Virginia Woolf as told by Septimus
Virginia Woolf seemed to reflect her life onto her characters, and Septimus is no exception, though he captured parts of Woolf’s own experiences more personally than others. More specifically, Septimus captured the effects of mental health issues, and he also portrayed a complicated relationship with medical professionals. He was prescribed the “rest cure,” a treatment for multiple causes, but in his case, shell shock/PTSD. The rest cure, almost exclusively used for women, consisted of isolation aside from a nurse, feeding, and hearing soothing stories & topics from the nurse to keep away disturbing thoughts. None of this seemed to be pleasant though, with the first week’s diet consisting of only milk, or alternatively, 18 or more raw eggs, and the rest cure’s generally uncomforting treatments (Martin). Virginia Woolf was also prescribed the rest cure, though instead used in an attempt to cure bipolar disorder (National Library of Medicine). She likely used Septimus’s experience to help illustrate what she went through, especially considering his rough experiences with doctors. Septimus was somewhat cornered by the expectations of his doctors, wanting him to be “manlier.” Similarly, the people around Woolf, and probably most explicitly to her, her doctors, wanted her to be what they thought was “normal,” and it probably caused her to have a lot of the same emotions Septimus experienced.
I particularly found one of the initial scenes where Septimus expresses suicidal thoughts compelling due to how it connected to Virginia Woolf herself:
“Suddenly he said, ‘Now we will kill ourselves,’ when they were standing by the river, and he looked at it with a look she had seen in his eyes when a train went by… But he himself remained high on his rock, like a drowned sailor on a rock. I leant over the edge of the boat and fell down, he thought. I went under the sea. I have been dead, and yet am now alive, but let me rest still; he begged…” (Woolf 65-7)
Woolf committed suicide by means of drowning after filling her coat pockets with stones. This was her 3rd attempt. A week prior to her death, she was said to be soaking wet appearing “ill and shaken,” leading scholars to believe she attempted to drown herself despite Woolf claiming she had only slipped into a riverbank (National Library of Medicine). Although Septimus did not commit suicide in this scene, and in a different way later when he did, it’s still interesting to think about how Virginia Woolf wrote about a similar experience to what she would go through later. It would be quite crude to say that her death was specifically linked to this one scene in Mrs. Dalloway, but I specifically remember thinking about this connection while reading that scene.
Virginia Woolf also seemed to share the same feelings towards her spouse with Septimus. In the book, Septimus was enjoying his life with his wife until the very end, “They were perfectly happy now… For she could say anything to him now…She had never seen him wild or drunk, only suffering sometimes through this terrible war, but even so, when she came in, he would put it all away. Anything, anything in the whole world, any little bother with her work, anything that struck her to say she would tell him, and he understood at once” (Woolf 142-3). Though this sentiment is shared by Rezia, Septimus’s wife, she describes their relationship as happy and without fault aside from the side effects from the war. Septimus would always set aside his struggles for her, and he always had Rezia’s best interest in mind. Woolf expressed similar feelings in her suicide letter to her husband:
“Dearest,
I feel certain I am going mad again. I feel we can’t go through another of those terrible times. And I shan’t recover this time. I begin to hear voices, and I can’t concentrate. So I am doing what seems the best thing to do. You have given me the greatest possible happiness. You have been in every way all that anyone could be. I don’t think two people could have been happier till this terrible disease came. I can’t fight any longer. I know that I am spoiling your life, that without me you could work. And you will I know. You see I can’t even write this properly. I can’t read. What I want to say is I owe all the happiness of my life to you. You have been entirely patient with me and incredibly good. I want to say that — everybody knows it. If anybody could have saved me it would have been you. Everything has gone from me but the certainty of your goodness. I can’t go on spoiling your life any longer.
I don’t think two people could have been happier than we have been.” (Woolf)
Throughout this letter, Virginia Woolf consistently mentions her husband rather than focusing on her struggle. She says that she’s a burden to him, and she repeats over and over how much happiness he brought her despite her struggles with bipolar disorder. She seemed to have the same viewpoint on her relationship between her hardship and spouse as Septimus did, prioritizing the latter over everything else.
I’d like to explicitly mention that it’s important to tread carefully when exploring these types of topics. As interesting as Virginia Woolf’s life in comparison to her characters is, it’s way more important to discuss it with respect for her in mind. Virginia Woolf passed away more than 15 years after the publishing of Mrs. Dalloway, so her connections to Septimus aren’t necessarily a foreshadowing of her death to me, but rather a vicarious depiction of her struggles at that time in her life. (Septimus was around 30 years old in the book, and Virginia Woolf was around 35.) As upsetting as her story is, she provides valuable insight as to how women in the 1900s with mental disabilities felt and were treated.
Work Cited
Boeira, Manuela V, et al. “Virginia Woolf, Neuroprogression, and Bipolar Disorder.” Revista Brasileira de Psiquiatria (Sao Paulo, Brazil : 1999), U.S. National Library of Medicine, 14 June 2016, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7112729/.
Jones, Josh. “Virginia Woolf’s Handwritten Suicide Note: A Painful and Poignant Farewell (1941).” Open Culture, 26 Aug. 2013, www.openculture.com/2013/08/virginia-woolfs-handwritten-suicide-note.html.
Martin, Diana. “The Rest Cure Revisited.” American Journal of Psychiatry, 1 May 2007, psychiatryonline.org/doi/10.1176/ajp.2007.164.5.737.
Woolf, Virginia. Mrs. Dalloway. Harcourt, 2005.
I wish I could have read this blog as a preface to reading Mrs. Dalloway to really understand who the author was and glean more information from the writing to a deeper extent. This blog is causing me to reflect on everything I have known about Clarissa as well, perhaps she had underlying mental health struggles and no one knew. Maybe that is why her life became so bland and she was forced to reminisce on the past later on. Any way- I do agree that the tie between Septimus and Woolf was needed as it was likely a groundbreaking idea at the time. The awareness spread on this topic is difficult but necessary.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Annika that it would have been helpful to read a blog like this before finishing Mrs. Dalloway for a fuller understanding. One point you made is that Septimus seemed happier with Rezia right before his death. I wonder if this happiness is truly due to Rezia, as you suggested, or if there are other factors at play. Septimus himself mentioned that he married Rezia in a futile attempt to feel something, which makes it unclear if he ever genuinely loved her.
ReplyDeleteIt’s fairly well-known that people who plan to commit suicide can sometimes experience a sudden sense of calm or happiness just before taking that step. I wonder if something similar happened to Septimus that day, especially since he had been contemplating suicide for a long time. This could suggest that his decision was premeditated. However, the scene is written in a way that makes it seem sudden and unplanned, so my theory could be completely off.
This is such an interesting perspective on Septimus's character, especially considering the fact that the original short story of Mrs. Dalloway ended in Clarissa unexpectedly taking her own life. In that short story, Woolf was clearly basing Clarissa on her own life and experiences, and it's easy to see how she split herself into two characters, Clarissa and Septimus, and based their lives off of her own. I think it's so interesting how you tied in the scene with Septimus talking about drowning himself to Woolf's own suicide. This is a really interesting and well written blog post, I love how you integrated pieces of Woolf's own life into it, it was really interesting to read the letter she wrote to her husband, and even more interesting to be able to see the letter!
ReplyDeleteVirginia Woolf's final piece of writing--her note to her husband Leonard--is heartbreaking and remarkable in many ways, not least because of the clearly "rational" view she is taking to her own life and death, and the loving way she addresses him (who made many sacrifices and devoted his life to caring for her and promoting her art and career). She feels the onset of another episode and doesn't have the strength to endure it--and the encroaching onset of the Second World War was also weighing heavily on her mind. Thank you for sharing that--there's no way I would be able to discuss it with the class without breaking down.
ReplyDeleteBut you're absolutely right to note that there is nothing inevitable about this outcome, and certainly Woolf is not "foreshadowing" her own death when writing this book. But she knows something about how bipolar disorder can lead a person to a suicide attempt, and she writes Septimus's character with real empathy and first-person understanding. I always try to remind classes that there is nothing inevitable about Septimus's death, either--he reacts impulsively, as a symptom of his disorder, to a particular confluence of circumstances on this particular day. He does not "want" to die, but he feels he "has to" flee his pursuer, "human nature," personified in the redoubtable Dr. Holmes. He quite literally doesn't know what he's doing, but the act is irreversible. This is in no way a rational decision: Septimus is driven by what seems like reflex, distorted by misunderstanding and an apparent conflation of Dr. Holmes and Sir William Bradshaw. Woolf is reflecting something important about how mental illness can result in a suicide attempt, and this is something she has direct experience with--and it's important to remember how ignorant the general public was at this time (including Dr. Holmes!) about psychology in general and mental illness in particular. I think there is likely some impulse to "raise awareness" through her depiction of Septimus's character, and she links him to "current issues" via shell shock, making his story even more immediately relevant and urgent for her readers.
I love the research that you have put into this, you bring up great points. Septimus seems very much to be a (possibly subconscious) representation of Virginia Woolf. She had her own experience with mental illness and could portray what some may categorize as insanity, in an empathy provoking way. I found myself sympathizing with Septimus, and understanding his experiences further than reading a textbook summary of PTSD. Knowing the similar details of the two, it makes sense to conclude that Woolf almost writes herself in some passages. The section on his love for poetry holds several beliefs that she probably held. Also, she referred to him as "The Artist" in many of her notes, and it could be her perception of herself. This is one of the most interesting blog posts I have read in a while, great job!
ReplyDeleteAlready while reading the novel, I was noticing similarities between details that I had heard about Virginia Woolf's life and the character of Septimus, and I had assumed that Septimus was a character that had been curated with so much complexity in order to inform ignorant others about the very real experiences that those with bipolar and shell shock go through. After seeing your research, I need to modify my view of Septimus' character as not just one that serves to educate the masses, but also one that Woolf can pour her soul out through, and bare herself and her experiences, if to help her to deal with her struggles or to show others. This post brought to light how much more devastating and real the connection was between Woolf and Septimus, and it paints his narrative in a new light that I wish I had seen it through originally. Great thought-provoking blog post!
ReplyDeleteThis is both incredibly dark, depressing but also interesting and gives so much more insight into Woolf and the book in my opinion. This shows how Woolf's own experiences in real life did influence her work, such as that in Mrs. Dalloway. It is tragic that she unfortunately ended up taking her life, and as you said, Mrs. Dalloway was certainly not some sort of foreshadowing of her own death but rather showcases the mental struggles she might have been facing throughout her life.
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