The novel Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf takes place during a single day in London, after the end of the First World War, following the main character, Clarissa Dalloway, who is preparing for her party happening that same evening. Despite the novel being centered on Clarissa, we get to meet several characters and get to know their stories by “invading” their consciousness. Woolf is known for implementing free indirect discourse in her novels, opposing the post-Victorian traditions of literature and thinking about the mind, hence becoming one of the main figures in modernist literature. Free indirect discourse can be described as the merging of both the narrator’s and the character’s thoughts resulting in a series of unmediated streams of consciousness and causing the reader to find itself in some else’s head, without knowing who exactly the thoughts belong to. Although the novel is set up in a single day, it deals with several essential themes surrounding the human condition such as war, trauma, love, time, aging, nostalgia, etc. However, from the themes and characters we meet, I find particularly interesting how gender plays a defining role in the novel and how it affects the lives of Lucrezia and Septimus.
Firstly, I would like to bring your attention to the fact that the novel is called MRS. Dalloway making it clear that Clarissa’s position and identity are defined by her marriage, moreover that gender is a constraint influencing all characters in Woolf’s novel. Such characters include Septimus Warren Smith and his wife Lucrezia. Septimus is a veteran of World War I and suffers from shell shock, today known as PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder), he is lost in his own mind and through present interactions with objects or even words relieves his experiences during the war. One of the main scenes which to me highlights how painful the experience of war can be for both men and women is when Septimus and Lucrezia are at the park and he becomes fixated by an airplane, advertising for toffee in the sky, so he starts crying. Lucrezia tries to convince herself that everything is alright with her husband, “(who had nothing whatever seriously the matter with him but was a little out of sorts)” (21). This belief is a reflection of the lack of medical understanding of the trauma resulting from war. Since veterans were not physically harmed the only explanation for there being something wrong with them was that these men were being cowards, and failing their roles as strong and courageous veterans. When Lucrezia takes a moment away from Septimus and walks to the fountain she thinks:
“For she could stand it no longer. Dr. Holmes might say there was nothing the matter. Far rather would she that he were dead! She could not sit beside him when he stared so and did not see her and made everything terrible; sky and tree, children playing, dragging carts, blowing whistles, falling down; all were terrible… Look! Her wedding ring slipped-she had grown so thin. It was she who suffered-but she had nobody to tell.” (23)
This passage reflects how much of an emotional and physical burden it was to love someone who suffered from shell shock. Lucrezia thinks “to love makes one solitary”(23), which makes her ascribe to the gender role of women in the post-war period, taking care of their husbands, loving them without reciprocity, not being able to tell anyone how they felt and pretending to be fine. Dr. Holmes, who had checked on Septimus before, had told Lucrezia to urge her husband to take interest in things outside himself, in real things, therefore she keeps on repeating and imploring “look” while he remains daydreaming, distant from her isolated in his own world. As Maisie Johnson passes them by at the park she has the impression that they are queer when in reality their pain, frustration, and suffering is immeasurable. Hence, we can compare this scene to how the society at the time seemed to overlook war veterans, their traumas and its impact on relationships. Later on in the novel when Clarissa is told about Septimus who commits suicide she explains how she did not pity him, how she was glad he had done it and how she felt a connection with the young man. According to the sociological imagination, all personal troubles are connected to historical issues, hence the fact that Septimus committed suicide is at the same time personal as well as a societal issue resulting from the experiences of WWI. It is only Septimus trouble, it was Clarissa’s as well as the whole English society.
Regarding Septimus death, as he jumps from the window in order for Dr. Holmes not to separate him from Lucrezia, it is interesting how even though it was an individual act it felt like Lucrezia helped him both physically and emotionally. She attempted to stop Dr. Holmes from going up the stairs and once Septimus was about to jump the window the narrator describes it as: “it was their idea of tragedy, not his or Rezia’s (for she was with him)” (149). Personally, what I find most interesting in this scene is that the couple feels no longer distant, Septimus finally escaped his own mind and Lucrezia prior to him jumping was able to have a few minutes during which he was present, he was himself. Furthermore, while Lucrezia ascribes to the gender role of women in the post-war period, Septimus does not. At first, we believe he does since when Evans died he was proud that he felt nothing, but this scene with Lucrezia shows that he had a lot of unresolved emotions which he was not able to deal with, he was not a strong man who was unaffected by his friend’s death, he was a coward.
Additionally, when I was reading Mrs. Dalloway and when we were learning about Freud in class it made me question how close to us are such experiences of war? How long ago have they affect my family and who did they affect? And so I decided to ask my father about my grandpa who I did not have the chance to meet. His name was Letterio Livoti and he was an Italian immigrant who made Brazil his home. Turns out though that my grandpa was born in Tunisia to his Italian parents and he had to fight for the Axis power in Africa. He was young and really had no other choice. Thankfully he did not serve for too long and from what we know did not suffer from any severe trauma resulting from the war. After the war, he went back to Italy with his family but the country was destroyed, thus he bought a ticket with his friends to Brazil. Similarly, from my mother’s side, I know that her father’s family escaped Germany/ Russia before the war truly broke and his mother’s family moved to Argentina where there was a large German community. My grandpa’s father who had a lot of children mainly boys was scared that they would have to serve, hence they moved to Brazil. It seems to me that Freud’s death drive is closer to us than we think, the drive for aggression and our attempt to delay death by immigrating for instance. It is also extremely interesting to draw on war and its effects on geography. As we learned in class, every process happens in a specific place and yet somehow it seems like war promotes globalization in a sense, with the movement of people and their interconnectedness, the creation of families in new places while maintaining ties with still other places. Septimus fought in France for his nation, England, while my grandpa fought in Africa for Italy and because of it moved to Brazil.
Lastly, in GRSJ (Gender, Race, Sexuality and Social Justice) we are learning about epistemology and storytelling, how we create knowledge and which stories we find valuable. Personally, from all the post-war novels that I have read (which being honest haven’t been many) were centered in a male experience of war. Although Mrs. Dalloway challenges this male-centered notion of war especially with Lucrezia’s character, I believe we as literary critics must make the move towards looking for literature that reflects women’s experience of war or children’s experience of war. For instance, what about reading novels regarding comfort women?
My point with this post is that war is mostly gendered but its consequences do not discriminate, all people are affected by it directly or indirectly. I believe that Virginia Woolf was aware of that and if she tried to battle gender constraints in her literature why can we battle gender constraints in our choices of reading and understanding current and past wars?