally Seton ....................................................................................................................... 24

4.2 Middle Age ....................................................................................................................... 26

5 Marriage............................................................................................................................ 29

6 Septimus ........................................................................................................................... 32

6.1 Mental Illness ................................................................................................................... 32

6.1.1 Loss .................................................................................................................................. 33

6.1.2 Treatment ......................................................................................................................... 34

6.2 Shakespeare ...................................................................................................................... 39

7 Religion ............................................................................................................................ 41

7.1 Family Background .......................................................................................................... 42

7.2 Clarissa’s Religion ............................................................................................................ 43

7.2.1 Atheist’s Religion ........................................................................................................... 44

7.2.2 Privacy of the Soul ......................................................................................................... 45

7.2.3 Miss Kilman ................................................................................................................... 46

7.2.4 Septimus’s Sacrifice ....................................................................................................... 47

8 The Great War ................................................................................................................ 49

8.1 Describing the War ......................................................................................................... 50

8.1.1 Attitude Towards the War ............................................................................................... 51

8.1.2 Remembrance ................................................................................................................. 53

8.2 Personal Significance ..................................................................................................... 55

8.2.1 Inspiration for Septimus .................................................................................................. 55

9 Conclusion ...................................................................................................................... 59

10 Works cited ..................................................................................................................... 60

Introduction

Virginia Woolf is a writer whose work remains a popular subject of study. The reasons for the

sustained attention to her work and life as an artist are many. Her work was innovative, nuanced

and it was a part of a new transformed way of writing, the modernist way. There is also much

attention focused on her personally, she was a progressive, complicated and fascinating woman

who left an impression on those around her just as she left her mark on literature. In her fourth

novel published in 1925, she placed an unusual main character into the center of its story, a

middle-aged high society woman named Clarissa Dalloway. The narration follows many other

characters but it is possible to say that Clarissa Dalloway and Septimus Smith are given the most

attention. Clarissa and Septimus are sometimes considered as literary doubles (Larsson 111). The

stream of consciousness nature of the novel means that the distinction between inner monologue,

the thoughts, and conversations of characters is blurred. Set in London on a June day, five years

after the end of the Great War, the novel captures an emerging of a new world in which Woolf

was writing and living.

The aim of this thesis is to analyze the degree to which Virginia Woolf’s life own

experiences influenced the novel Mrs Dalloway and the similarities between her life and the

character of Clarissa Dalloway. This thesis will attempt to show that Mrs Dalloway features

many autobiographical aspects. The novel and its characters appear to be as complicated and

changing as Woolf herself was said to be. The novel explores many themes often appearing in

Woolf’s writing such as the nature of the self, the theme of death and sanity. These are the

themes Woolf noted in her diary, among other notes which offer insight into the sources of

inspiration Woolf used, some directly from her life experiences.

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The first chapter briefly introduces Woolf’s work and life and the second chapter delves into

some of the objectives Woolf had set out to tackle in the novel. The second chapter refers to

Woolf’s diaries from the years 1920 to 1924, during which she was working on the novel. The

main body of the thesis focuses on the primary source Mrs Dalloway and several biographies,

Woolf’s diaries and scholarly articles and essays in order to trace the inspiration and influences

in the development of the novel. This part of the thesis is divided into several chapters.

The chapters are based on the areas where there are links between Woolf’s life and the

novel. The third chapter deals with the city of London. Woolf lived in London and used it more

than just a setting, she gave symbolic meaning to the paths characters take. The fourth chapter

explores other areas in which Clarissa Dalloway was inspired by Woolf’s own personality such

as her youth, her relationship with a woman and her perception of aging. Septimus Smith, a

character closely linked with Clarissa and consequently Woolf is analyzed in the fifth chapter,

delving into Woolf’s critique of mental health treatment. The sixth chapter explores some of the

novel’s philosophical questions about soul and religion, showing how Woolf herself was

agnostic but somewhat spiritual and how this reflected in Clarissa. The seventh chapter analyzes

the treatment of the Great War and how Woolf chose to integrate certain experiences of those

around her and her own knowledge.

Many elements of Mrs Dalloway represent areas of the author’s life, nevertheless, besides

a reflection of Virginia Woolf’s beliefs and attitudes, it remains a work of great literary value by

itself. This thesis merely attempts to explore certain possibilities that may bring a new way of

enjoyment of the novel.

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1 Virginia Woolf’s Biography

Virginia Woolf, her full original name Adeline Virginia Stephen was born on January 25, 1882.

Being born at the end of the nineteenth century meant she was influenced by the conservative

social atmosphere. She devoted much of her work to dismantling the stereotypes of the Victorian

era and she is now recognized as an important figure not just in writing fiction but for her

contribution to the movement for woman’s equality as well. Although as a woman, she could not

attend higher education, she was very perceptive and talented, and she was educated at home

(Reid “Major Period”).

She married Leonard Woolf in 1912 and together they established the Hogarth Press, a

publishing house that printed Woolf’s novels and various works by new talents. Virginia Woolf

was very productive, writing numerous reviews, articles and of course novels throughout her life.

She was also a great diarist, noting her day to day business as well as personal thoughts and

feelings. Her diaries are an excellent resource for illuminating her writing, which even after

decades remains a rich resource for academic research as well as for literary enjoyment. She led

a rich social life and she accomplished much despite her sometimes debilitating periods of

depression. Discussions of Virginia Woolf’s life often tend to draw attention to her mental illness

or the fact that she chose to commit suicide by drowning in 1941. While this fact affected her life

and writing, there are many more reasons to remember Virginia Woolf, a few of which were

mentioned here such as her position in British literature as a great novelist, essayist, and critic

(Pattison 9).

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1.1 Bloomsbury Group

Virginia Woolf later became a part of the Bloomsbury group, a community of artists and

intellectuals who had an important place in the modernist movement. An informal grouping of

friends more than an organized movement, they were bohemian and sought to live according to

their own accord. They wanted to introduce a new perception of the world and art, one different

from the old Victorian ideals (Hilský 184). They began meeting at the home of Woolf and her

sister Vanessa Bell. They were mostly from wealthy families and they thus had social advantages

and education; however, they were opposed to the restraint of their parent’s generation. This

outraged their contemporaries and often made them more notorious than their works of art. In

their search for freedom, they developed liberal ideas about relationships, and they had affairs

within the group. Their simultaneous closeness and diversity in their personalities and their

reputation of free-thinking bohemians continue to fascinate to this day (“Lifestyle and Legacy”).

It was Virginia Woolf who claimed that “On about December 1910, human character

changed” (Winkiel 128). This break means several things, a break from the previous generation

of novelists and the Post-Impressionist art exhibit held that month in London and also the

growing importance of the suffragette movement. Woolf was keenly aware of the rapid changes

of the modern era and she knew she was a part of this new world. She too had grown to oppose

the conventions of her parent’s generation just like the rest of Bloomsbury. She sought to capture

modern life with a new, fresh form of literature. After all, the old literary conventions could not

be sufficient enough to reflect that: “All human relations have shifted – those between masters

and servants, husbands and wives, parents and children” (Winkiel 128). Mrs Dalloway is one of

her best-known novels and a part of this search for new ways of expression. Its story takes place

on a single day, yet with the stream of consciousness perspective, the reader goes in and out of
11
characters’ minds and their thoughts and memories, constructing a rich image of Clarissa

Dalloway’s life in the post-war social structure.

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2 Mrs Dalloway

Mrs Dalloway was published in 1925 and it details a day in the life of a high-society middle-

aged woman Clarissa Dalloway in London. In this novel, she continued her experimentation with

form, and she carried on her resolution set in “Modern Fiction” in 1919 to “examine the mind on

an ordinary day” (Bradbury 181). Woolf was working here on the novelist’s task to capture the

human perception and in order to get closer to portraying how “the mind receives a myriad

impressions – trivial, fantastic, evanescent or engraved with the sharpness of steel” she chose to

examine a woman’s perspective such as one of Clarissa Dalloway (Bradbury 181). Perhaps she

did this because she knew that women were not supposed to write and often, they were not able

to for a lack of “money and a room of her own” (“A Room of One's Own”). Therefore, a woman

writer writing about a woman’s mind could create a new form of writing, capable of more

closely reflecting the “luminous halo” that is human life (Bradbury 184).

As Lyndall Gordon suggests in A Writer’s Life, Woolf always closely reflected her life in

her work, besides other influences, she turned her experiences, joys, and traumas into lasting and

influential art (8). However, it is equally crucial to remember not to simply reduce all her writing

to therapy, as Hermione Lee notes in her extensive biography Virginia Woolf (“Madness”).

This thesis attempts to analyze Woolf’s novel Mrs Dalloway and to seek connections with

her life and how these connections formed the themes and ideas of the novel. Woolf

communicated much of what she wanted to communicate through her novels and her characters.

This thesis deals chiefly with the similarities between the lives of Virginia Woolf and the life of

the fiction Clarissa Dalloway, the heroine of Mrs Dalloway. However, this search for

connections is one that seeks to explore the possibilities and not one which seeks to create a

13
definite interpretation of Mrs Dalloway. This is a task that is justly discouraged by biographers

and scholars alike. Peter Gay, in his short article On Not Psychoanalyzing Virginia Woolf argues

that while there is a strong tendency to overly psychoanalyze Woolf’s writing, one ought to

remember her own dislike of psychoanalysis which attested “mainly to her deeply felt wish not

to be boxed in, typecast, labelled” (73). Gay also argues that even though a work of literature

should stand on its own, the “origins in the maker’s psyche are never irrelevant to a full

appraisal” (75). This is the direction this thesis is aimed at. It aims to compare Woolf’s life to

Clarissa’s but also to remember that Woolf herself wanted to be known foremost as herself, a

writer. She knew herself to be still evolving and changeable and this reflected in Clarissa

Dalloway who is equally multifaceted. As a writer concerned with representing identity, she had

an ever-changing vision of the self (McCracken 59). Still, Virginia Woolf was someone who

sought inspiration all around her and as this thesis will attempt to demonstrate, she often used her

experiences in writing. She also was skilled at creating literary sketches of the people she knew

and she would note down in her diary how she would base certain traits of her characters on her

acquaintances. For surveying these influences, this thesis will examine her diaries and

biographies to show parallels between Woolf’s life and Mrs Dalloway.

2.1.1 The process of Writing

Diary entry from Tuesday 19 June in 1923 shows certain questions that were provoked by

reading Katherine Mansfield’s words about her work Dove’s Nest. Mansfield mentions feeling

things deeply and this, in turn, made Woolf reflect on her work: “But now what do I feel about

my writing? – this book, that is The Hours, if that’s its name?” (D2 248). Woolf had a wealth of

ideas, which she wanted to tackle in the novel, at times worrying that the number of themes may

14
even be too great. She wanted The Hours to have “life & death, sanity & insanity” (D2 248). She

also wanted “to criticise the social system, & to show it at work, at its most intense” (D2 248).

In this diary entry, she estimates that the crux of writing “from deep emotion” lies with

the novel’s characters (D2 248). This problem is closely connected to criticism of her previous

work Jacob’s Room and especially comments by the critic Arnold Bennet, who claimed that in

Jacob’s Room the characters do not endure in the reader’s mind. Later in 1923 Woolf published

an influential essay in response – Mr Bennet and Mrs Brown. In a similar way, she asks herself

in her diary: “Have I the power of conveying true reality? Or do I write essays about myself?”

(D2 248). Regardless she remained confident: “The design is certainly original & interests me

hugely” (D2 249). Besides wondering whether she wrote about herself she also had doubts about

the character of Clarissa Dalloway, wondering whether she is “may be too stiff, too glittering &

tinsely” Her solution was to “bring innumerable other characters to her support” (D2 272). There

are many instances in which we see Clarissa through the eyes of others, enriching her

personality. The shifting and interconnected narrative supported by “the tunneling process”

allows one to see beyond and appreciate the characters more (D2 272).

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3 London

Mrs Dalloway is a novel firmly rooted in London. London almost becomes a character on its

own. This chapter explores Virginia Woolf’s attitude towards the city of London and how it is

reflected in Mrs Dalloway. It focuses on the significance of London to Clarissa and how Woolf

expressed her love for the city, giving it special significance beyond just a literary setting. This

special significance becomes apparent when taking a closer look at the treatment of the city

environment in relation to the characters of Elizabeth, Peter, and Septimus as well. Woolf lived

in London and equipped with knowledge of its topography, she used the paths characters take

when walking as an analogy to the paths the characters’ lives take.

3.1 Clarissa’s London

In the very beginning Clarissa goes out to buy flowers and she enjoys the busy atmosphere of

London immensely, equally as much as Woolf does in her diary writing. It soon becomes clear

that Clarissa Dalloway appreciates the liveliness of the city. Clarissa loves London as it

represents the aspects of life she loves:

In people’s eyes, in the swing, tramp, and trudge; in the bellow and the uproar; the
carriages, motor cars, omnibuses, vans, sandwich men shuffling and swinging; brass
bands; barrell organs; in the triumph and the jingle and the strange high singing of some
aeroplane overhead was what she loved; life; London; this moment of June. (Woolf 36)

On Monday 5 May 1924 Woolf charts in her diary a timetable for writing during the following

months and she surmises that the work on her novel is currently going well. She writes: “It is

reeling of my mind fast & free now…It is becoming more analytical & human I think; less

16
lyrical; but I feel as if I had loosed the bonds pretty completely & could pour everything in. If so

– good” (Woolf D2 302). The positive tone continues in the following lines, where Woolf seems

to be quite delighted to be living and working in London. It is a fitting creative environment for

her, offering her respite from her own mind. Woolf states that the city provides her with a sense

of novelty and vitality: “And I like London for writing it, partly because, as I say, life upholds

one; & with my squirrel cage mind, it’s a great thing to be stopped circling. Then to see human

beings freely & quickly is an infinite gain to me. And I can dart in & out & refresh my

stagnancy” (Woolf D2 302). Clarissa appears to make very similar observations about the sights

and sounds of London. They carry a creative significance to both Clarissa and Woolf. On

Monday 26, 1924 Woolf describes her love of London yet again, highlighting the human

movement of the modern age and she likens people to “rabbits” and the Southampton Row to a

“seal’s back”. It seems that nature is therapeutic and positive for Woolf as it is for Clarissa.

Interestingly, they also both seem to describe the same spectacles such as the people, the buses

and street musicians. Woolf describes her love of London:

London is enchanting. I step out upon a tawny coloured magic carpet, it seems, & get
carried into beauty without raising a finger. The nights are amazing with all the white
porticoes & broad silent avenues. And people pop in & out, lightly, divertingly like
rabbits; & I look down Southampton Row, wet as a seal’s back or red & yellow with
sunshine, & watch the omnibus going & coming, & hear the old crazy organs. One of
these days I will write about London, & how it takes up the private life & carries on with
it, without any effort. (Woolf D2 301)

Shannon Forbes claims that it is exactly this special quality of London that seems to carry one’s

private life on that is most important to Clarissa’s struggle with identity (Forbes 39). Clarissa has

a plethora of conflicting feelings concerning her sense of self, she feels at once “invisible;

unseen” and yet “somehow in the streets of London, here, there, she survived” (Woolf 39).

17
Forbes suggests that the crux of Clarissa’s struggle is her role of being a wife. Her feeling of

being hidden stems from not being Clarissa but “this being Mrs. Richard Dalloway” (Forbes 39).

Her own identity seems to be erased or it may never have had the chance to fully develop

because she was tied down to perform a certain social role. Clarissa’s destiny was shaped by her

upper-class upbringing and this meant she could not go out into the world and shape her own self

freely, but she had to settle down and become “Mrs. Richard Dalloway” (Woolf 40).

Clarissa seeks stability and strength in London, something she supposedly lacks because

she feels unfulfilled by marriage. She is thinking back on her life and the choices she made

throughout the novel. When she is outside of her home, she is free to think about herself. Her

home offers her comfort, but it also traps her in the role of a hostess. Clarissa momentarily sheds

her role, and therefore it is so important for her to go buy the flowers herself. It is clear that

Woolf loved the lively streets of London and she decided to give them significance in Mrs

Dalloway by showing how important the sense of renewal is to Clarissa Dalloway.

3.2 Elizabeth’s London

Concerning appreciation of the city, Clarissa is not the only character who does so. Similarly, to

her mother, Elizabeth feels free when she ventures out in London on her own. Being able to

explore the Strand alone is closely connected to her thoughts about the future. Elizabeth has

more opportunities than Clarissa had when she was her age. Thanks to the cultural change she

knows that “law, medicine, politics, all professions are open” to a young woman of her age and

position (Woolf 129). These opportunities would have been nearly unthinkable to women of

Clarissa’s generation. This is a parallel to Woolf’s own life as well. She was born in 1882 and

lived into the first half of the twentieth century, meaning she had lived in a time of a rapid

18
change in a woman’s potential for education and opportunity (Gordon “Explorer”). She was well

aware of the previous generations of women who could not express themselves and this was an

issue she continued to develop in her work even well after the granting of the vote to women and

the transformation of public life after the Great War. Clarissa Dalloway is a woman very defined

by her social class and the time she lived in and Woolf sought to illustrate how this affected her

ability to create her own identity. This is no doubt similar to Woolf’s experience, born in the age

of the Victorian "Angel in the House" and moving onto living with friends as an unmarried

young woman, intellectually independent and involved in cultural life. In short, the progression

from the likes of Clarissa Dalloway to the much more promising life of Elizabeth Dalloway.

Concerning the possibilities Elizabeth has, her optimism and a sense of freedom is

reflected in her walk and a bus ride in London. The atmosphere of the Strand is quite dissimilar

to Westminster, it is less affluent but also livelier and busier, it grants Elizabeth a sense

determination and she thinks that she would like to find fulfillment in a profession. Whether she

decides to become a veterinarian or a doctor, possibly even being involved in politics, Elizabeth

is determined to shape her destiny “all because of the Strand” (Woolf 133). While they share a

similar excitement about London, it is clear that Elizabeth has “nothing of her mother in her”

(Woolf 91). She does not enjoy parties and she does not care much for shopping or clothes, at

least not as much as her mother does. Uninterested in these pursuits, Elizabeth seems to have

much more of her father’s personality. She probably looks up to him more as she even considers

a career in Parliament as her father has. It is unclear whether Elizabeth will manage to secure

such a future for herself, however since she is still young and “she inclined to be passive” (Woolf

132).

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 It appears Woolf was not always optimistic about the future of equality and this is hinted

at in the apparent danger of Elizabeth becoming like her mother. Interestingly enough, Clarissa

was once very ambitious as well; she was young and had many idealistic aspirations. Thanks to

Sally Seton, during her youth spent at Bourton she dreamt of reforming the world, going as far as

writing a letter in which they outlined their plans “to found a society to abolish private property”

(Woolf 57). Nevertheless, she settled down into her role as a “perfect hostess” instead (Woolf

78). It is not clear, then, whether Elizabeth has more in store for herself yet there remains her

likeness to her father and an adventurous spirit, which she indulges in as she goes to the Strand.

“For no Dalloways came down the Strand daily; she was a pioneer, a stray, venturing, trusting”

(Woolf 134). Perhaps she will be able to remain a pioneer but as Forbes suggests, she is also

trapped by the city. She would sometimes prefer to be in the country with her dogs and to do as

she pleases. However, she must remain in the city and attend her mother’s party, wear pretty

dresses and take a more traditional passive role. Forbes claims that Elizabeth will not follow her

aspirations; she goes back to Westminster after all which might suggest that she too, will become

a homemaker. (49)

3.3 Converging Paths

Besides the character’s feelings about London, another aspect of the novel which was possibly

drawn from Woolf’s own life is the knowledge and intriguing use of London’s geography. In the

chapter “Walking in Upper Class Westminster” of Walking Virginia Woolf’s London, Lisbeth

Larsson suggests that a closer look at the paths all the characters take in London may reveal a

great deal of information about Woolf’s intentions for them. She highlights the fact that even

though Clarissa and Septimus never meet, they both walk the same corner of Bond Street and

20
Brook Street, and then walk in opposite directions. Their walks then form a joint, single line.

This unified line signifies how Septimus is a part of Clarissa, foreshadowing that he is her alter

ego, or alternatively that they mirror each other. Whether one interprets these characters as being

a psychological double or simply as two contrasting characters, very different in their social

standing, age, gender yet both affected by the war in different ways is up to consideration (111).

An article by David Bradshaw supports the idea that Woolf loved London and that both

its beauty and its inequalities influenced her writing. He provides evidence for her tendency to

look to the city for inspiration:” ‘Personally,’ she wrote in a 1916 review of a book about

London, ‘we should be willing to read one volume about every street in the city, and should still

ask for more. From the bones of extinct monsters and the coins of Roman emperors in the cellars

to the name of the shopman over the door, the whole story is fascinating and the material

endless’” (Bradshaw “Virginia Woolf’s London”).

Another instance of character paths converging is when Septimus and Rezia and Peter

Walsh are all in Regents Park at the same time. Besides Westminster, Woolf also wrote about

the less pleasant parts, noticing the inequalities as a part of the city mosaic. Both Peter Walsh

and Rezia notice an old beggar woman whose “ancient song bubbled up opposite Regent’s Park

Tube station” (Woolf 93). He gives her a coin, and Rezia later wonders about where the “poor

old woman” sleeps. Later Peter Walsh walks through Tottenham Court Road and he sees an

ambulance. He thinks about the ambulance as a clean, humane device to help someone, a

pinnacle of civilization (Bradshaw “Virginia Woolf’s London”). Ironically, he is unaware that

the ambulance is carrying away the body of Septimus, who can be considered to be a victim of

“the efficiency, the organisation” (Woolf 144). Medical science may have benefited from an

efficient tool such as the ambulance but the treatment Septimus received from Sir Bradshaw was

21
guided by the goddesses of “Proportion” and “Conversion” (Woolf 106). Still, it appears that at

least geographically speaking, Peter gets to see most of London during his movement throughout

the novel. Beside Westminster, he walks through several different parts of London. Returning

from India, he is in many ways an outsider. This sets him apart from his counterparts as they stay

within one area. Larsson comments on limited perspectives of the upper class: “The lines drawn

by the characters’ walks on the London map reveal how the representatives of the upper classes -

Clarissa, the Government car, Richard and Hugh - are all moving about within the same small

area and how they walk in each other’s footsteps” (123). Possibly because of his proximity to

both Septimus and Clarissa Peter is sometimes considered “as a link between the ‘doubles’,

Clarissa and Septimus” (Larsson 123).

Woolf’s love for London is well documented in her diaries and essays, for example, the

essays published in the 1930s. The essay Street Haunting was written just two years after Mrs

Dalloway. Here Woolf continued examining the city and its inhabitants, going from mind to

another and exploring their inner lives (“Street Haunting”). London was a rich reserve of

inspiration for her and as this chapter attempted to prove, it was crucial to the characters and

themes of Mrs Dalloway as well.

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4 Age

Most of the characters in Mrs Dalloway are middle-aged, and the theme of mortality seems to be

one of the main themes. The novel was called The Hours during the writing process and time is

also an important theme. While taking up just a single day, all of the characters move from the

present into their memories and back freely. Their perceptions of time are observed and the

constant presence of the past is in contrast with the chimes of Big Ben. Big Ben marks the

passing of time instead of chapter breaks and every time the “leaden circles dissolved in the air”

the characters are reminded that time cannot be stopped (Woolf 36).

4.1 Youth

Clarissa’s youth may be described as sheltered, and in some ways, aspects of Woolf’s upbringing

were similar. In Clarissa’s youth in Bourton and her lack of real education, Woolf likely

criticizes the Victorian upbringing of girls, with its intellectual and physical restraints and

limitations. Clarissa influenced by the rebellious Sally Seton reads and discusses radical ideas yet

later she becomes the “perfect hostess” and Sally also marries and becomes seemingly no more

than an accessory to her rich husband (Woolf 78). Woolf suggests that the lack of opportunity is

oppressive. The Stephen home in Kensington was described as quiet and sedate, a part of

upbringing which sometimes meant Woolf and her sister Vanessa were taught to “sit passive and

watch the Victorian males go through their intellectual hoops” (Gordon 10). These so-called

hoops more than likely involved arguments against women’s education, which might endanger

the purity and devotedness of the Victorian daughters, never destined to choose their own

profession but to take care of the family and home. Reading and discussing ideas freely were

23
against the ideal of Victorian womanhood and both Clarissa and Sally became domestic and their

influence was confined to the home. Without education and money, they had little choice but to

settle into marriage in order to secure a livelihood.

4.1.1 Sally Seton

Sally Seton had a great influence on Clarissa’s youth and in Clarissa’s memories ”the wild, the

daring, the romantic Sally” still has an important place (Woolf 86). She appreciated her

rebellious spirit and their far-flung, yet intellectual debates and her personality swept her away.

She opened her eyes to new ways of thinking and Woolf describes their idyllic time spent

together:

Sally it was who made her feel, for the first time, how sheltered the life at Bourton
was. She knew nothing about sex - nothing about social problems … There they sat, hour
after hour, talking in her bedroom at the top of the house, talking about life, how they
were to reform the world … The ideas were Sally’s, of course - but very soon she was
just as excited - read Plato in bed before breakfast; read Morris; read Shelley by the
hours. (57)

Clarissa remembers getting ready to meet her at dinner “in a kind of extasy” and kissing Sally as

“the most exquisite moment of her whole life” (Woolf 58). Her infatuation with Sally is quite

unlike her relationship with Richard Dalloway or Peter Walsh. The portrayal of relationships

with men is much less passionate. The connection between Sally and Clarissa is often said to

have been inspired by a particularly important relationship in Virginia Woolf’s life – her affair

with Vita Sackville-West. They first met in 1922 and even though she went on to later dedicate

an entire novel to her, Orlando, Woolf expressed her affection towards Vita in Mrs Dalloway as

well (Goldman “Life” 17).

24
 Much like the effect Sally had on Clarissa, Vita made Virginia feel appreciated and opened

her eyes to a new way of looking at herself. Louise A. DeSalvo describes how, thanks to Vita,

Virginia was able to see herself not as someone fragile but someone accomplished and strong

(199). Woolf was raised to believe that she had to always watch herself in order not to become

too intellectually strained which might lead to sickness. She was warned against “the adverse

effects of intellectual pursuits upon her hypersensitive nature”, an idea perpetuated by her father

and her physician, later also by Leonard Woolf and her subsequent doctors (DeSalvo 200).

Virginia Woolf found in Vita Sackville-West support and inspiration unlike what she had

in her relationships with men. One of the often-cited reasons for her inhibitions towards intimacy

with men is the alleged molestation Woolf suffered at the hands of her older half-brother George

Duckworth while she was very young (Lee “Siblings”). It is unsurprising then that she would

carry such trauma into her later relationships with men, including her marriage. It was Vita

Sackville-West who claimed that “Virginia dislikes the possessiveness and love of domination in

men. In fact, she dislikes the quality of masculinity” (Pattison 4). This is an element of Woolf’s

personality that tinges Clarissa’s views about men. When Peter Walsh interrupts her and Sally’s

kiss Clarissa describes this exact quality which Woolf was said to dislike in men: “she felt his

hostility; his jealousy; his determination to break into their companionship”. His intrusion was

“like running one's face against a granite wall in the darkness! It was shocking; it was horrible!”

(Woolf 59). Whatever the cause or degree of Woolf’s supposed reproach towards men, it is clear

that both she and the fictional Clarissa Dalloway gained much inspiration in their relationships

with women.

25
4.2 Middle Age

Woolf was in her forties when writing Mrs Dalloway, yet it appears that she had noted musings

about aging even before that, in her 1918 diary. Barbara Lounsberry points out that although she

used a light-hearted tone, Woolf seemed apprehensive about what direction her life may take

after the age of forty: “At thirty five Woolf feels the shadow of age and gives a shudder. She

vacillates in this first 1918 Hogarth diary between treating herself (mockingly) as “elderly” or as

on the threshold of middle age” (217). Lounsberry also claims that Woolf based some traits of

Peter Walsh on “Harry Stephen …alluded several times to his great age. He is 58” (217). Peter

Walsh also has a vision of Clarissa dying and he is anxious about death: “She is not dead! I am

not old, he cried, and marched up Whitehall” (Woolf 69). Clarissa is also in her fifties and

perhaps she was inspired in part by these thoughts on aging. Woolf might have included the

meditations on middle age in Mrs Dalloway, perhaps because she seemed “preternaturally

obsessed with age” (Lounsberry 216). Another evidence for this can be found in Woolf’s

biography by Hermione Lee, who notes that in 1921 Woolf had been very ill and she spent the

entire summer with her “old symptoms” (“Party-Going”). This illness even brought her to think

about writing a will, a testament to how seriously ill she was feeling. Given that she began to

draft Mrs Dalloway after this “brush with mortality” it is safe to assume that the novel would be

affected by such thoughts (Lee “Party-Going”).

Clarissa appears to think about her life and aging a great deal as well. She seems to have

accepted the prevailing outlook which is that aging is an unhappy process, through which women

lose their beauty and social appeal. Despite the fact that it is never straightforwardly expressed in

the novel, it is most likely that at 52 years old, Clarissa has gone through menopause. She is now

truly middle-aged, and Clarissa feels her age, because of her unspecified heart condition she
26
takes rest at midday. As she goes up to her room, she feels melancholic: “There was an

emptiness about the heart of life; an attic room. Women must put off their rich apparel. At

midday they must disrobe … Narrower and narrower her bed would be” (Woolf 55). The idea of

midday evokes the woman’s middle age and the lonely attic room is where Clarissa loses her

“rich apparel” is possibly showing how she must adjust to the fact that she is no longer

appreciated as much, the influence her beauty had is shrinking. Society deems her as less

attractive now, in contrast to her daughter Elizabeth for example who at the age of eighteen is

blossoming. Elizabeth is receiving an influx of attention because she is young and beautiful. Her

mother, however, must deal with “the attic room” which is solitary and enclosed from the world,

the narrow bed becomes even narrower, claustrophobic and possibly conjuring the image of a

coffin. Here she is “feeling herself suddenly shrivelled, aged, breastless” further elaborating on

the impact of middle age can have on a woman who prides herself on having a rich social life.

Besides other images such as “the candle was half burnt down” Clarissa also “ feared time itself,

and read on Lady Bruton's face, as if it had been a dial cut in impassive stone, the dwindling of

life” (Woolf 55).

Although Woolf herself was in her forties and thus she probably felt some of the same

emotions as Clarissa, middle age also meant for her time for reinvention and creativity, in her

own words “I have found out how to begin (at 40) to say something in my own voice” (Bradbury

186). After all, she also chose to give Clarissa another chance and at the very end of the novel,

Clarissa lives, and she is able to “assemble” and to “go back” (Woolf 170). After coming back to

the party from her solitude, she still has a presence about her of “extraordinary excitement”

which makes Peter Walsh proclaim “It is Clarissa, he said. For there she was” (Woolf 176).

27
Perhaps Woolf sought to suggest that despite all anxieties, there remains life to be lived even

beyond middle age.

28
5 Marriage

In their youth, Clarissa and her friends at Bourton saw marriage as a catastrophe. Peter Walsh

used to call Clarissa a “perfect hostess” in order to mock her (Woolf 78). Clarissa’s character is

often scrutinized for being a snob, who enjoys throwing frivolous parties, yet this is also a part of

her role as a wife and she enjoys the creative aspect and bringing people together. She is said to

have sometimes “frittered her time away” (Woolf 90). It may be tempting to view Clarissa as

purely superficial and snobbish. She admits her love of clothing, putting on appearances and

hosting the cream of society in her home. Her love of parties, in particular, is a point of

contention, criticized by Peter Walsh. He thinks “that she enjoyed imposing herself; liked to have

famous people about her; great names; was simply a snob in short” (Woolf 93). Margaret

Blanchard goes as far as to describe Clarissa as a woman of extreme passivity, limited by her

middle-class socialization in her article Socialization in Mrs Dalloway (304). Blanchard turns her

characterization of Clarissa over and claims that Woolf presented things as they are and

therefore, she achieved her plan to show how middle-class women are confined in an oppressive

system (305).

Nevertheless, Clarissa may not just be a part of Woolf’s plan to “criticise the social

system” (D2 248). Clarissa does what she can within her means and parties are said to be “her

gift” (Woolf 123). James Sloan Allen argues that Clarissa does more than entertain people, he

claims that her role is one that “someone must play” and that through her social graces Clarissa

creates “an honest morality” (591). This is the role Clarissa plays in her marriage yet when she is

alone her thoughts turn to a less positive aspect of her marriage. The previously analyzed passage

about Clarissa’s attic room can also be explored in relation to Woolf’s marriage.

29
 Though she appreciates many aspects of their marriage, Clarissa seems to struggle with

aspects of her relationship with Richard and in the attic room, she ponders what she is missing.

She sleeps alone in her room and though it initially was Richards’s suggestion, a decision to

protect her sleep and health Clarissa even admits she prefers it that way. She is “like a nun

withdrawing” into her room where she reads in solitude because she cannot sleep well (Woolf

55). She is aware of her inability to “dispel a virginity preserved through childbirth which clung

to her like a sheet” (Woolf 55). Clarissa knows something missing in her relationship with her

husband and she recalls how she “through some contraction of this cold spirit, she had failed

him” (Woolf 55).

Although they were mostly happy together, this seeming lack of passion is something that

troubled Woolf’s marriage with Leonard Woolf as well. When she agreed to marry him, he gave

her a kiss and despite just agreeing to marry, Virginia told Leonard about this first kiss, that she

felt “no more than a rock” (Gordon “Explorer”). Similarly, to Clarissa, Woolf felt as though she

disappointed her husband and what is more, he apparently expressed his frustration in his novel

The Wise Virgins. Lyndall Gordon details how this book contributed to the branding of Virginia

Woolf as frigid:

On 4 September, he was writing the first chapter of a new novel that was to explore the
issue of unresponsiveness in an artistic woman, Camilla, whom the Jewish hero, Harry,
longs for and adores in vain. It is widely acknowledged that what emerged as The Wise
Virgins is a roman-à-clef, and that Camilla is a portrait of the author’s wife. How much
she knew or guessed of this work in progress is impossible to say, but Leonard’s
disappointment was plain. (“Explorer”)

Although her novel The Voyage Out, published shortly after, can be considered a response to The

Wise Virgins, it appears the memories of marital troubles found its use in the character of

Clarissa as well. Gordon also emphasizes that the situation was more complicated than it might
30
seem. Vanessa Bell’s claims, for example, that her sister is “incurably frigid” might have been

revenge for Virginia’s flirtation with Vanessa’s husband (“Explorer”).

As was mentioned in the previous section about Sally Seton, there is a tendency by critics

to link her supposed repressed sexuality to abuse by her half-brother or to some form of guilt or

trauma. However, as Caramagno asserts “biographers value continuity in the inconvenient

anarchy of an artist's life” (10). It remains to be said that comparably to discussions of Woolf’s

suicide, it is not always possible to pinpoint the causes for certain behavior or to link it with the

artist’s work.

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6 Septimus

While considering Clarissa Dalloway as the main character, around whom other characters

converge, we cannot overlook the character of Septimus Warren Smith, a veteran of the Great

War. He is sometimes labeled as Clarissa’s double and although they never meet, their characters

are connected throughout the novel.

Septimus is about thirty years old, somewhat shabby and pale. Even his appearance

seems to reflect his frail mental state, his brown eyes have “that look of apprehension in them

which makes complete strangers apprehensive too” (Woolf 43). He is unable to resume a normal

way of living after witnessing the Great War and the death of his close friend Evans. Septimus

knows Evans is dead, nevertheless, he keeps hallucinating him on different occasions throughout

the novel and he talks to him: “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!” (Woolf 50).

He is treated by two doctors; however, their treatment is wholly ineffective and insensitive to his

condition. In critiquing the treatment of mental illness, Woolf very likely drew from her own

experience of mental breakdowns and subsequent rest cures, prescribed to her.

6.1 Mental Illness

Jean Thomson, the author of the article Virginia Woolf and the Case of Septimus Smith, claims as

do many other scholars, that Woolf’s experiences of depression give authenticity to the portrayal

of Septimus’s states of mind. She touches on the close dependency of the carer and the ill person,

who tends to be so closely attached that it might be difficult for the carer to see their care is not

helpful. The possible parallel between the relationship of Rezia and Septimus and Leonard

32
Woolf and Virginia Woolf as the spouse and the carer will be touched on later in this chapter.

The following section will deal with the nature of mental health described in the novel. It will

also deal with Woolf’s criticism of psychological treatment which was colored by Woolf’s own

experiences.

6.1.1 Loss

The root of Septimus’s madness is the inability to feel after the death of “his officer” Evans.

Their relationship is described very briefly, yet it is possible to interpret their relationship in

different ways. It seems possible that they were lovers, yet it is also possible that they were close

friends who had relied on each other for support in the trenches. In the few lines which describe

their time together in Italy we can find out that they had a very close bond, brought about by

their situation: “They had to be together, share with each other, fight with each other, quarrel

with each other” (Woolf 96). At the same time, Woolf likens their bond to “two dogs playing on

a hearth-rug” and Rezia notes that Evans seemed to not be interested in the company of women.

This hints at the possibility of a romantic relationship. Either way, Septimus and Evans were

definitely close, it seems to be his comrade's death specifically which continues to haunt

Septimus for so many years after it happened. It may be affecting him so deeply because he

suppressed it at the moment, just as the effect of shellshock, his reaction to a traumatic event was

delayed. Keeping a façade of bravery was considered desirable and Septimus, clearly

overwhelmed, reacts in a seemingly unusual manner: “when Evans was killed, just before the

Armistice, in Italy, Septimus, far from showing any emotion or recognising that here was the end

of a friendship, congratulated himself upon feeling very little and very reasonably”(Woolf 96).

33
 This suppression of grief is analogous to the reaction of the Stephen children to the death

of their mother, Julia Stephen. Similarly to Septimus, Woolf felt she could not forgive herself for

her own shutting of emotions (Gordon 46). Her loss led her to suppress her emotions which

generated a nervous breakdown. She felt a sense of detachment instead of deep grief. This

haunted her for years to come. In 1934, for example, she notes in her diary a memory when she

was standing at her mother’s deathbed: “Remember turning aside at mother's bed, when she had

died, … to laugh, secretly, at the nurse crying. She's pretending, I said, aged 13, and was afraid I

was not feeling enough. So now.” (Woolf AWD). Her fear of expressing or not feeling enough

emotion is equal to Septimus’s reaction to Evan’s death. She might have used her experience of a

shocking loss and a subsequent breakdown to inform her writing of Septimus. Woolf described

her state between the deaths of her mother and her older sister Stella as two years in which she

was in a constant state of physical distress, feeling her emotions more as being terrified of people

and isolating herself in her room, reading. Her distress manifested in physical symptoms such as

racing pulse, rather than a psychological breakdown (Lee “Madness”). Here it is possible to see a

biographical link between Woolf’s life and Mrs Dalloway.

6.1.2 Treatment

Concerning the nature of mental illness and its treatment, the idea that the treatment available is

ineffective is introduced early. Rezia and Septimus are in a park and as a loving wife, she is

trying to distract him because this is what she was advised to do by Dr. Holmes. Dr. Holmes is a

General Practitioner, who recommends that Septimus should simply “notice real things, go to a

music hall, play cricket” (Woolf 51) as there was “nothing whatever seriously the matter with

him” (Woolf 58). Rezia knows that this is wrong; she is desperate however, even wishing her

34
husband was dead, rather than behaving so bizarrely, with no improvement in sight. She tries to

draw his attention to various things, such as an airplane, writing an advertising message in the

sky. Sadly, all that he can see is that the words are bestowing him with “unimaginable beauty”

and he is moved to tears (Woolf 48). His mental state, in fact, seems to change rapidly. He

fluctuates between thinking everything is bestowed with meaning and beauty in one moment; to

the next moment when he feels afraid or depressed, thinking that either there is no meaning or

that he is disconnected from the world and cannot feel. Thomson claims that this understanding

of “delusional excitement alternating with depression” comes from Woolf’s own struggles (58).

She supports this argument by a detail found in a letter:

After Mrs. Dalloway had been published, Virginia Woolf wrote a letter to the painter,
Gwen Raverat, who had read the proofs and “understood what (she) was after.” Referring
to the scenes about Septimus, she says: “It was a subject that I had kept cooling in my
mind until I felt I could touch it without bursting into flame all over. You can’t think
what a raging furnace it is still to me—madness and doctors and being forced.” (63)

This may be why the characterization of doctors in the novel carries such biting satire and dislike

of their profession. It is understandable that Dr. Holmes or Sir William Bradshaw would like to

rid Septimus of his hallucinations and bring him back to a more peaceful state. The particular

methods they chose, however, are precisely the same ones that made Woolf feel like “bursting

into flame” (Thomson 63).

Woolf herself was majorly affected by illness five times in her life and in possibly all of

the instances she even attempted suicide. Very little concrete evidence survives from these

instances. The descriptions by her family and friends are sparse and there are very few

documents from doctors (Lee “Madness”). She did not record the worst in her diary writing at

the time of her illness as she was most likely too unwell to do so.

35
 Hermione Lee aptly emphasizes in Virginia Woolf, chapter “Madness”, the importance of

not accepting the varying narratives about Woolf’s mental health as pure biographical fact. She

stresses that these records have a far too varied number of interpretations and as such, should not

be used to paint a conclusive picture of her experience. This is important to remember when

looking at Woolf’s own diaries and letter or searching for possible parallels between her life and

writing. Relevant to the aim of this thesis, it is crucial to note that putting an equal sign between

her description of a breakdown and the hallucination of Septimus Smith would reduce Woolf’s

creative work and the importance of her own voice.

It may be tempting to compare the manic and depressive states of Septimus to records of

Woolf’s illness which come from Leonard Woolf. Lee notes that “he documents her illness with

the same scrupulous integrity, exhaustiveness and attempt at objectivity that he would apply to

the minutes of the Labour Party’s Advisory Committee on International Relations” (“Madness”).

He gives what appears to be such a nearly scientific description of two phases of her

breakdowns, the first one being a state of excitement, delusions and a continuous

incomprehensible stream of words. The other being its opposite, downcast, quiet, haunted by

guilt and in some instances culminating in a suicide attempt. Thomas C. Caramagno argues in his

essay Manic-Depressive Psychosis and Critical Approaches to Virginia Woolf's Life and Work

that fusing of these two sides of perception allowed Woolf to express the sane and normal in

Septimus and Clarissa (16). Caramagno also claims that writing fiction was a process of

reconciling with depression and an opportunity to explore her illness for Woolf. Yet similarly to

Lee, he also notes that making definitive interpretations from Woolf’s writing remains

problematic (17). Whether it was Woolf’s own depression which informed her description or not,

36
her portrayal of Septimus’s sense of guilt and his harrowing suicidal state are deeply evocative

and disturbing:

He had not cared when Evans was killed; that was the worst; but all the other crimes
raised their heads and shook their fingers and jeered and sneered over the rail of the bed
at the prostrate body which lay realising its degradation; how he had married his wife
without loving her; had lied to her; seduced her;… 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. (100)

Another aspect of Septimus’s condition is his inability to communicate his thoughts to others

similar to Leonard Woolf’s record of Virginia Woolf talking constantly yet incoherently (Lee

“Madness”). This strange language is a symptom of Septimus’s post-war trauma and according

to Karen DeMeester, his language becomes a mixture of poetic and mad statements. In her article

Trauma and Recovery in Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway, she explains that Septimus is: “an

extreme example of the struggle all trauma survivors experience in trying to create a means of

describing their traumatic experiences so that others will fully comprehend them” (655).

Septimus himself sees only one way of healing from his trauma and that is communication. This

is why he is constantly writing or attempting to share his truths such as “Change the world. No

one kills from hatred. Make it known (he wrote it down)” (Woolf 50). He seems too damaged by

the delayed effects of the war, however, as nothing seems to get through to others in a

meaningful way. Still, Septimus repeats that “Communication is health; communication is

happiness” (Woolf 101). This is his own idea of recovery, not the one his doctors are trying to

impose on him. While Woolf does not present any more concrete ideas on what a more

appropriate treatment might be, it is clear that she is showing how the unknowing doctors rob

Septimus of his own initiative. They suggest he should be either resting or that by distracting

himself he can become who he once was. Such a rest cure is something Woolf was definitely

37
familiar with and by showing how it drove Septimus Smith to suicide, she is very likely

criticizing the oppressive nature of this system.

While the connection is there, Lee again brings up another interesting point which is that

often, the records available about Woolf now come from people with their own narratives. It is

impossible to tell how a person really feels when they are going through a mental breakdown, no

matter how close one is whether it is her husband, her sister Vanessa or her nephew and

biographer Quentin Bell. One aspect all of their descriptions often fail to recognize is how the

treatment and breakdowns are intertwined. It is very likely, as Lee notes that the effects of the

treatment often merged with the condition itself. Furthermore, the effect of psychiatric drugs is

not to be overlooked. Woolf was apparently sensitive to medication and the medication used

during her lifetime had quite a strong effect on a person’s state, to begin with. She was

prescribed drugs by all her doctors, most of the time sedatives. However, some could produce

different results under different doses or circumstances, possibly leading to a state similar to

mania. This could make Woolf look and feel even more afflicted that she would have been

without them (Lee “Madness”).

In conclusion, Woolf had extensive experience with psychiatric treatments, which she

criticized in Mrs Dalloway in the characters of Dr Holmes and Sir Bradshaw and she also dealt

with a spouse who in their best effort to help, pressed the doctor’s methods on them as well,

analogously to the relationship between Septimus and Rezia.

38
6.2 Shakespeare

Yet another connection between Clarissa and Septimus is their shared love of Shakespeare. The

literary allusion to Shakespeare’s play Cymbeline becomes a motif in the novel, repeating several

times. It is one of the connections between them which makes the reader see how Clarissa and

Septimus are in many ways similar. Their minds are like the two sides of one personality,

perhaps a part of Woolf’s idea of showing “sanity & insanity” (D2 248). It is the phrase “Fear

no more the heat o’ the sun Nor the furious winter’s rages” (Woolf 39). Clarissa sees it looking

into a shop window and Septimus studied Shakespeare before the war.

As was mentioned in the chapter about mental health, Woolf had many experiences with

states such as depression and mania and she possibly wanted to show how they are separated

only by a thin line, just like Clarissa and Septimus are. They both feel the calming effect of art

on their mind, the lines come to their minds when they experience a calm moment. Clarissa

composes herself after feeling rejected because Lady Bruton has not invited her to lunch and

Septimus thinks “fear no more” after his visit to the psychiatrist (Woolf 39). Barbara Lounsberry

claims that the roots of this allusion can be traced to Woolf’s journals all the way to when

Virginia was fifteen years old, reading Thomas Carlyle in 1897. She read Carlyle’s

Reminescences for the second time and on January 29, her father takes her to the writer’s home

in Chelsea. The four stanzas beginning “Fear no more the heat o’ the sun” are displayed copied

in his handwriting there and it is possible that they were there in 1897 as well (Lounsberry 43).

However, if Woolf had not seen these lines in 1897, it may be more likely that she saw them in

1907. At this time, she was reading the diary of another writer, William Allingham. He recounts

meeting, walking with him to Kensington Gardens where he quotes the lines from Cymbeline

39
and describes them as some of the loveliest ever written, highlighting the value of its rhymes

(Lounsberry 106).

Jane Goldman, however, notes a different account of Shakespeare inspiring Woolf in

writing the novel. Goldman examines a diary entry in her work From Mrs Dalloway to The

Waves. In it Woolf invokes Shakespeare and she gives an account of “a beautiful clear

November day” and she describes how “the squares with their regular houses, & their leafless

trees, & people very clearly outlined filled me with joy” (Goldman 57). Woolf sounds like

Clarissa when she is walking through London and relishing in the lively atmosphere:

It was so lovely in the Waterloo Road that it struck me that we were writing Shakespeare;
by which I mean that when live people, seeming happy, produce an effect of beauty, &
you don’t have it offered as a work of art, but it seems a natural gift of theirs, then – what
was I meaning? – somehow it affected me as I am affected by reading Shakespeare. No:
its life; going on in these very beautiful surroundings. (D2 273 qtd. in Goldman)

Perhaps Clarissa saw the world in a similar manner, she saw what she loved: “In people's eyes…

what she loved; life; London; this moment of June” (Woolf 36).

No matter the first time she saw them, Woolf chose these lines from Shakespeare to

connect Clarissa and her double. It appears that this is how she identifies with him when she

learns about his suicide. Even though she never even met Septimus “she felt somehow very like

him - the young man who had killed himself" (Woolf 169). Although Septimus is dead, Clarissa

is able to go on living and it is in her moment of reflection, the moment she decides to go back

and experience life when: “the words came to her, Fear no more the heat of the sun. She must go

back to them” (Woolf 170). It appears that Woolf herself was very fond of Shakespeare and she

used the lines to show how “sanity & insanity” can be companions and that art connects both

(D2 248).

40
7 Religion

This chapter explores Virginia Woolf’s attitude towards religion and how it is reflected in Mrs

Dalloway. It focuses on the views of Clarissa Dalloway and how these were similar to the ideas

Woolf expressed about Christianity during her life. It will also examine the character of the

openly religious Miss Kilman, whose portrayal allows for both satirical and sympathetic

interpretation. Passages from Mrs Dalloway will be analyzed to show that even though Clarissa

herself expresses her disdain for religion, she values the “privacy of the soul” which suggests she

may be spiritual (Woolf 126). The aim of this chapter is to examine whether Woolf’s original

views on religion and spirituality found their way into the novel, given the similarities between

her and Clarissa Dalloway.

The author of the article Religious belief in a secular age: Literary modernism and Virginia

Woolf’s Mrs.Dalloway Emily Griesinger asserts that even though Woolf herself was openly

critical towards all forms of organized religion, Mrs Dalloway remains open at least on some

level to a Christian interpretation. Her article will be examined as well, to help explore the

parallels between Clarissa’s and Woolf’s life and to evaluate the argument that an allusion to

religion is present in Mrs Dalloway in the form of Septimus Smith being a Christ-like figure, a

young man who sacrifices himself so that Clarissa may live. As Griesinger writes, Woolf herself

was open about her attitude towards Christianity. Her position was one of dislike, even hostility.

In a letter to her sister Vanessa, when she learned about her contemporary modernist writer T.S.

Eliot’s conversion to Anglo-Catholicism she says that he:” may be called dead to us all from this

day forward.” She goes on to express her disbelief by claiming that: “there’s something obscene

in a living person sitting by the fire and believing in God.” His conversion seems to rob T.S.

41
Eliot of all respect in Woolf’s eyes: “A corpse would seem to me more credible than he is.”

(Griesinger 438).

Despite such a scathing critique, it appears that Woolf’s view on religion is not as easy to

define as it might seem. Woolf was a very gifted and intelligent individual and it is of no surprise

then that her independent stance on religion can be traced as far as when she was only fifteen

years old. Although it is now lost, she wrote an essay at that age, where she argued “that man has

need of a God; but the God was described in process of change” (Lousenberry 13). This

argument may not be a surprising one, considering the household Woolf grew up in. Her family

had a legacy of religious writing and thus she was exposed to many different points of view

growing up. One of the many books she read was the Essays in Ecclesiastical Biography, for

example, written by her grandfather Sir James Stephen (Lousenberry 13).

7.1 Family Background

Her grandparents were high ranking members of the Evangelical Clampham Sect; however, her

parents have both shed their parent’s religious beliefs and they certainly influenced their own

children to do so as well. Both Leslie Stephen and Julia Stephen had likely brought up Virginia

to challenge the Evangelical faith (Griesinger 439).

Leslie Stephen had gone through an interesting evolution of belief during his life. Once an

ordained priest, his views changed gradually, influenced by his reading of Mill, Comte, and

Kant. Eventually, he rejected the historical evidence of Christianity popular at the time. He

became skeptical of the church and service leading to his resignation from his clerical duties in

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1875, at the age of 43. What followed was a very influential and varied range of interests and

works. Even though he is famous for his work in literary criticism and being the first editor of

Dictionary of National Biography, religious and philosophical themes remained a stimulating

topic for him. His collection of essays Essays on Free Thinking and Plain Speaking made him a

chief figure in the agnostic school, his main argument was that religion cannot satisfy one’s true

spiritual needs (“Leslie Stephen”).

Virginia’s mother Julia Stephen was also an agnostic. Though not much is known about her,

at least not as much as about Leslie Stephen and she died when Virginia was only thirteen, she

had left a deep impression on her. No doubt she remembered her for her selflessness and dutiful

nature as much as for her beauty. As a nurse, Julia Stephen voiced her belief that agnostic

women nurses and teachers are very useful in charity work. She stressed the virtues of sympathy

and self-control, arguing that: “the very negativeness of her position may possibly help her to

sympathise with the various and widely divergent characters with whom she has to deal” (Lee

“Maternal”). This appears to be similar to Clarissa’s belief that even there is no God she still

ought to be empathetic and that she ought to still “behave like a lady” (Woolf 90).

7.2 Clarissa’s Religion

Concerning parallels between Clarissa’s character and Woolf, they were both affected by the

death of a sibling. Woolf was deeply hurt by the death of her older sister Stella. The years

between her death in 1897 and the death of her father Leslie in 1904 became the “7 unhappy

years” (Lee “Anon”). Similarly, Clarissa witnesses her sister’s death and while this incident is

only briefly mentioned, it is described as having a huge impact on her worldview, leading her to

43
believe there is no God. Peter Walsh remembers Clarissa’s sister’s death as the root of her

skepticism:

To see your own sister killed by a falling tree (all Justin Parry’s fault—all his
carelessness) before your very eyes, a girl too on the verge of life, the most gifted of
them, Clarissa always said, was enough to turn one bitter. Later she wasn’t so positive
perhaps; she thought there were no Gods; no one was to blame; and so she evolved this
atheist’s religion of doing good for the sake of goodness. (Woolf 90)

Clarissa’s notion of “atheist’s religion of doing good for the sake of goodness” is one of Woolf’s

parents and Woolf herself appeared to adhere to as well (Woolf 90).

7.2.1 Atheist’s Religion

This is where another possible connection between Clarissa and Woolf arises. Their philosophies

on life appear to be very similar, they both enjoyed life and happiness yet there are two more

concepts they appear to share.

Her autobiographical essay A Sketch of the Past develops one of these ideas – that there is

no God, yet everything and everyone is connected and “the whole world is a work of art” (72

qtd. in Griesinger). Clarissa is not very educated, however despite getting through life on “a few

twigs of knowledge” she is open to her surroundings, recognizing the connections and “to her it

was absolutely absorbing; all this; the cabs passing” (Woolf 39). Clarissa seems to share the

point of view which Woolf described, one where there is no mythical creator yet the whole world

is precious like “a work of art”. Even running errands in London allowed Clarissa to see “what

she loved was this, here, now” (Woolf 39).

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7.2.2 Privacy of the Soul

The second concept Woolf endowed Clarissa with is the appreciation for “the privacy of the

soul”. “Love and religion” are the two threats Clarissa perceives to her soul. In the relevant

passage, she is repulsed by “the odious Kilman” who represents to her the imposing, twisted side

of religion. As she watches the “old woman” in the window opposite, she calms down,

appreciating the woman’s solitude (Woolf 126). In Clarissa’s mind, there is no need for “creeds

and prayers”. Clarissa dislikes the fact that Miss Kilman feels morally superior to her, especially

because no one has the answers to “the supreme mystery”, not Christians nor people like Peter

Walsh. He represents the intrusive side of love to Clarissa. She considers him to be charming and

intelligent, yet when he is in love, he is selfish and absorbed by “degrading passion”. Clarissa is

skeptical about their passionate outburst of “love and religion”. In her mind, the questions they

claim to have answers to are unanswerable because” here was one room; there another” possibly

suggesting that no one can really know another human being or reach some final answers about

life (Woolf 127).

Emily Griesinger suggests a possible interpretation of this side of Clarissa’s personality.

In her reading, Clarissa is upset by Miss Kilman for the same reason Septimus is angry. They are

both bothered by “meddlers like Dr. Holmes and Dr. Bradshaw” (454). The doctors and Kilman

thus represent “Woolf’s aversion to religious and psychiatric meddling” (453). As evidence that

both Clarissa and Woolf treasure the “privacy of the soul” Griesinger quotes an essay written

around the time she wrote Mrs Dalloway. In this essay, On Being Ill, Woolf illustrates the want

for privacy during illness. Even sympathy has its limits, according to her: “There is a virgin

forest in each; a snowfield where even the print of birds’ feet is unknown. Here we go alone, and

like it better so” It appears then, that Clarissa watching the old neighbor alone in her room
45
assumes that she likes “it better so” to be solitary. However, this need for solitude may be seen as

contradictory to Clarissa’s love of parties which she hopes will bring people together (454).

7.2.3 Miss Kilman

In the previous section, it was stated that none of the characters in Mrs Dalloway seem to believe

in God, save for the German tutor Miss Kilman, who is tinted with her disagreeableness and

bitterness. However, this is chiefly Clarissa’s description of her and there are scholars who

consider a more sympathetic reading. Such is a reading by Vereen M. Bell who argues in his

essay Misreading Mrs. Dalloway that none of the characters can be pinned down in a definitive

interpretation, due to the nature of the text itself. He argues that thanks to the stream-of-

consciousness technique, the thoughts of characters provide far too great a number of

contradictory evidence for a conclusive reading. There is no narrator or a point of view that

would take superiority over the others and thus a conclusive reading of the novel and of

Clarissa’s or Kilman’s character remain elusive (94). Miss Kilman sees Clarissa with the most

critical eye, she dislikes her entire social class and she considers her spoiled and shallow. She is

in many ways her opposite, she is unattractive, unpopular in society and religious. As Bell notes,

however: “Ironically, given everything else she has going against her, Doris Kilman is the one

character Woolf has situated in the novel who embodies and enunciates feminist principles”

(100). Miss Kilman worked hard to educate herself and it was through no fault of her own that

she was German and thus looked down upon after the war. She remains quite courageous,

despite knowing it would not make her any more popular she “would not pretend that the

Germans were all villains” (Woolf 124). Although she also indulges in it and seems to make a

martyr out of herself, Kilman does have reasons to feel pain. She tells Elizabeth that “When

46
people are happy they have a reserve, upon which to draw, whereas she was like a wheel without

a tyre (she was fond of such metaphors), jolted by every pebble” (Woolf 129). It is possible to

say then, that Miss Kilman represents to Clarissa a threat, an invasion of privacy while at the

same time she is somewhat redeemable, and she is also equipped with certain feminist traits. The

traces of positive interpretation of Kilman may also come from a possible real-life source of

inspiration from Woolf’s aunt Caroline Emelia Stephen.

A Quaker and an independent woman thinker, she was mocked by Woolf’s father Leslie

Stephen. Still, after his death and Woolf’s subsequent breakdown she took her niece in. When

Caroline Stephen also passed away, five years later, her will included Virginia and she let her

£2500. While it was not much, it was this legacy that allowed Woolf to become a writer. This

fact is of no small importance in Woolf’s life and it is possible that she could not make a

character similar to her aunt entirely unsympathetic. According to Lyndall Gordon, it was

precisely the inheritance from her aunt which was the basis for Woolf’s famous claim that a

woman needs her own room and an income to pursue writing (“Explorer”).

As it was stated in the introduction to this chapter, similarities between Clarissa’s opinion

and Woolf’s were examined, followed by an analysis of the character of Miss Kilman as a

representative of a religious attitude. The next section deals with the last point of the

introduction, which is the importance of Septimus to Clarissa from a religious perspective.

7.2.4 Septimus’s Sacrifice

The connection between Clarissa and Septimus brings further complexity even to the treatment

of religion in the novel. Griesinger argues in her essay that Septimus’s suicide alludes to the

crucifixion of Christ (450). Septimus’s suicide leads Clarissa to at the very least consider the

47
suffering war has caused to those outside of her circle, when she hears about it during her party it

strikes her as “her disaster – her disgrace” (Woolf 169). In regard to the Christ-figure quality of

Septimus, it is important to note that there is an innumerable set of instances where an attempt to

attach this interpretation onto literature has gone “awry” (Griesinger 451). This interpretation is

probably not a primary one in the case of Mrs Dalloway yet it can be tempting to see it that way

when considering Clarissa’s thoughts “She felt somehow very like him - the young man who had

killed himself. She felt glad that he had done it; thrown it away while they went on living”

(Woolf 169). It is as if his sacrifice allowed everyone to keep living, however, this is her point

of view. From a different point of view, his death was entirely needless and nobody saved

Septimus and it is unclear whether his throwing away of “his treasure” saved anyone, even

though it seems that it did help Clarissa remember the value of her own life.

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8 The Great War

Although Mrs Dalloway takes place on an ordinary day in June 1923, five whole years after the

Great War, it shows how its effect carried on to after-the-fact. Those who have lived through it,

like Virginia Woolf, knew that this effect rippled on well after the Armistice. Many citizens of

Great Britain may have felt similarly to Clarissa Dalloway, relieved but feeling it was “very

dangerous to live even one day” (Woolf 39). Some, principally the upper classes, have resorted

to “stoical bearing” (Woolf 39). Although Clarissa herself has lived quite comfortably, not being

directly involved in the conflict herself, she does seem to possess a sense of empathy for others,

she knows that: “This late age of the world's experience had bred in them all, all men and

women, a well of tears” (Woolf 39). Woolf in like manner to Clarissa also had empathy for

people outside of her social circle and her views on the war influenced her choices when writing

Mrs Dalloway. The topics considered in this chapter are Woolf’s deep knowledge of the political

aspect of the war, her own personal experience, her commemoration of the fallen and how her

social milieu might have influenced her composition of the novel.

Woolf drew on a number of her own experiences of the War when writing, some of

which are direct personal ones and some of which were a result of her being well-informed. This

chapter will focus on Woolf’s diary entries and letters from the wartime era, her unique position

in British culture where she had access to information from her Bloomsbury friends and

especially from her husband Leonard Woolf who was working for the government. Given how

well-aware she was of the realities of the conflict, she made some interesting choices such as not

describing the war directly. In her astute depiction of the post-war atmosphere she achieved the

intention she set in her diary. When the novel was in development and still called The Hours

Woolf decided “to criticise the social system, & to show it at work, at its most intense” (Woolf

49
D2 248). The war caused major changes in the way of life, yet the ruling classes to which

Clarissa Dalloway belonged to assumed that things would go on as before. Woolf critiques the

tendency to see all casualties as heroic, Septimus becomes a reminder of the warfare and in an

effort to pretend that nothing has changed; he is treated as a coward (Thomson 66).

8.1 Describing the War

As Jane Lilienfeld argues in "Success in Circuit Lies": Editing the War in "Mrs. Dalloway" even

though Woolf knew a lot about World War I, she decided not to describe it explicitly in her

novel. Lilienfeld claims that this had two reasons, the first one is that Woolf didn’t want to insert

herself directly into the text and the second one is that she disliked political propaganda in art.

While Lilienfeld argues that Woolf did not want to insert herself directly and too obviously into

the novel, it still holds true that her “personal feelings are translated into history” (Lee “War”).

One of the questions which Lilienfeld’s article poses is whether it is possible to see the conscious

choices in representing the warfare Woolf made in the early drafts of Mrs Dalloway (113). While

the different versions offer different clues about Woolf’s knowledge of the war, the prevailing

impression is one of aftershock. After all, Woolf was not exempt from the civilian experience of

the conflict and due to bombing and food shortages it can be said that there was hardly anyone

who felt safe in Britain (Lilienfeld 114). Even though Woolf left out specific pointers to

historical events of the war and explicit description of warfare, other scholars such as Hermione

Lee describe Mrs Dalloway as “her most dramatic mixing of autobiography and history”

(“War”).

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8.1.1 Attitude Towards the War

While most civilians relied on the official media or the letters of their sons from the front to form

their opinions, Woolf had access to information that would not get through to the masses. The

media was heavily propagandistic and even the letters from soldiers were censored (Lee “War”).

The Woolfs had access to insider information, chiefly due to Leonard’s work in the government.

Still, Virginia Woolf also had connections of her own as a result of her own work. For example,

she reviewed war poems by Siegfried Sassoon and while writing Mrs Dalloway in 1924, she met

him several times. It is very likely that they discussed the repercussions of the war. Woolf chose

to present the war differently than others and this indirection allowed her to stay away from

“sentimentality” and “political harangues” (Lilienfeld 119). Yet with images such as “figure of

the mother whose sons have been killed in the battles of the world” which appears in Peter

Walsh’s dream, it is clear that Woolf did intend to write a novel capturing the feeling of a

gruesome change (Woolf 75). Most of Woolf’s friends and acquaintances did not fight and it is

not surprising that her own opinion was heavily anti-war. She rejected it from a pacifist

standpoint and also from an artistic standpoint. She thought of the Sassoon’s poetry she reviewed

as too realistic and raw. Perhaps in her opinion, such experiences had to be heavily transformed

first. Jonathan Atkin supports this view in his book A war of individuals: Bloomsbury Attitudes

to the Great War:

…she flinched at the sound of the guns in France in March 1918, clearly audible at her
Sussex home, Asheham House, as the Germans pushed the Allies back towards Amiens.
She wrote that the events across the Channel were ‘towering over us too closely and too
tremendously’ to be fictionalised without a ‘powerful jolt in the perspective’ occurring.
(87)

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The war was an altogether difficult time for Woolf, in the spring of 1915 she suffered a mental

breakdown. Notwithstanding this, she recovered, and she took some political action as well. She

chaired meetings of the Richmond branch of the Women’s Co-operative Guild at her home in

Hogarth. This activity was spurred by her disgust with the war which she described to her friend

in a letter as “this preposterous masculine fiction” due to which her opinions were becoming

“steadily more feminist” (Atkin 39). Surprisingly, perhaps the only feminist character of Mrs

Dalloway, the German Miss Kilman is a somewhat bitter and unpleasant character. Although

affected by the war as a German, Miss Kilman may also be connected to Woolf’s sense of

disillusionment with the suffrage movement. Woolf often took an outsider position on political

issues, preferring to create her own concepts instead of joining an existing movement moreover

she often viewed these with a detached skepticism. The suffrage movement became less

important in the public eye during the war and when the Suffrage Bill was passed in 1918 Woolf

commented on this with her typical cautious approach: “I don’t feel much more important –

perhaps slightly less so” (Lee “War”).

Duncan Grant, a member of the Bloomsbury group, fittingly summed up the group’s

attitude, describing the war as: “an absolutely mad thing for a civilized people to do” (Lee

“War”) One of Woolf’s more practical actions was appealing on his behalf regarding alternative

service. She wrote: “The war is a nightmare isn’t it – two cousins of mine were killed this last

week, and I suppose in other families it’s much worse” (Atkin 40). Woolf was acutely aware of

the deaths caused by the “preposterous masculine fiction” and she put the words into Septimus’s

thoughts about humanity. Septimus has an exaggerated accusation against humanity, to him

humans have “neither kindness, nor faith, nor charity beyond what serves to increase the pleasure

of the moment” (Woolf 99). There is no trace of a patriotic celebration of warfare in his view,

52
reflecting the view of Woolf and the Bloomsbury group who as artists had to become “in a sense

unpatriotic, as most artists must do” (Lee “War”). It is also of note that Septimus was a

sensitive, artistic type before the war, he ran away from home to London because he saw himself

as a poet. He writes after the war too, but unlike the war poets he has no audience and his writing

does not seem to be therapeutic. To Septimus humanity is abhorrent because “They desert the

fallen” (Woolf 99). Woolf knew that other families also suffered, perhaps because they had sons

like the “weedy … boys of sixteen, who might, to-morrow, stand behind bowls of rice, cakes of

soap on counters” which Peter Walsh sees laying wreaths at the Cenotaph (Woolf 70).

8.1.2 Remembrance

Although without patriotism, Mrs Dalloway seems to have an air of commemorative

remembrance. David Bradshaw notes that there are several such instances such as the “fictional

counterpart” of the Remembrance Sunday ceremony (“Mrs Dalloway and the First World War").

Woolf includes her own version of the 11 a.m. silence in the sky-writing airplane scene: “As they

looked the whole world became perfectly silent, and a flight of gulls crossed the sky, first one

gull leading, then another, and in this extraordinary silence and peace, in this pallor, in this

purity, bells struck eleven times, the sound fading up there among the gulls” (48). This seems to

be generally about as close as Woolf gets to celebrating the lives of the fallen, doing it in her

own melancholy way. Her tone is much distant from the patriotic newspapers such as The Times

where lines were printed about “the vast and gallant company of the fallen” (Lee “War”). Such

lines surely dispelled the optimism about the post-war situation of those who had originally

opposed the war. As Lee notes, the thoughts of Leonard and Virginia Woolf about the post-war

future were tinged with disillusion, they wondered how soon after the peace celebration will

53
people forget. Their question of “how people will soon forget all about the war,& the fruits of

our victory will grow as dusty as ornaments under glass cases in lodging house drawing rooms”

(“War”) is reminiscent of the tendency of the various individuals in Mrs Dalloway to pretend

that nothing has changed.

Clarissa’s social circle is on its way out. As Zwerdling notes in Mrs. Dalloway and the

Social System, the readers would surely be aware of the fact that the Conservatives such as

Richard Dalloway were replaced in British government by the Labour Party (70). To the upper

class, the war was to be forgotten because they were characterized by their “Solidity, rigidity,

stasis, the inability to communicate feelings” (Zwerdling 71). This inability to react and to

respond to the uncomfortable is shown in the treatment of Septimus, who does not fit with the

brave fallen and he is an unpleasant reminder of something the upper classes were trained to

suppress – a violent display of emotion. Lady Bexborough is admired for her stoicism for

example, for opening a bazaar with a letter about the death of one of her sons in hand. The War

was simply not of concern to them anymore and the characters who dismiss its significance are

said to be “sealed with wax over the deeper sources of life” (Woolf 47). Despite the fact that or

perhaps due to the fact that Woolf and her social circle had taken the decision to be conscious

objectors, they had perhaps thought more about the war than the characters of Mrs Dalloway.

This is a part of Woolf’s plan to critique the social system since, as Zwerdling writes: “Neither

Virginia Woolf nor any of her Bloomsbury associates could have brought themselves to say "the

War-tut-tut." (71).

54
8.2 Personal Significance

Though she was clearly influenced by the involvement of those around her, Woolf also

employed her own memories of the wartime. In 1915, for example, she reports one of many

unnerving war-related happenings in London: “In St James Street there was a terrific explosion;

people came running out of Clubs; I stood still & gazed about them. But there was no Zeppelin

or aeroplane – only, I suppose, a very large tyre burst” (D1 32). This is remarkably similar to the

sound which jolted Clarissa’s in the flower shop and everyone around. Clarissa immediately

thinks it’s a pistol shot, even years after the war, her mind is still influenced by it. It turns out to

be merely a sound from a motor car, just as in Woolf’s diary entry. Her diary offers more

examples of her life being affected by the war and many of these instances seem to have found

their way into Mrs Dalloway. Such an effect of The Great War is described yet again in 1917,

firstly Leonard Woolf is summoned again, which was a fearsome experience for both of them.

Having to resist the call meant a “humiliating examination” where Leonard had to prove he was

unfit for combat (Lee “War”). Secondly, within a short time span, Leonard’s brother Cecil dies

in the war and Philip is injured. These experiences, aside from the general anxiety and civilian

experience of the war, inform Woolf’s opinion on the conflict.

8.2.1 Inspiration for Septimus

One need not be directly involved, of course, to recognize the disastrous effects of a war on its

soldiers. When they visit Philip Woolf in the hospital on December 14, she writes, “A feeling of

the uselessness of it all, breaking all these people & mending them again was in the air, I

thought” (D1 92). Philip Woolf was actually wounded by the very same shell which had killed

55
his brother Cecil. Virginia Woolf noted certain symptoms about Philip during their visit at the

Fishmonger’s Hall in London, used as a recovery ward. What is called “shell shock” in Mrs

Dalloway is classified by some scholars as survival guilt or survivor syndrome. This concept was

developed to classify the symptoms of victims of persecution or various disasters. The victims

are usually afflicted by depression and anxiety as a result of trauma. Karen L. Levenback writes

about this concept and how Woolf observed it in her essay Virginia Woolf and Returning

Soldiers: The Great War and the Reality of Survival in Mrs. Dalloway and The Years. Besides

his physical injury, Philip Woolf seemed to be detached and absentminded. Woolf continues in

her diary: “I imagine that he is puzzled why he doesn't feel more” (D1 92). Levenback states that

such entries in Woolf’s diary and correspondence show evidence that “Woolf used her

observations particularly of Philip Woolf, to illuminate the reality … of their survival, something

that exacted a cost that some found it difficult to pay – and impossible to talk about” (72). The

character of Septimus Smith is used to explore two themes at once, the theme of sanity and the

treatment of the soldiers returning from the war in general.

Woolf had more opportunities to notice the difficult position of a soldier in the civilian

world when working with Leonard and Philip on publishing a volume of Cecil’s poems in his

honor at their own Hogarth Press. She noted that he was “wretched” and seemed unable to

resume his previous life (Levenback 73). Woolf harshly criticized the expectation of the society

on the soldiers to carry on, it seemed that only those injured or dead were honored in the eyes of

the public. Septimus’s injuries are of a psychological kind, however, and society did not accept

these. Bradshaw calls Septimus a coward for committing suicide. Woolf had more empathy, as

Levenback points out from a diary entry about Philip’s visit to their home in Asheham. In this

entry she describes a discomfort caused by Philip’s presence, one felt by himself as well and she

56
wonders whether he felt himself a hindrance “as no doubt, he always feels himself now—an

outsider; lonely” (74). Such words show that she was sensible to the outlier position of a soldier

such as Philip and she based some of Septimus on this perception. No matter their distinction in

the war, both Philip and Septimus were destined to feel like outsiders. Even though he lived

admirably after his return from Italy, Septimus cannot conform anymore, he perhaps finds

himself an outsider surrounded by those such as Rezia, who have no idea what he has been

through and his only comrade Evans is dead. He cannot communicate with his wife and he seems

to only respond to his hallucinations in which the dead speak to him. He senses his exclusion

because he feels like a ”last relic straying on the edge of the world, this outcast, who gazed back

at the inhabited regions, who lay, like a drowned sailor, on the shore of the world” (Woolf 101).

When a servant girl finds him talking to himself she jumps and runs downstairs to tell the cook,

and similarly, Rezia is “wild with terror” because he is talking to himself (Woolf 101). Woolf

noticed that Philip Woolf did not speak about his experiences in the war (Levenback 74).

Possibly because she sensed that these experiences were too painful to be communicated,

she chose Septimus to utter the words “Communication is health; communication is happiness”

to himself (Woolf 102). It is as if others cannot hear what Septimus is saying, the mere fact that

he is muttering something means that he is ill. Concerning Rezia’s fear, Woolf had probably

another real-life model for her unfortunate situation of a wife to a veteran. One of the

inspirations for Rezia was Lydia Lopokova who Woolf observed as a model for certain

characteristics, going as far as accidentally calling Lopokova Rezia when they met for tea (D2

310). She also recorded in her diary a visit to an artist associated with the Bloomsbury group

named Barbara Bagenal who was trying to cope with the state of her husband, similarly to Rezia.

Woolf writes about Barbara: “Such a grind & drudge her life is as fills me with pity—seeing

57
human life a thing to be put through the machine by necessity" (Levenback 80). Woolf’s

compassion for the victims of the war carried on into Mrs Dalloway and she was well aware of

the inability of the soldier’s wife to facilitate healing. Rezia’s misunderstanding and fear of

outsider’s judgment is thus a part of the critique of post-war society, which Woolf observed

around her.

As Kaley Jones observes in Failed Witnessing in Virginia Woolf's "Mrs. Dalloway” both

Rezia and Clarissa make sense of Septimus's shell shock through their culture’s point of view.

Their understanding is limited by their experience of the war, the patriarchal norms of the

doctors, and the imperialist narrative of the ruling social class (70). By writing about how things

were and not as they should be, Woolf avoided preaching and yet she managed to achieve her

intent to criticize the system. Jones comments on the impossibility of recovery in the restrictive

post-war atmosphere: “That neither Septimus's male doctors nor his female witnesses are able to

facilitate healing reveals the need for cultural change” (70). While Septimus pays the ultimate

price for preserving his private soul, Clarissa is able to protect her soul from Sir Bradshaw and

other intrusive influences and “in her repressive cultural context, is as healed as she can be”

(Jones 87).

Despite all the trauma of the war, ineffective treatment of mental illness and societal

pressures, Clarissa Dalloway is able to go on. Despite the numerous pessimistic interpretations

Mrs Dalloway can be also interpreted as a celebration of life. In her forties, Virginia Woolf was

just entering a richly creative period of her life and Mrs Dalloway reflects her cautiously

optimistic look to the post-war world.

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9 Conclusion

Woolf uses the character of Clarissa Dalloway, a high society hostess to show how limited the

role of middle-class women was. Being somewhat privileged to be able to support herself

through writing, she sympathized with these women and she used Clarissa to show how women

such as her used to be controlled by societal expectations.

Septimus Smith, a mentally unstable war veteran who is closely linked to Clarissa, shows

how sanity and insanity exist side by side. Through his character, Woolf was able to criticize the

inflexibility of the post-war society and also the psychiatric treatment of individuals. As this

thesis attempted to show, this was a topic very close to Woolf and her passionate disapproval of

the methods she was treated with is palpable in the novel. Woolf believed such psychiatric

methods presented a threat to a person’s privacy, the highest most precious part of their self. Just

as Septimus or Clarissa, Woolf believed she always had to protect herself, possibly because

during her youth the prevailing image of womanhood was the Victorian ideal. Woolf spent much

of her life dismantling this idea and arguing for equality, yet she was affected by the perception

that a woman artist was unacceptable. Perhaps this is why Clarissa Dalloway and Septimus

Smith are connected through Shakespeare, showing Woolf’s attitude that art is the shield of

one’s soul, protecting the individual against the intrusion of oppressive aspects of society.

Never presenting concrete alternatives, merely pointing out and satirizing the oppressive

and close-minded aspects of the British post-war society, Woolf achieved her ambition of

showing the social system at work. Thus, she created a multifaceted novel in which she was able

to include both deep appreciation for life as well as a call for change.

59
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